The metric system

Ok, first off, this does not keep me up ant night, but I find it interesting. ( I am biased on the matter as I have been bought up with the metric system )

here goes anyway.




On this map you see all the places in the world that still use the imperial measurement system. Now I would have thought that as soon as you folks kicked the British out together with their tea and taxes, that you would throw out the kings way to measure things at the same time. Not even the British themselves have kept that archaic way of measuring stuff because it makes little sense and really has no system as such. I know folks around here like to call it " standard " but fact of the matter is that the official name in the world is " Imperial " as devised by Mr. Witworth and his fellow measuring stick advocates. One would think that a relatively high tech nation like the USA would go with the times and ditch the quarts , gallons and inches in favor of a far superior and more logical way of measuring things.
Or is it because ya can't call a 3.5 by 1.5 a 2 by 4 in that system and houses would end up even more crooked

We do use the metric system, unfortunately, just pull up any scientific paper or medical chart.

True the Imperial system is more cumbersome. But look what we do with it... all with one hand tied behind our back.

We're ok, it's the rest of the world that's messed up Scuba!

Warrior .... that could be considered a half a.... attempt at best

Fun fact.........the metric system is based on distance from equator to north pole............10,000,000 meters. That is it.......all weights and measures flow from that.

But since it is a 10 based system, it is way easier to work with if you have to do anything precise. But where is the fun in that?

Metrics are for commies.

We were taught the metric system in high school in the 70's with the assurance the US would soon be switching. Obviously that never happened. As a carpenter and builder I use math daily and have no problem with the imperial system. Likewise I probably wouldn't mind using the metric system. I do use it sometimes, when I have to. Some transitions would be a PITA.

Building my house, a co-worker was at the smart end of the tape measure, I was on the dumb end. He told me I needed to cut the board "11 feet, 4 3/16 inches. Wow! Why not 3.46 meters? Water boils at 212 degrees? How stupid. Why not freeze at 0, boil at 100? I think American's are too lazy to convert, although to me, it makes too much sense. Basically, the only thing we do metric is our money.

Rant over...

Jack

The British folks have done a half as.... attempts at converting as well. The road signs are still in Mp/h and consumption is still measured in miles per gallon. But when you fill the tank up, it is sold by the liter. Younger folks have no idea what a gallon is these days. They sell produce by the Kilogram and weigh persons in stones, pounds and ounces. Distances on maps are in kilometers. Speed limits in miles.
Having lived there for a while, other than them driving on the wrong side of the road, not much else made sense either

Worked in manufacturing.
One issue with going to metric is all the machine tools and measuring equipment around when the change was proposed were in imperial. So either convert all metric to imperial to make stuff (still happens most of the time.) or buy all new machines and measuring equipment. So the only real solution was convert from metric to imperial. there is one h*ll of a lot of machine tools and measuring equipment out there that is still in operation that was made before the '70's. And alot being sold today is still made in the imperial system.
Most part drawings are metric, then converted to imperial to make tooling and equipment to make parts. Parts made from tooling equipment are then measured as the drawing in metric.

Some places I worked at wanted tooling to be metric, so tooling was priced higher, had to buy metric taps, reamers and other components to make the tooling. Raw material (steel for example) is pretty much Imperial. So alot of the stuff was made in odd metric sizes cause in reality it was sized in imperial.

AS far as precision, I'd argue that imperial is more precise. Typically imperial measure in thousands of an inch, .001. Metric is .01mm. .001" is a smaller (more precise) amount.

Some may argue about fractions of an inch. How many carpenters, masons, roofers, and electricians work in less than 1/16"? Everyone I know who works in finer measurements ends up going to thousands of an inch, no more fractions. I have never seen anything built to any other fraction other than a multiple of 1/16. Never seen 1/7 or 1/5 or 1/13 used. So fractions are easy, I can tell you off the top of my head the decimal equivalents of every 1/16 increment. Work with the system for awhile and its easy.

Go to any hardware store and start looking for metric fasteners, wrenches taps, dies and compare to whats available in imperial. Always alot more Imperial stuff.

I watch youtubes from other countries that are metric and you'll see them using imperial from time to time.

In the end it works so why change? Just to be like everyone else?

X2!! We don't need no stinking metric system.

I guess I am the odd ball in this one as brought my tooling over from the other side of the pond. So all my stuff including micrometers etc. is metric. Same goes for taps and dies ..... So when I make things , they end up being made using the metric system. Unless I tread barrels and stuff like that, then i cut them imperial ( even single point on a metric lathe. ..... With todays machines ( that I don't have here at my disposal ) it makes no difference as you can choose your flavor of measurement in the CNC world. I do that on my 3D printer. Stuff that I write is metric. Things like hose adapters and such are imperial, so I go with the flow there

11 ft 4 3/16" is way more precise than 3.46meters.

if your of 1/16 your off .0625"
if your off .01 meters your off .3937"

so a measurement in 1/16 of n inch is 15X smaller (more precise) than a measurement in .01 meters.

