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Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

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Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#111

Post by jahewson »

harshpotatoes wrote: post #53

Could you imagine Boeing/lockheed/GM/some some oil company or any other manufacturer going up to their stockholders and saying: "This next year, profits will be significantly reduced as we replace every piece of equipment we own, replace every 1/4-20 screw with an M5, and redesign every aircraft/automobile/widget to meet new metric specifications"

There are costs to sticking with the imperial system. Non-US buyers want metric products which fit with their existing tooling. The factories of the world want all-metric manufacturing, which reduces costs. Error from unit conversion is a real problem.

Designing new products in metric wouldn't require old products to be replaced with imperial. Each product line has it's own special repair kit, spare parts, already. It's not like the suppliers who actually make parts aren't equipped to do metric if they're selling parts worldwide.

The UK went metric in the 1960s and it managed just fine, so there's no reason why it can't be done. Some pragmatism can be involved, for example road signs in the UK are still in miles, and one can still buy a pint of milk or beer (though the latter are technically labelled and sold in millilitres).

A move to metric wouldn't dictate the internal practices of a company like Lockheed, they could still require their suppliers to build parts in inches (even if that means that formally they purchase 2.6234cm sized screws or similar) and they can continue to do everything in inches. Not that they'd want to.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#112

Post by Strilanc »

raldi wrote: post #6

I wish the article had touched on temperature systems; I feel like Celsius is metric at its weakest. Farenheit has beautiful bands: 0's: So cold you have trouble doing anything and just want to warm up immediately 10's: Wear a ski jacket with hat and scarf and gloves 20's: Wear a ski jacket and hat 30's: Wear a ski jacket but leave it open 40's: Wear a wool overcoat 50's: Wear a heavy jacket 60's: Wear a light jacket…

Celsius is metric at its weakest only in the sense that Fahrenheit is the imperial system at its not-worst. Everyday temperatures don't vary enough to create the need for multiple units, like what happened with distances, so there's not random conversion factors strewn around. You never care about millidegrees, and you never see kilodegrees.

Incidentally, the same "beautiful bands" appear in Celsius. They're just separated by 5s instead of 10s. It's actually kind of hard to make a temperature scale that's bad for everyday usage, assuming you put zero between or near freezing vs boiling.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#113

Post by analog31 »

I started grade school around when the big push for metric occurred in the US. Here's what I remember. Inches were taught as inches. Here's a ruler, measure some things.

Metric was taught as a bunch of math. Here's how you convert between different units.

Many years later I was talking to a machinist who told me: "My daughter is learning metric in school but I don't like it because of all the math."

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#114

Post by ScottBurson »

teamonkey wrote: post #96
venus wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it'd be better than being Boeing and going in front of your stockholders to explain why your marketshare is radically down because you refused to conform to the measurement system 95% of your customers are using. It's a non-question anyway. Boeing planes already report fuel load in litres. Funnily enough, flight levels are internationally represented in feet (well, 100-feet) so there's a "win" for you. Also…

The knot isn't quite as arbitrary as most imperial measures. 1 knot = 1 nautical mile/hour 1 nautical mile ~= the distance travelled by someone at the equator in one minute due to the Earth's rotation Since navigation at sea was strongly dependent on the position of the sun and stars, it makes sense to use a unit of speed that makes your calculations easier. Even for modern navigation it makes sense to use a unit of…

> 1 nautical mile ~= the distance travelled by someone at the equator in one minute due to the Earth's rotation

No. It's approximately one minute of arc, that is, 1/60 of one degree.

In fact the speed of the earth's rotation at the equator is more like 15 nautical miles per minute.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#115

Post by jwecker »

Havoc wrote: post #99
jwecker wrote: post #89

I am not anti-metric by any means, but having done carpentry a lot in the past it always strikes me when this comes up that one of the central arguments for (a limited use-case of) the imperial system is usually glossed over: the fact that in many crafts (especially historically), using base-12 makes certain things much easier. It divides into 3rds far more easily, divides into 4ths slightly more easily, and still di…

>a rational practical reason for sticking in some cases to Imperial units That to me is the worst of both worlds. The optimal solution is to use one consistent system and the winner is pretty clear. >carpentry Certainly. The future is full of 3D printers though.

