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230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

theregister.com

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Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#41

Post by perilunar »

cameronh90 wrote: post #15
dogma1138 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? Have you seen the mess that is the British measurement system? Distances are in meters if they are short, miles if they are long, Leeds will be 275 miles away from your gas station that would charge you by the liter so would be most other liquids unless they are milk or beer, then you’ll get a mixtures of metric pipes with inch threads and inch pipes with metric threads, when you buy a property the land would be…

Things like threads sizes staying imperial makes sense to me. I believe they are now technically defined in mm, but obviously it's still based on fractions of an inch. In my view, there aren't any truly compelling reasons to switch from BSP to something based on natural metric measures. On the other hand, if we were to replace these pipe fittings with metric, we'd end up with a mixed system for realistically at least…

> It's similar to how in flying, we still use feet/flight levels, and actually a few places have migrated from metric to the more conventional imperial system.

It hasn't stopped the conversion of most other aviation measurements to metric. Runway dimensions, visibility and separation distances are in meters, temperatures are in Celsius, atmospheric pressure in hectopascals, fuel is in litres, mass is in kilograms. Frequencies are in Hertz. At least that's the case in Australia. Pretty sure Europe is similar.

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#42

Post by satiric »

irdc wrote: post #9
radiator wrote: post #8

Such a long article, repeatedly praising the "simplicity" of the metric system, and it still ignores all possible opposing views. Not a word about the superiority of the duodecimal system when dividing quantities, even though a couple of examples are quoted (12 inches is a foot, 12 pence to the shilling). No effort to explain whyever someone would approach the matter in this way. The author is either extremely biased…

Quick, how many inches are in a yard?

As an American, the only time I use yards is with football fields. When am I going to use inches in that context?

It's not a simple conversion because it's not a common conversion. It's like converting between inches and meters. The imperial system is multiple systems smashed together, and it's optimized for the more common conversions.

Not saying it's a perfect system, or that metric isn't better, but it's absolutely useable. I'd much rather stick with imperial than half-ass a conversion to metric and be stuck between the two systems, like what's happened in Canada and the UK.

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#43

Post by elcritch »

perilunar wrote: post #33
elcritch wrote: post #6

Interesting backstory about the lost metric influence. The problem I have with Celsius is that it’s so clinical. “Man it was sunny day at 23.1” just doesn’t roll off the tongue like say it’s mid seventies today”.

We do the same in Celsius: mid to high twenties is a hot day. Over thirty is very hot. Low teens is cold. Zero is freezing (literally). Nobody every talks about the weather in fractions of a degree.

Thanks, that's a good point. I've only used Celsius in technical situations, so it always felt technical.

I wonder if that could be part of why Americans don't tend to dislike metric -- we associate it with technical work. Without a forcing function none of use grow up using it in common daily usage, sort of like how emotional words in second languages tend to not be as impactful. They just never match your first language's import.

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#44

Post by downvotetruth »

radiator wrote: post #8

Such a long article, repeatedly praising the "simplicity" of the metric system, and it still ignores all possible opposing views. Not a word about the superiority of the duodecimal system when dividing quantities, even though a couple of examples are quoted (12 inches is a foot, 12 pence to the shilling). No effort to explain whyever someone would approach the matter in this way. The author is either extremely biased…

Sexagesimal could map to Alphanumeric dropping C,O,S,V,W,X,Z and adding ~!@$%&? and optionally 1 for #

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#46

Post by [deleted] »

radiator wrote: post #8

Such a long article, repeatedly praising the "simplicity" of the metric system, and it still ignores all possible opposing views. Not a word about the superiority of the duodecimal system when dividing quantities, even though a couple of examples are quoted (12 inches is a foot, 12 pence to the shilling). No effort to explain whyever someone would approach the matter in this way. The author is either extremely biased…

[deleted]

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#47

Post by brg »

wirrbel wrote: post #18
radiator wrote: post #8

Such a long article, repeatedly praising the "simplicity" of the metric system, and it still ignores all possible opposing views. Not a word about the superiority of the duodecimal system when dividing quantities, even though a couple of examples are quoted (12 inches is a foot, 12 pence to the shilling). No effort to explain whyever someone would approach the matter in this way. The author is either extremely biased…

How many ounces are in a pound?

A pints a pound the world around.

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#48

Post by wirrbel »

randomcarbloke wrote: post #37
wirrbel wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

throughout my life I planned on teaching my kid(s) this one created word for the state of being not-thirsty. So in German, there is 'satt' which means 'not hungry', but for thirst, there is no corresponding word and its one of these urban memes that the corresponding word for not-thirsty would be 'sitt'. Now that I have a kid, my kid has not learned the word 'sitt'. :-) Anyway, I wouldn't have made the news as this d…

What's wrong with quenched or sated?

Does not exist as such in German.

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#49

Post by Fatnino »

somat wrote: post #17
radiator wrote: post #8

Such a long article, repeatedly praising the "simplicity" of the metric system, and it still ignores all possible opposing views. Not a word about the superiority of the duodecimal system when dividing quantities, even though a couple of examples are quoted (12 inches is a foot, 12 pence to the shilling). No effort to explain whyever someone would approach the matter in this way. The author is either extremely biased…

It does not bother me, it turns out that having an inconsistent measuring system is not actually that bad. and metric, it turns out has no more purity in it's base units than any other system. Take the meter, the group setting up the metric system was searching hard for something that was close in size to a yard so they choose 1/10_000_000 the distance from the pole to the equator. nothing wrong with that, but it is…

Step 1: get humans to evolve an extra thumb on each hand

Step 2: ???

Step 3: profit

Re: 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

#50

Post by Fatnino »

irdc wrote: post #9
radiator wrote: post #8

Such a long article, repeatedly praising the "simplicity" of the metric system, and it still ignores all possible opposing views. Not a word about the superiority of the duodecimal system when dividing quantities, even though a couple of examples are quoted (12 inches is a foot, 12 pence to the shilling). No effort to explain whyever someone would approach the matter in this way. The author is either extremely biased…

Quick, how many inches are in a yard?

Quick, how many mm in a dm?
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