Actual poster from 1917 that made me laugh. A lot.
Also, those motherfuckers are measuring the weight of those balls in kilograms, aren’t they?
Imperial US system is defined using the metric system…
What was the point of this propaganda? To keep products incompatible somehow?
Relabeling is such a chore.
Replacing all your tools and machines is super easy, though. /s
FWIW I only work in metric, Imperial is utter trash, tbh.
Well we already deal with a mixed system, so they could relabel where possible and just phase out any machines where not, and in the interim just hand out slide rules with conversions on them.
Why don’t you want to measure things by parts of a twelfth of a Roman foot?
of an approximation of a derivative of the Roman foot in metric*
The Roman foot was between approximately 0.96 and 1.1 international feet (most commonly about 0.97 ft, except in modern Belgium where it was 1.091 ft/13.1 in, the size of Nero Claudius Drusus’ foot). After that, the foot in Britain was based off the North German foot (~13.2 in), but in the late 13th century it became more like 12 in (so around the same as the modern foot). Later the English foot was between 11.7 and 12.01 in, and the US foot was based on the English foot until the 19th century when they made the US Customary Units and defined the foot as exactly 1200/3937 meters. The British made the British Imperial system and a bit later defined the foot as 1200/3937.0113 meters. They didn’t switch to metric because they saw “French Revolutionary units” (metric) as “atheistic”. Later, we advanced our understanding of physics, and the British adopted a foot of 304.8 mm in 1930, and the Americans followed them in 1933, based on the new “industrial inch” from the now-unused 1927 light wave definition of the meter (which used the International Prototype, made of a standard bar). The modern foot is defined as exactly 0.3048 meters, by international agreement in 1959 between some English-speaking countries, after the newer Kypton standard definition of the meter (which is also now not used).
Now it’s based on the modern meter definition (distance travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299792458 of a second, which is defined based on the uperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of a caesium-133 atom being 9192631770 Hz)
The really neat thing about those changes to the meter is that it didn’t really change how long a meter was (-ish), it changed the precision of that definition, as well as the ability to reproduce an exact meter, reducing the need for a specific piece of material to define the meter (which changes length based on environment). Now, an exact standard meter can be reproduced independently in any lab with the proper equipment.
What’s especially wild is that the kilogram was still an artifact in 2019! Every single calibrated weight in the world, big and small… They all could be traced back to a single metal chunk in a french vault.
Capital owners that don’t want to retool for a bullshit reason like “common good”.
It literally costs them more money to not use the global standards!
In the long run, maybe. short term is all that matters. And short term it costs money
My comparison is that the metric system is like color vision. It’s like colors for traffic lights, but USC people insist it’s fine memorizing which light is which location. In metric you just see the world in a way USC can’t, but USC people insist they’re just fine.
The idea that a simpler system of weights and measures that operate in base-10 will somehow cripple America is somehow fucking hilarious.
Metric is just easier and the founders of the US actually considered it but wars -obviously- distracted them from switching to it.
I stopped caring about British units in 1776! Metric all the way, baby! 🇺🇸 We decimalized their dumb ass currency and we need to finish the job with weights and measures! A vote for imperial units is a vote for red coats! Vote for me for President and I will liberate us from British tyranny! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 🦅🦅🦅
Lab rat here. I got you fam! Let’s collectively believe that BTU’s are real!
Wait…
The more I read about America, the more I realise what a fucking stupid country it was, is, and will probably keep on being.
If I could read, I’d probably be insulted by this comment.
There are some pretty smart people in America tho
Indeed, too bad nobody wants to listen to them
Hence the effort to defund education.
As if people weren’t so fuckin dumb already.
Christ WTF year are we fucking in you guys?
Y’all preach about how much better the metric system is because it’s base ten and super intuitive, then measure weather temperature on a scale from -20C to 40C 🥴
Yeah… We do… everyday. Its not hard
Fair, but that’s pretty much how a lot of people feel about imperial units, too.
What.
Well, yeah. Anything less than 0 is freezing and anything greater than 0 isn’t.