I would love to hear from someone who does carpentry (or some craft-like equivalent) with the metric system- specifically what kind of ruler/tape they use and whether it has a special 1/3 and 2/3 mark on it (since you don't want to have to eyeball 0.33333....) or if they just avoid dividing things by three altogether.

Because the truth is, your perspective is a political one more than a practical one. The whole idea of "officially" adopting either system is somewhat misleading- regardless of politicians or zealots decide, most craftspeople would use rules that easily divide into three, most programmers would often reference things in terms of base-2, and most people would still prefer 24 hours in a day. There is no general-case optimal winner that applies to all measurement and work-flow situations.

In the case of base-2, international bodies have already found a nice dual-system ( http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html ). A simple solution for (for example) carpentry that would give the best of both worlds would be to define a unit that is exactly 1/60th of a meter. Let's call it a "sixer." Now someone crafting things can have all the convenience and easy division they need (here- cut this at 1/5 of 1/3 of a meter- no problem!) and still have it unified with the meter at some scale. There would be issues- but it's situational, which is my point.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#116

Post by Natsu »

ScottBurson wrote: post #109
walshemj wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And "codes" !!

Actually, the use of "code" as a count noun is quite old and well entrenched in the numerical modelling community. I can recall back in the early 1970s hearing Fortran programs routinely referred to as "codes".

Code is a weird one because there are times when it's correct (e.g. "encryption codes"). But when it's used to mean "software" it should never be "codes", IMHO, though I guess there's a minority in disagreement.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#117

Post by nice_uname_nerd »

Havoc wrote: post #99
jwecker wrote: post #89

I am not anti-metric by any means, but having done carpentry a lot in the past it always strikes me when this comes up that one of the central arguments for (a limited use-case of) the imperial system is usually glossed over: the fact that in many crafts (especially historically), using base-12 makes certain things much easier. It divides into 3rds far more easily, divides into 4ths slightly more easily, and still di…

>a rational practical reason for sticking in some cases to Imperial units That to me is the worst of both worlds. The optimal solution is to use one consistent system and the winner is pretty clear. >carpentry Certainly. The future is full of 3D printers though.

I strongly disagree. Using the right tool for the right job is worth far more than enforcing arbitrary universal consistency. In a math course, you'd measure angles in radians so you're dealing with nice small multiples of pi. I think it'd be downright dangerous to use radians in a fighter jet, say, when the precision you need is much better provided by degrees.

Imagine if we enforced only one programming paradigm, since they're all equivalent. Or if we demanded that logicians and cs professors only prove things using turing machines, instead of picking the model of computation that best suits the problem. If there's a case where the english measurement system is more convenient, people should use it.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#118

Post by dalke »

kps wrote: post #39
andmarios wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Body temperature isn't constant. Even excluding abnormal cases (eg fever), normal body temperature not only is within a range, but even this range depends on the body part you use for your readings. Instead with Celsius at 0°C water freezes, at 100°C water boils. Thus Celsius makes more sense because the main range (0-100) covers both very cold and very hot temperatures from a human perspective. Furthemore it has a s…

Consider, in 1725, reliably dividing a measured distance into 100 segments. Repeated bisection is practical.

I find that extremely difficult to believe without some sort of external verification. Consider that the Rømer scale from 1701 had 60 degrees between freezing brine and the boiling point of water.

Any technology which can find 60 divisions can find 100 divisions.

For that matter, Pierre Vernier invented his calipers nearly a century earlier, and William Gascoigne the micrometer in the mid-1600s, so I doubt that 100 divisions was a hard thing by 1725.

(To be certain, 64 divisions is easier than 100, but I believe it was reliably possible to do the latter in the early 1700s.)

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#119

Post by analog31 »

JohnDoe365 wrote: post #75

> Likewise, employer-provided health insurance was a historical accident As an European, a stance like that is near to instant execution.

As I understand it, employer-provided health insurance was first introduced by Ernst Abbe through his oversight of the Carl Zeiss company, in Germany.

Abbe is one of my favorite unsung tech heroes.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#120

Post by jonathansizz »

tfinniga wrote: post #103

Here's my proposal: America goes metric, and the rest of the world starts driving on the right hand side of the road.

Most of the world already drives on the right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-_and_left-hand_traffic
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