I know, there’s a ton (not tonne) of redundancy in the title, but bear with me.
Over at The Divine Sarah’s place, some guy spouts off about the foul Napoleonic metric system, and of course I agree with all of it.
Engineers (of whom there are a few who will read this) will strongly disagree, but I live in a world of my own stuff and am not making things for other people. And in that world, I can certainly see this:
If you had to estimate the dimensions of a room without the benefit of a tape measure, you might walk its perimeter heel to toe, counting your steps.
I cannot tell you how often I’ve done this, either for the above purpose or to see whether a carpet will fit into a room whose dimensions I know in feet and inches. Ditto when installing shelves on a wall, or estimating a smaller space (my hand, with fingers fully splayed, measures just over eight inches from pinkie to thumb tip). I have small (8.5 shoe size) feet, which measure ten inches long from heel to big toe, or just over eleven inches if wearing my Minnetonka moccasins. I can measure distance because my step is about a yard (and I have no idea what that is in meters because a meter is much longer than my step). I’d rather use arshins or schritten than meters because they make more sense (about a step, in each case).
In other words, I don’t need to carry a frigging tape measure inscribed with inscrutable and meaningless units because I already have measuring devices on hand, so to speak. (And yes, if I know inches but am presented with centimeters, I can multiply / divide by 2.5 as needed because I’m not an idiot, and I don’t care about the missing .04 cm because I don’t have OCD.) I know that my measurements are somewhat approximate, but in my world that does me no harm. If it’s likely to, then I’ll use a tape measure (in Imperial/U.S. units*) for the precision required.
And yes, I know that some of the Imperial measurements are loony — gills, furlongs, chains, pecks and so on — but when last did anyone use those?
Engineers, scientists and drug dealers can use all the grams, milliliters or centimeters they need. The only time I “need” the metric system is when I’m looking at bullet diameters, and I’m okay with that. (And on the same topic, grains make more sense than milligrams.)
Otherwise, those stupid French measurements can kiss my ass. Bloody Europeans are just a bunch of poxy control freaks, and I want no part of it, or them**.
*I have no idea why the U.S. gallon is smaller than the Imperial, but even then I can live with it. When I’m in Britishland, it requires less adjustment in my thinking than it takes to drive on the left vs. the right side of the road.
**except when it comes to cheese or goulasch.
Real men like the guys who walked on the moon and the guys who lap a Formula 1 track pulling 4g use metric. Please send in your man card for shredding.
Not sure how that fits in with the old joke:
“There are two types of countries: Those that use the metric system, and those that have put a man on the moon.”
As a retired mechanical engineer I have had to use both systems, and learned to hate the metric system. Particularly with regard to temperature, the units °F and °C, which is more useful for daily application? From freezing water to “too darned hot °F goes from 32 to 100, while °C goes from 0 to 37.8; not terribly intuitive. Yeah, splitting freezing to boiling from 0 to 100 seems to make sense compared to 32 to 212, but which one gives better precision at normally used ranges? Having 180 degrees between the two as compared to 100 degree strikes me as more useful. But then, I grew up with °F so it just seems better.
And then the other old joke (I grew up in Minnesnowta) where the two temperature scales have the same value at -40°F and -40°C:
“It’s minus forty F ‘n’ C”, which means it’s minus forty Frickin’ Cold.
It does cause American boys being educated in France to contemplate their own demise, as Hemingway wrote about it.
Never figured you for a Frenchman, SB.
😉
In February 1966 — I was 16 — we changed from LSD (librum, solidus, denarius), or pounds, shillings and pence, to decimal currency where $1AUD = 100 cents. What a revelation! Previously, for example, to multiply £2/12/6 x 10 required the following:
10 x 6d = 60d at 12d per shilling = 5 shillings. Carry the 5.
10 x 12 shillings = 120 shillings plus the 5 carried = 125 shillings at 20 shillings to the pound £6 5 shillings. Carry the £6
10 x £2 = £20 plus the £6 carried = £26.
Answer, therefore, equals £26/5/-
Easy, huh?
Why do you think you guys use decimal currency?
Thank heavens though that we still use fps when we’re talking about how fast a pew!pew! is going.
Some how I managed to get well into my 60’s before finding out there are THREE (3) teaspoons per ONE (1) tablespoon. I was gobsmacked. I thought there was 2!!!! No wonder everything I baked tasted so good, there was more sugar in it than required!
While in the army in germany in the 70’s I was in classes to get an international driving license. We were told to quit bitching about the metric system because the US gov’t was in the process of turning the US into metric and by the time we got out the conversion would be complete. Here we are almost 50 years later….