Ezpz
Fahrenheit makes more sense for human experience… 0 to 100 roughly corresponds to what can be survived for a significant amount of time. Below freezing you can survive without shelter as long as you’re dressed for it, but as you approach zero it gets a lot harder, you really need shelter and heat at that point. Same with above 100… 117 won’t kill you right away, but without some sort of man-made cooling device, you’ll be wishing it would. I say this having lived both extremes, mountains of Colorado in winter, and Phoenix in summer… Honestly, given the choice between 115 and -15, I’d rather have the cold.
Exactly! Weather happens at temperatures lower than water’s freezing point, and much lower than it’s boiling point, so using those two reference points to measure weather temps against isn’t very convenient.
Can’t wait for the day when Uncle Sam to turns brown.
And the most ridiculous (or inclusive) thing are tiresizes in Europe (perhaps somewhere else, too?). 195/55r16 195 is the width in millimeters 55 is the height in percentage of the width R16 is the radius of the wheel in inches
Same in US…
Fuck that, we should be measuring everything in Stone.
I’ll take a seventh stone of chicken please.
And lengths in Royal cubits.
If we’re gonna go weird we need to go all the way.
Is that Trump???
Yes! 🤩😍😍😍😭😭😭
This is among the dumbest internet arguments ever.
G20/G21. The machines don’t care, my digital calipers, micrometers, rulers, and 3D CAD software don’t care which system is being used. So why should I have my undies in a bunch about which is better? I use the measurement system best suited for the task at hand - whether that’s metric, US customary, or light years.
As for not knowing how many inches are in a mile, that’s about the stupidest internet point ever. No one cares about that, well maybe some civil engineer might need to very rarely care in some unusual situation. The scale of measurement is wrong for inches. In fact, most people don’t care much about the actual distance away something is, they mostly care about how long does it take to get there. The odds are pretty good you have no idea how far it is from your front door to the grocery store in miles or kilometers. But you DO know how long it takes to get there. Whether by foot, bike, bus, or car.
I use the measurement system best suited for the task at hand
So you always use metric, gotcha
Mostly. But not always. Again use what is best for the job. An idea that often fails here.
Again, so metric then, as the imperial system is arbitrary shit that make no sense from hundreds of yours ago that only still is in use in the IS and a few third world countries, and ONLY because conservatives in the US refuse to get with the program.
Literally the entire world switched to the metric system because it works, and the US literally got left behind because conservative values.
Oh yeah? I bet you also use mebibyte instead of megabytes!
That rocket that crashed because of usage of different units seems to differ.
Weird how you think inches are only used for long distances and not, for example, making sure a beam is the right length while you’re building a house, or making sure a screw is the right size.
But I do agree that inches are not practical for long distances. That’s probably why people in the U.S. use miles.
Millimeter are not practical for measuring long distances either. And measuring the length of a piece of lumber isn’t a “long distance” either
That is why kilometers are used for long distances in metric. I’m really not sure why you don’t know about how people measure long distances.
I do and perhaps more than you. I don’t know why you brought your point about inches and scale when I had already pointed out that those who think it’s such a “gotcha” argument are wrong and why.
Again, use the measurement system and units best suited to the task at hand. And never forget, every measurement system is just a bunch of made up units by some random dude and then modified by some other random dudes at random times.
The machines don’t care.
That’s people making the dumb mistake of using the wrong units. They could have just as easily used the wrong metric units.
A second piece of code that read this data assumed it was in the metric unit—“newtons per square meter"
Yes… Code doesn’t write itself.
The machine running that code cares about the definition of the units in that code.
Machines do care.
Machines don’t care about shit, they blindly do what they’re told. Garbage in, garbage out.
I’ve designed and built those machines. We don’t care. Pick the proper units for the job and go at it.
You’ve built an interplanetary spacecraft!? Do go on…
Oddly enough I have helped build a couple of items that flew on the space shuttle back in the day. Which is more than you can say. But most of my work involved industrial machines for manufacturing lines and associated custom tooling. I have machines all over the planet.
OK. So on projects with international teams you always picked metric?
What are the circumstances that would give imperial units an advantage?