I'd rather anyone building anything of mine would work in 1/16 rather than .01 meters.

your wrong about too lazy to convert, I had to convert metirc to imperial and back again so much that after awhile I can now do it in my head as I worked with both all day long. I was forced to by customers and vendors.

one can use any measurement system they want when their work is all made by themselves. But when you make something that needs to work with other machines and tools some thought best be made.

If I was making a implement to be used on a tractor I'd go with Imperial. I know vastly every farmer/mechanic/fabricator out there has imperial tools at his disposal.

If I was making something for the current automotive world I'd use metric as my final product.

Working for General Motors for 40 years, the last 30 in skilled trades in the tool room/inspection we used metrics.

Still some of the unchanging older guys always asked "what that in English"? We would convert it for them so they could build something.

Its actually quite easy to use if you think of the ratio. An inch comes out to 25.4(aprox.). Or .040 English to a Millimeter (aprox).

In 1976 GM and the other auto industry started to change over. (Cheaper nuts and bolts available -- Chinese)

All of the CMM machines were using metrics.

All our contacts from Europe talked Metric.

I worked making tooling for the auto industry and many other industries. I can assure you that GM may use metric on their part drawings and they may force their vendors to use metric in their tooling components but the vast majority of it is made and measured in the imperial system while being made.

How much of the tooling you worked with was actually made by GM?

That and soccer. Got no business being on our shores.

Pretty soon Scuba will have us figuring out fuel efficiency in our vehicles by counting how many liters of petrol to 100 kilometers like they do in France.

You would like the big 'ol lathe that's in my shop, Scuba. It does metric and whitworth threads but not American as I call them.

.001 inches is .0254 mm so it is not a smaller more precise amount than .01 mm. You would have to go to 3.9 ten thousandths to do better than .01 mm.

So looking at that map I have to wonder:

How many of those non-red places have ever used metric pipe.

Why change something that works? Changing just to be changing is stupid. Any measurement system is only as accurate as the person measuring and the tools used.

My tape measurer goes by feet and inches. It's worked just fine so far. Most of the countries shown as not red are still mostly illiterate.

Your better cabinet makers will mill down to the 32nd. Any finer than that the micrometer comes out.

I suspect he uses furlongs per fortnight.

The flaw in your thinking is that metric measuring sticks and tapes have a division of 0.001m or 1 mm and in the technical world, measurements are given in mm and decimals thereof not cm

i am fine with ounces pounds and tons. inches feet and yards. pints quarts and gallons.


leave the european measurements in europe

Where were you all in 1992? That's when the Feds started to change all DOT projects to metric. As a surveyor we had to dump all of our imperial equipment and purchase all metric tapes, rods, etc. All highway plans had to be done metric. Many many millions were spent upgrading everything including all of the manuals. Guess what happened, the contractors/manufactures refused to change, an 18" pipe stayed 18" a half inch rebar stayed a half inch, etc. After five - ten years the Feds gave up and returned to imperial. Many many millions down the drain. The non red areas of the map as well our Dr's and scientists are just not smart enough to use imperial.

A kilo of gold is better to have than a pound of gold...

Being a product of the California education system of the 50 and 60’s and serving a 4 year carpenter apprenticeship also in the 60’s don’t confuse me with new math or metric measurement unless you want things screwed up. 10ths we’re bad enough to learn for my simple mind since it was not taught.

Thank goodness for Measure Master Pro conversion calculators and apps. Some of the jobs we are on now like bridges and some commercial buildings the designers are using metric measurements.

Do you know what ticks me off? The need for two sets of wrenches and two sets of sockets in both SAE and metric sizes. What a waste of money!

X1000!


Hey Scuba, when ya go out to the garden do ya pick a bushel of green beans or do ya say I picked 35.2391 liters of beans?

So true.. you get people that cant measure worth a darn.. wont be any easier with metric

It’s hilarious trying to explain percent of grade to a plumber. They’re all a quarter bubble off.

And ya can still never find that 10mm socket.......
State projects uses tenths of a foot instead of inches........that's hard to comprehend too. My Son was staking out the foundation for a new house. He had a 100' tape that was inches and feet on one side, and tenths on the other side. We discovered it after not being able to get the foundation square after about 10 tries. Then I discovered the one side was tenths. Brand new tape and he beat it to pulp with a sledge hammer.

Did you know they're not going to make yard sticks any longer???

They're going to leave them the length they have always been.