I’m an architect and I agree in theory that metric dimensioning is easier (base 10 as opposed to base 12) but the conversion is murder.
I couldn’t agree more. And so many Europeans seem to think we’re completely unable to understand metric! It’s not that we can’t use metric when it’s better (mostly in chemistry and such), it’s that we use whichever system seems to work best for what we’re doing, and most of the time that’s ours.
My own personal yardstick is from the first knuckle of the middle finger to the center of my chest. And my slow walking pace is close enough to 2 feet that I can make useful estimates. If I’m building something, sure, I’ll use a tape measure, but mine doesn’t even have metric markings on it, because it’s nice to be able to divide by two, three, four, six, etc., and I really don’t need to know that my wall studs are 40.64 cm apart.
Also, furlongs and chains are not loony, they’re just a bit dated, because we don’t plow with oxen these days. At least not until they outlaw diesel.
As one of the engineers who does read your musings, if I need to measure a room without a tape measure I’ll use the LIDAR Ap on my I-phone. For longer distances ( to measure a bridge for example) I use Smoots. or parsecs
https://www.mit.edu/~stevenj/mitmap/harvard-bridge.html
….. and I have a full set of both SAE and Metric sockets and wrenches, so it doesn’t matter. and if I still tortured myself with early English motorcycles, a set of Whitworth spanners. It’s all arbitrary anyway, just an agreed upon standard.
Could you please include European wines in your **?
Especially Spanish ones.
The USA does produce great wines but the vast bulk of them are over sugared Kool-Aid.
When I lived in Germany for three years 1967-70 while I was in the U.S. Army I kind of got used to the metric stuff. My wife and I lived amongst the Krauts in a nice high rise apartment with a neighborhood grocery store a block away where we did some of our shopping. We both spoke basic German after about a year and watching people order meat from the butcher counter I heard them requesting their portions in pfunds, I asked how much a pfund is and they told me it was a half kilo or about one pound which I alway thought was a good unit of measurement.
I also learned how to read kilometers on my speedometer in mph by dividing by two and adding the first two digits, 120 kilometers = approx 72 mph and that was about how fast my VW would go down the Autobhan without falling apart.
Last thing I was reading a history fiction set in ancient Rome and the author had the Roman soldiers talking about distance in kilometers. I looked the author up and informed him that the Romans used miles and there are still mile markers on ancient roads in Europe. He replied back and apologized for being so dumb and said he knew better. Dumb shits, for a short time in the 1970’s we had some road signs stating distance in miles and kilometers here in Texas and miles always made more sense because Texas. The only other unit of measure for road distance at that time was beers, how many beers to Amarillo from Dallas made good sense and there were no open container laws about beer in the old days.
Damn Frogs also tried to make metric clocks, weeks, months and all sorts of crap that did not make much sense to me. I like our common sense units of measurement and they do work rather well for actual human brains. I am also so very sorry that Paris is burning and glad I was able to visit there in the olden days.
The metric system is very, very easy to do math in.
The Imperial “system” is much more difficult.
This is why American Engineers–raised and taught math partially through the imperial system–made it to the moon first. Their brains were better trained.
I prefer to think of it as two systems to measure different things.
Metric is good for science and engineering. Consistent standards and you can develop the tools using standard materials. A liter of water weighs one kg and you can calibrate a Celsius thermometer with water and ice. All good.
An engineer who can’t convert from metric to standard is incompetent. I wouldn’t trust him.
For other tasks, what I call “human” tasks, the standard system is better. For instance: I want a reasonable quantity of hamburger for cooking a meal. That’s a pound. It’s not a kilo. To convert it for ignorant Europeans, you have to say “about 400 grams”, like that’s intuitive.
Design a house, to human specifications. Lay it out in feet. Too small? Add a foot here, a foot there. Not 30 cm. Use (nominal) 2×4 studs on 16 inch center to build a wall. What the hell is that in cm?
Farenheit calibrated his thermometer in human terms. Zero is damn cold for a human, and 100 is damn hot. On a scale of damn cold to damn hot, what percent are you?
I actually rough measure stuff using my personal cubit, which is exactly 18 inches long.
This.
For science and engineering, having measurements based off fundamental constants such as the speed of light is a solid idea. For “human” tasks, twelve inches to a foot is useful. Go ahead and divide that meter by 3.
Easy. It’s about 13 inches.
Oddly enough, a set of metric weights and measures was ordered from France in the early 1800’s so thatthe US could start using them then. The ship was attacked by pirates, however, and the “standards” never arrived.
As a result, in 1830 the “United States Customary System” was formally established. It’s based on the British Imperial system, but it’s not quite the same, so we do not and never have use “Imperial” but rather “avoirdupois.” As others have mentioned, there have been times the country’s talked about switching, but it’s just never happened.