You make projects to the buyers specs. But I have made US Customary machines and parts as requested by companies in India, Pakistan, and Great Britain if I remember correctly, (I’ve been out of the business for a good while and I’m now retired altogether). I can’t remember anything in Germany or Japan. The Chinese were always whatever dope dreams they were on that particular day. They could be particularly bad about mixing and matching units for no reason or just making something up out of thin air.
Let’s see, just off the top of head, US thread patterns are a bit better the the metric ones. While it doesn’t mean as much these days thanks to CNC and G20/G21, (because the machines don’t care). The inch pattern of threads are a little bit stronger, (it’s not a whole lot more), and due to the threads per inch standard, it’s easier to just count the number of threads over a set distance, (1 inch), vs trying to measure a thread crest to crest. This makes identifying threads pitches easier with inch pattern threads when trying to make repair parts. And back when manual machines ruled the shops, inch pattern threads made screw cutting lathes smaller, simpler, and cheaper than metric lathes. You needed fewer gears and shafts, fewer bearings, and less cast iron to make the head stock. This made US lathes faster and cheaper to make and cheaper to buy. Plus you can cut more different thread pitches on an inch pattern lathe vs a metric lathe due to not needing to resort to removing covers of the metric lathe to make gear changes and even swapping to a different threading dial despite the QC gear boxes.
These small cheap lathes is why, in their own small way, during WW2 the US industrial capabilities grew so fast. Anyone could buy a small lathe for a few hundred dollars, literally carry it up to as second story flat and start making all those small parts for the war effort. Small benchtop lathes were manufactured by the tens of thousands and they were all bought by people, many of whom had little to no experience in manufacturing to start making extra money in their off time from their day jobs. And while many got worn out and scrapped over the years, you can still find those little South Bend, Clausing, and Atlas lathes in hobby workshops in the US today. And they are lovingly used and doted over by their owners.
US Customary Units are slowly and surely fading into the sunset. And at some point they will just organically fade away, (it’s why there has never been a national law forcing people to switch), as the casual US population just starts using them more and more. We already use the metric system to buy soda and whisk(e)y to searching for that missing 10mm wrench just like every one else on the planet. The only places you still see US Customary units being commonly used is in construction, (inches and feet), travel distances, (miles), and temperature, (Fahrenheit). Construction has backwards compatibility issues making it very difficult to switch from using a 2"x4" to a 50mmx100mm piece of lumber. Not to mention plumbing problems. And distances and speed limits on a road sign don’t really make a lot of difference in how they are shown for the average traveler. And for deciding just how to dress for the weather, what units you are using really doesn’t matter. (Why doesn’t the metric world use Kelvin to measure the temperature in daily use?) It’s not the first time a measurement system has been eclipsed in human history and even the metric system likely will get replaced by something else in the far future. In the end, neither system is head and shoulders better than the other. Nor have I ever claimed such. They both are, after all, just arbitrary units made up by some random dude hundreds of years ago.
G20/G21…
US thread patterns are a bit better the the metric ones
Very interesting. Not directly related to measurements but a clear practical reason to chose imperial over metric. Cups are also a more convenient measurement for dry, equally dense ingredients.
neither system is head and shoulders better than the other
Metric having intersecting definitions (1l of water = 1kg) and being divisible by 10 have clear advantages for mental arithmetic. But if imperial were consistently base 12 I could be convinced to swap.
Why doesn’t the metric world use Kelvin to measure the temperature in daily use?
It sort of is. At least the scale is the same. Only the base value differs.
Uncle Sam couldn’t handle the success the metric system would bring. /s
Lol this thread got spicy. Today I learned base 12 is actually superior to base 10 in a myriad of ways.
It seems the most reasonable people in this thread are arguing for a new system, not one or the other. I concur with this thought.
So… Fuck the imperial AND metric system. I’m team new system.
Same. Until then, I use both.
The base 12 system was real popular in Sumeria.
So your new system is akshualy the oldest.
Base twelve would be great if we went all-in, as in new symbols for single digit representation of ten and eleven, then 10 would mean twelve. Having a base that’s divisible by several primes is handy.