We moved from Germany to the UK when I was 15 and my i did y first apprenticeship as a diesel maniac while they were changing to metric stuff. British leyland did not show a single bolt away it seemed like and had Witworth, BS, AF and metric nuts and bolts on the same truck. I had four sets of wrenches. We had to buy our own tools then and the snap on guy that came by every friday just after we go our ages was one happy camper in those days.
Me thinking if I could buy a 13mm of a half inch AF combination wrench that week lol The tool box was pretty weighty as well when ya had to go to a breakdown.

Or slope vs pitch to a roofer.

I'm gonna go ahead and admit it took me longer than it should have to get that.

My Confederate flag will always be measured in feet and inches.

Shows you how clever us metric guys are. Werner von Braun worked that stuff out inspire of the imperial system

I've heard that us American's only buy liquor & drugs using the metric system.

Same thing in the Engineering Deparment ebsurveyor - With plan assembly, it was actually getting easier with the metric system. Then, swooosh throw everything in a box or drawer & back to U.S.

Screw drivers, hammer, crescent wrenches, can be saves. What would we do with football?

There was a third system about 70 years ago. In-law rebuilt an MG-TD and had to buy a new set of wrenches and sockets. That system was short lived I think. What was it called?

Could be British Standard or Whitworth. Similar but separate types of sizes. I've worked on a couple older Rolls-Royces that had those fittings.

In the UK, Everything to do with electrickery was then BS ( British Standard ) Hydraulic stuff was Witworth and the rest was AF then came the metric system and mixed things up a bit. So we had 3 sets of wrenches to round off any bolt we encountered.

The English can't pick anything and stick with it.

90% of the English speaking beekeeping world uses the Langstroth hive and whether imperial or metric is fully interchangeable.

The British Isles has over half a dozen different hive designs in common use including two different types called British National.

You got that right.

This ^

My lathe cuts threads in threads per inch. Electrical conduit and plumbing pipes are imperial. Along with all the fittings and machines to bend or process them. Cost too much for industry and tradesmen to change over.

What is theoretically sharper?
I perfect sphere on a perfectly flat surface,
Or a point of a triangle?
(I find that all of this rabble about measuring systems is injuring my devout binaryism.)

If you think the imperial measurement system is too difficult, cumbersome, or hard to understand, you probably aren't smart enough to need to measure much anyways. It's really not that complicated. Any fourth grader should be able to handle it with no problem.

I think most people in the US are pretty well adept at using metric measurements when needed. I would consider us rather "bi-lingual" when it comes to measurements. Why is the rest of the world unable to cope with using more than one system of measurement? I guess the Heimies just aren't bright enough to deal with both systems - gets them all confused, I guess.

Anyways, what gets me is when I see a drawing for a brand new part design coming out of Germany or Switzerland and everything is metric. I see all these weird metric dimensions like 22.225mm or 8.731mm. Then, when I convert them to USAican for manufacturing purposes, I find the dimensions are exactly 7/8" and 11/32". So, clearly the design was done using the imperial system of measurement. Then, the drawing was convert to metric. I convert it back to inches to manufacture the parts. Quality takes measurements in imperial, and then converts it back to metric. What a bunch of useless nonsense to bring the metric system into play at all. Just for the purposes of showing how superior Fritz is.

I don't see impact or any other square drives in metric or am I leading a sheltered life? The international langue is English so why not make international measure in imperial as well?

75 degrees ...sounds a whole lot bettah than 24 c

When I was in grade school (late 70’s) they told me I had to learn the metric system because that will be all that’s available in my adult life. Wrong.

When I was in Jr High they said I had to show my work on math problems because I won’t be carrying a calculator around when I’m an adult, wrong again.

In high school my English teacher said I had to buckle down and take an extra spelling class because I wouldn’t be walking around with a dictionary ……… strike three.

When my kids went to collage we were told they would have to pay back student loans if they borrowed $$, so they didn’t………… you guessed it.

If metric is so good, Michael, why do they need four different thread pitches in metric. What a nightmare! To get a bolt or nut, you have to take in one that came out of what your working on, to match it. AND most places only stock two of the different pitches. To be honest, I have gotten more used to it, but still scratch my head as to why ya want to be like everyone else! I cant remember which way it is, but Europe uses uneven sizes and Japan uses even, or vice versa. A mechanic needs a short legged dog, with American on one side and metric on the other, otherwise you will spend your whole day chasing wrenches! lol

Strike four, Shawn!

Did not know that!

But a pound of gold in Troy or Av., when converted to grams is very close to the same!