In another oddity of history, the original “standards” eventually did make it to the US, but it was in the late 1800’s and since the USCS was firmly established by then, they simply became museum pieces instead.
The specific bastardy that bothers me is if you buy a set of metric wrenches, they come with two missing sizes because those are covered by SAE, so ostensibly you have to buy another set of wrenches now to get the complete ones.
Go straight to hell, give me a full set or build your crap with standard sizes.
As a 35+ year engineer, I can firmly attest that I effing HATE the godless commie metric system. If you can’t do math well enough to convert inches, feet, gallons, barrels, etc., then you got no place on my team. The plant I work in still uses lbs/hr, psig, and gpm. Thank God, cause I’m too close to retirement to change now.
The way I see it there are three points of view on this subject;
1) People who like the base ten system of metric for various reasons.
2) People who like the I Persian system for various reasons.
3) People who just with the first two groups would shut up about it and get the frick on with their lives.
By law the US is a metric country, and all US measures like the foot and pound are defined in SI measures. The US is, in fact, one of the five charter members of the metric system.
The traditional US system is the pound-force, pound-mass, foot, second system. This is what is called a “gravitational system,” and in it the pound-mass and pound-force are numerically (but not dimensionally) equal. Hence, Newton’s Law is written,
F = ma/gc
where gc is a constant equal to 32.17 lbm x sec^2 / lbf
The metric system is a dynamic (absolute) system, and Newton’s Law is,
F = ma
Because we are the hegemon, aircraft speed is reported as “knots” and jet engine and rocket engine thrust as pounds-force.
Because NASA scientists did not know this, they crashed two billion-dollar satellites onto Mars, trashing them and losing the mission.
An American engineering student in the 60’s was taught several measuring systems: (1) centimeter gram sec; (2) meter kilogram sec; (3) System Internationale, SI; (4) slug pound-force foot sec; (5) pound-mass poundal foot sec; (6) pound-mass pound-force foot sec; (7) kilogram-mass kilogram-force meter sec.
Almost all our existing infra-structure and and older machinery is lbm, lbf, ft, sec. My John Deere riding mower has a mixture of trad US units and SI parts, which I discovered when I had to replace its battery.
By law the US is a metric country, and all US measures like the foot and pound are defined in SI measures. The US is, in fact, one of the five charter members of the metric system.
The traditional US system is the pound-force, pound-mass, foot, second system. This is what is called a “gravitational system,” and in it the pound-mass and pound-force are numerically (but not dimensionally) equal. Hence, Newton’s Law is written,
F = ma/gc
where gc is a constant equal to 32.17 lbm x sec^2 / lbf
The metric system is a dynamic (absolute) system, and Newton’s Law is,
F = ma
Because we are the hegemon, aircraft speed is reported as “knots” and jet engine and rocket engine thrust as pounds-force.
Because NASA scientists did not know this, they crashed two billion-dollar satellites onto Mars, trashing them and losing the mission.
An American engineering student in the 60’s was taught several measuring systems: (1) centimeter gram sec; (2) meter kilogram sec; (3) System Internationale, SI; (4) slug pound-force foot sec; (5) pound-mass poundal foot sec; (6) pound-mass pound-force foot sec; (7) kilogram-mass kilogram-force meter sec.
Almost all our existing infra-structure and and older machinery is lbm, lbf, ft, sec. My John Deere riding mower has a mixture of trad US units and SI parts, which I discovered when I had to replace its battery.
If you think that is bad, go read some SAAMI definitions of gun calibers, especially bullet diameters for 38 spc, 357 mag, and 9 mm.
Perhaps the British gallon is larger because they wanted more beer in a pint. Their pint is 20 ounces (568ml), and the US pint is 16 ounces (473ml). (The US liquid ounce is a tiny bit larger than the British, but this changes little; the British pint is almost 4 ounces larger by either ounce.) In both systems, there are 2 pints in a quart and 4 quarts in a gallon, so the gallon is either 160 or 128 ounces.
Historically, the English had multiple conflicting definitions of the gallon, and Scots, Irish, and Welsh probably had even more definitions. In 1824 the British parliament standardized this: 1 gallon held 10 pounds of distilled water at 62 degrees F. From this, they divided out quarts, pints, and ounces, but to keep the ounce nearly unchanged, they made the pint 10 ounces.
The US had avoided much of this mess by using mainly the British wine gallon (exactly 231 cubic inches, or 3 x 7 x 11 inches), which gave an approximately 8 pound gallon and “a pint’s a pound the world around”. (The second half of that was never true.) We weren’t going to change just because the British Parliament said so.