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Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

petitions.whitehouse.gov

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Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#81

Post by thinkling »

It's nice to be reminded that there will always be fresh waves of not-yet-cynical people to take up issues like this. But boy, am I cynical about the chances on this one.

The wikipedia article on Metrication in the US [1] isn't the best article ever but is worth reading for mentions of previous efforts.

A few things: - the US Congress has in various ways 'blessed' the metric system, more than any other. However...

> Proponents of the metric system in the U.S. often claim that "the United States, Liberia, and Burma (or Myanmar) are the only countries that have not adopted the metric system." This statement is not correct with respect to the U.S., and probably it isn't correct with respect to Liberia and Burma, either. The U.S. adopted the metric system in 1866. What the U.S. has failed to do is to restrict or prohibit the use of traditional units in areas touching the ordinary citizen [2]

Did you know that Jefferson proposed a decimal system for the US before the SI system had come about? (See e.g. [2].) There were also proposals to measure land in decimal units rather than in 640-acre sections.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_State...

[2] http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#82

Post by robin_reala »

mpclark wrote: post #57
oneandoneis2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think metric could be improved with a few imperial equivalents - A "metric foot" as 30cm, for instance - because they are convenient measurements. e.g. If somebody asks me "How tall is that person?" it's easier to say "About five foot" rather than "I dunno, about 155cm?" (I'm British, btw)

It's our age, I'm afraid. I'm a foot'n'inch-using brit too, but my early teenage kids only deal in metric units (except for miles)

My parents used pounds, stone, feet and inches; my school used kg, g, and cm (born in ’80). I’ve had to take a conscious decision to reset my thinking to metric only and to supply metric values when people ask for them.

This all apart from miles of course, but when all your road signs are in miles and the speed limits in mph there’s not much you can do about that. Who knows what plans there are for that switchover…

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#83

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

scotchmi_st wrote: post #60
davidw wrote: post #18

The way I explain this one to my European friends is: Do you remember the transition to the Euro? How you had to mentally convert prices at first? And how old people had more difficulties with it in some cases? Now, imagine that, not just for one unit, but weights, lengths, temperatures and volumes, all at the same time.

The UK managed the switch from imperial to metric okay. It's really not that hard.

Mostly okay. Our roads are still in miles per hour, and we still sell a "pint."

But at least food labels are all metric.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#84

Post by jamesjguthrie »

lmm wrote: post #55
jamesjguthrie wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that the UK is metric at all. They try to teach us to think metric in school but in the real world almost everything is still imperial. We hear imperial units every day in this country. We hear it when we discuss body weight, driving distance, cooking, size of most things, etc.

As a 25-year-old living in the UK, body weight is mostly kilos (that's what my doctor uses, and what I look at at the gym) except when talking to my parents. Cooking is 100% metric; I genuinely do not know what people are talking about when they quote Fahrenheit temperatures. Lengths and weights are metric, though not clothing sizes I guess. Driving distance is the only thing day-to-day where I think in old units.

Doctors and the gym use kilos for body weight, I agree but I don't really hear people ever say "I just dropped a couple of kilograms in the last month" it's always "I've lost half a stone"

I never hear Fahrenheit, which I'm glad about.

Cooking is definitely not 100% metric. The cooking shows on TV still mention cup sizes, pints etc. There's so many recipe books still in imperial and colloquially we never say a 30cm baguette or a 113g burger. It's a foot-long and a quarter pounder.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#85

Post by rmc »

scotchmi_st wrote: post #60
davidw wrote: post #18

The way I explain this one to my European friends is: Do you remember the transition to the Euro? How you had to mentally convert prices at first? And how old people had more difficulties with it in some cases? Now, imagine that, not just for one unit, but weights, lengths, temperatures and volumes, all at the same time.

The UK managed the switch from imperial to metric okay. It's really not that hard.

They still haven't converted. Miles & Miles per hour are still used for driving.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#86

Post by davvid »

I think most engineers would naturally support this idea. The reality is that doing something like this is pretty tough because the current system has so much weight. It's akin to asking a company to abandon a perfectly functioning legacy software system just so that someone can rewrite it.

My dad was an engineer with Caltrans and he told me about how California was ready to make the switch. It was going to be a gradual transition where signage would start listing both metric and imperial speed limits. They had actually gotten pretty far along into designing signs, etc.

He told me that the state eventually killed it because no politicians supported it and there was no strong desire from the public. While I think this is a great idea, I don't have my hopes up.

Apparently the state did a lot of work actually switching over to the metric system (all manuals, standards, etc. were updated to metric) but the plan was eventually aborted in favor of English units and much effort was then spent on switching back. :-/

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric1/DD-12-R1_Final.pdf

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric1/metricpg.htm

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#87

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

rplnt wrote: post #31
oneandoneis2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think metric could be improved with a few imperial equivalents - A "metric foot" as 30cm, for instance - because they are convenient measurements. e.g. If somebody asks me "How tall is that person?" it's easier to say "About five foot" rather than "I dunno, about 155cm?" (I'm British, btw)

Then you would end up: "Not about, how exactly tall he is?", "Oh, five foot and 5 cm." The 30cm unit would improve absolutely nothing, it would only complicate things. If you want to use approximate measurement, just round it to tens of centimeters. Or you can use meters with one decimal place, whatever comes more natural.

> If you want to use approximate measurement, just round it to tens of centimeters

I totally agree. Rounding to powers of ten works comes for free in metric measurements using base ten numbers. This is by design.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#88

Post by robin_reala »

Avalaxy wrote: post #71
dickbasedregex wrote: post #49

At the risk of being lumped in with the negative/unhelpful/HN-is-on-the-decline comment crowd, and I hate naysaying here but... Seriously? 1) If you haven't seen enough of these White House Polls go by yet (and there is a never ending list of inanity, for example: http://www.modernman.com/12-dumbest-whitehouse-petitions/ ) let me clue you in. They do nothing. Nothing. No one reads them. Just go back to wishing on a s…

It does have a lot to do with programming actually. I'm building an international application and I have to convert all my dimensions and weights to make it work in the US.

It gets even more awkward when it’s not just output: we’ve got a refine-by-height range slider in our system that I’m having to localise.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#89

Post by micampe »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #14

Before we start with the standard junk about "imperial measures are better because they are easier to understand / better suited to human scale / etc." can I say nope . The only advantage that imperial measures have (for some) is that they are familiar. That's the sum total of it. People where were raised metric find these apologies for imperial measures to be pure gibberish.

I didn't think there were people that really tried to defend the imperial system on anything but familiarity. not very happy of having been proved wrong.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#90

Post by BasDirks »

randomdata wrote: post #77
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #14

Before we start with the standard junk about "imperial measures are better because they are easier to understand / better suited to human scale / etc." can I say nope . The only advantage that imperial measures have (for some) is that they are familiar. That's the sum total of it. People where were raised metric find these apologies for imperial measures to be pure gibberish.

I was raised metric, but still find utility in the imperial system under some circumstances. I use my anatomy to measure things all the time while out on the farm, for instance. You could say step off 914cms, but I think 30 feet makes more sense in the context since you are literally counting your steps. If you have precise measuring tools at your disposal, then I'm inclined to agree though.

How about 10 meters?
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