Three Countries that Do Not Use the Metric System

[sciphi]

Originally Posted By: BRZED
At 20°C I feel comfortable. At 68°F I begin to sweat.


Funny how our minds play tricks on us like that!!!

13mm is the metric 1/2", 15mm is 5/8", 17mm is 11/16", and 19mm is 3/4". And 1/4" is 5.5mm. We've converted, but just haven't made it official yet.

 

[BRZED]

Originally Posted By: sciphi
Originally Posted By: BRZED
At 20°C I feel comfortable. At 68°F I begin to sweat.


Funny how our minds play tricks on us like that!!!


I was kidding.

 

[expat]

Originally Posted By: Padawan
There's no mention in that article that folks in the UK still follow speed signs posted in MPH and measure their body weight in stone.


Back when I was a child in the UK our currency was not 10 based, we had 12 pennies to a shilling, 20 shillings to a pound.
Our currency consisted of the following:
1/4 penny, 1/2 penny, 1 penny, 3 penny coin, 6 penny coin,
1 Shilling coin, 2 shilling coin, A half crown coin ( that represented 2 shillings plus 6 pennies, 1 crown (5 shillings), 10 shilling note, 1 pound note, 1 guinea coin (representing 1 pound plus one shilling) 5 pounds. and so on.

People thought it was a perfectly good system, (Britain had built an empire on it! etc.etc.) and many protested decimalisation of the currency when it was introduced in the late 60's. It was a hard sell!

It would be interesting now to see how many would want to go back.

Metrication has been a slow transition, they still hold on to many of the old units, but metric units are gaining acceptance.

 

[Silk]

We converted to metric currency in 1967, there was some resistance, but people were quick to realise - duh, 100 cents in a dollar, that's all you need to know...how easy is that!!! So converting the rest of the system to metric in the mid '70's was an easier sell.

 

[nitehawk55]

Originally Posted By: John_K
When I was a kid in the early 70s we started to switch, there were a few metric highway signs. Then it stopped and I don't know why. 10 of this equals 100 of that makes much more sense to me that 12 of this equals 1 of this and 5,280 of this equals one of that, etc.

John


I was a mechanic during that time up here in Canada and the USA was supposed to switch as well from what I had heard and then it didn't happen so I'm not sure but I think congress pulled the plug on it citing too costly or something along that reason(s) .

One thing I do recall for sure is it cost all the mechanics a lot to buy metric tools as well .

 

[Silk]

Well we had (have) Euro cars in NZ, so metric was in the tool kit too, along with whitworth. I guess I was a bit anti at the time, and when one tool company was having a clearance sale of Imerial stuff, I stocked up on Imperial mics and DTI etc. Dumb move, I haven't touched them in 25 years, and couldn't read a mic in thou anymore antway.

I did bring my Mitotoyo DTI to work a couple of weeks ago, I was setting up a Toyota diff and didn't want to use the worn out possibly inaccurate DTI at work....and um...I'm happier thinking about 7 thou backlash than 0.15mm. Don't get pedantic about that conversion, there was a tolerance, I'm rounding out.

 

[Andy636]

Originally Posted By: DB_Cooper
I am fond of the metric system and use it in international business, however, we here in the USA did put a man on the moon with old fashioned slide rules and thousands of 1/4-1/2 inch fasteners. Despite the rest of the world being metric, USA technical/mechanical engineering is well respected. When I go down to Ga. Tech and look at the student population..a very high percentage are from metric countries. It really doesn't matter that much.


That's only because Wernher von Braun was used to both systems

 

[joegreen]

While i am still in school (college) i can remember when i was young having to learn cursive and being able to only use a pencil because thats what you had to use when you got older. Fast forward to now and i almost exclusively use a pen for everything and can barely write a few letters in cursive. I have not seen one college professor in any of my classes write anything in cursive. on to the mtric system I do use alot of metric in my physics class but alot of fractions in math classes. I like them both although if i was brought up on the metric system our system would seem very odd.

 

[E365]

I think we don't change because in our daily lives it doesn't matter. Both are completely arbitrary and made up anyway. And we use metric all the time in the USA, people act like like it's illegal or something.

When I step on the scale in the morning and it were to read 75 kg instead of 160 lbs., what benefit is that to me?

If I make pancakes and needed to measure 250ml of milk instead of 8 fl oz., what benefit is that to me?

When I drive down the street and look at a speedo that says 50 kph instead of 30 mph, what benefit is that to me?