There was a standard thread for metric screws at one time till the Japanese screwed it up ( pun intended ) The other pitches where then specialty items. The DIN standard thread size and pitch together with the drill size used is still printed on the back of most calipers.
The uneven and even wrench sizes again got screwed up by the Japanese , even though on larger things like pipes and big bolts the 22, 24 , 27 and 30 mm wrenches were old standard .... I have never needed a 28mm wrench yet.

Personally I have wrenches and sockets in imperial and metric size up to 24 mm or 1" respectively. After that its metric only and I can make do with that. I am not strong enough to round of a 1 1/2" bolt because the wrench is half a mm to large

A slippery slop you are putting us on there Scuba.
Next thing you know y'all will be expecting us to accept all these foreigners coming across the border to not be made to learn how to speak English like Jesus did in the Bible...

Yes, metric hardware means having to buy 2 sets of tools. Yes, the Japaneese are fond of weird thread sizes. But...service manuals. Japaneese translations can be funny with the left out words and broken sentences. They aren't really too hard to figure out. However, the manuals from a supposedly english speaking country are just downright confusing. What is meant by "Dismount the fixings and remove the spigot from face of block"? Maybe Scuba can interpret that one. Hint: 3054 Perkins manfactured in England.

I can't help you there as I am a Kraut and English is not my first language. I did have to stubble though the workshop manuals for Volvos.... to this day I think the swedes that wrote them were on LSD

After several minutes of head scratching and some useless suggestions by a few other of the shop mechanics I figured out that it meant remove the bolts (fixings) from the shaft (spigot) in order to remove it from the block. It had absolutely nothing to do with fixings that we over here associate with food, or anything to do with the thing that water comes out of.

Reading the posts reminds me of the days oftalking/discussing the measurements with a tool maker.

If you started talking about microns, you got this blank look. The deer in the headlights look.

The metric system sucks:

Both in cubic feet per minute, and liters per second.

Which reminds me....Why haven't those old country geniuses come up with a metric calendar and/or clock?

IDIOTS!!!

First time using metric shingles caused a brain cramp. Can't imagine plywood, framing or drywall.
Painted my mechanic tools red and blue. The box white just like the white house lol.
Color code helps for tools that are mobile and not in a specified drawer.

I forgot about the metric shingle thing. The first day laying out with them was special. LOL

I think there's a fair amount of skill with metric in the US. More wouldn't hurt. Makes us smarter. Kind of like speaking 2 languages. Gives the brain box a little workout.

Running the chain and rod as a young surveyor helper in the late 70's introduced me to the engineering scale of decimal feet.
The foot broken down to 1/100 increments.
A lot easier to broadcast, calculate and understand than 12ths ... or fractions.
10.33' = 10'-4" (+/-) close enough for surveying.

Metric is a standard.
All the other odd stuff can be converted to metric for comparison.
Like the Imperial gallon vs the small US gallon = 4.55 litres to 3.78 litres.
Same as vehicle milage-Litres per 100km-standard for comparison of milage for vehicles in any country regardless of odd measures of gallons miles etc.
Also when mixing fuel for small engines-all the ratios are easy as pie in litres and ml.

What's next, adding a U to words that don't need them!? Lol

So, who here advocates doing away with the English language and moving to a "universal" one that is far less complex, easier to learn and understand ? (as many are said to be)
English being of the most complex in existence.
'Bout the same difference ... to me.

Only thing that matters is, will my beaver grade better in metric?

Esperanto

I worked at a place that made cheapo chipboard furniture, (ie: sawdust and glue), they were quite proud to show off to visitors that all the blueprints were in metric, but failed to point out that the co. too cheap to buy proper tools, supplied tools tools were all English, and the set up man had to do conversions to check things. LOL

"English being of the most complex in existence" ...... who told you that gem of information ??

I don't know how many languages you speak but I found English to be the easiest. ( My guess is that is why t got picked as the international standard ) seeing that more folks speak mandarin and Spanish than english as their native language.
When I did my diving instructor course for PADI I could not make my mind up if I should get the written materials in German, Spanish of English.... I decided on German and what a mistake that was. Whereas the english version fitted nicely into a Rucksack that came with the course materials and still left room for a lunch box and water bottle. The German version needed two rucksacks with little room to spare. It was a bugger as I rode a Motorbike at the time as my daily driver and had to mess with a bunch of bungee chords to hold that all on there.

Could it be that English is a derivative of German with a strong French influence?

I kind of found basic German was fairly easy to grasp.

YEA,,Commie crap! Guess were supposed to put the steering wheels on the passenger side of our pickup trucks now too !!

If it weren't for our AMERICAN ways...not only would everyone be using Metric,,theyed all be speaking German too !! In fact,good thing we kicked the British outa here or we would all be speaking English !! Er,,,wait,,,never mind that last part.

Yes English is a Germanic language whereas French has its base in Latin like Italian, Spanish and Portuguese among others