And when I do a construction project and use a tape measure to determine I need a board cut at 83", I take that same tape measure and cut it 83". What benefit would it be if I measured out 221 cm and cut it at 221 cm.

And on and on....

And I hear other countries don't use the metric system besides those 3. But English roads are measured in miles and therefore speed limits are all in miles per hour. Their fuel economy figures are in miles per gallon. And Imperial gallons, not US gallons. And unofficially "stones" for weight. Plenty of non-metric use outside the US.

 

[Oro_O]

Last week, I was having a discussion on this subject with a friend who is a Russian immigrant to the US and has been here 12 years, has an engineering from a high-level Russian technical university.

We both agreed the persistence of the imperial system is because it uses "human" units in reasonable scalar units for most things.

For example, a person is "5 feet, 5 inches," which is imminently logical as both units are under 10, and not in the hundreds. Likewise with household measures you want. "Get me a pound of sugar," not "450 grams" (or 500 to round) off.

There is something inherently comforting in generally conversing in units that are 10 or less, and the imperial system makes that so much easier. Personally, I really don't see the US abandoning the system we use now - our industries that need to make an accommodation to global standards for competitiveness have done so, and the convenience measurements we like can stay in place without and hindrance.

Now to go down to the garage tomorrow and deal with that 22 stone of books I need to move into the attic...

 

[BRZED]

My PawPaw drinks beer and wine by the hogshead.

 

[Silk]

Originally Posted By: Or

There is something inherently comforting in generally conversing in units that are 10 or less, and the imperial system makes that so much easier.


I find it interesting that on this site everyone measures volume in ''quarts''. The Imperial system measures volume in gallons, and breaks a gallon down into pints. Funny to hear people talking about ''half a quart''...ah, that's a pint. A quart is pretty close to a litre, so when you are talking about sump volume in quarts, it's practically the same as litres. Does a sump hold 4 litres or 4 quarts? Sounds more like a gallon to me.

 

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: Or
Last week, I was having a discussion on this subject with a friend who is a Russian immigrant to the US and has been here 12 years, has an engineering from a high-level Russian technical university.

We both agreed the persistence of the imperial system is because it uses "human" units in reasonable scalar units for most things.

For example, a person is "5 feet, 5 inches," which is imminently logical as both units are under 10, and not in the hundreds. Likewise with household measures you want. "Get me a pound of sugar," not "450 grams" (or 500 to round) off.


That's the most convoluted argument that I've heard yet...congrats.

A foot is 12", so to translate between them you need to multiply or divide by 12, which is neither less than 10, nor an intuitive decimal shift.

 

[weasley]

I agree. I wouldn't ask for 454 grams of anything, I'd go for half a kilo(gram).

As a Brit born in the 70s I was taught in metric but had an imperial father, so what I ;leant at school was always in factors of 10 or 100, but what I learnt in the garage, shed or workshop at home was in imperial units. Consequently I can work in and interrelate both.

But as I have said on another post on this topic, I see the non-metric system as old-fashioned and irrational.

 

[BRZED]

Originally Posted By: weasley
I agree. I wouldn't ask for 454 grams of anything, I'd go for half a kilo(gram).


Why wouldn't you ask for a pound? A kilo is two (metric) pounds. Or you could ask for 5 hectograms.

 

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: weasley
I agree. I wouldn't ask for 454 grams of anything, I'd go for half a kilo(gram).

As a Brit born in the 70s I was taught in metric but had an imperial father, so what I ;leant at school was always in factors of 10 or 100, but what I learnt in the garage, shed or workshop at home was in imperial units. Consequently I can work in and interrelate both.

But as I have said on another post on this topic, I see the non-metric system as old-fashioned and irrational.


Aussie born in the late 60s, so always was here with decimal curenncy, our metrification of weights and measures started in 1971, and the board was disbanded in 1981...so my 1973 cars (what I could afford in the '80s) still had miles, my '74 cars had both, and my '76 cars had metric as the major nit with miles as the minor.

So I too grew up ambidextrous.

Engineer in Oz, you need to be...the Parsons turbines were all inches...except one machine that had every bearing 0.002" undersized...even the Japanese ones are inches...boiler tubes are 50.8mm, because the rules were that everything had to be "metric"...it was...stamped and sold in metric.

The people designing stuff didn't seem to want whole units in either system.

Condenser tubes 47' 5-3/8" long ???

 

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: BRZED
Originally Posted By: weasley
I agree. I wouldn't ask for 454 grams of anything, I'd go for half a kilo(gram).


Why wouldn't you ask for a pound? A kilo is two (metric) pounds. Or you could ask for 5 hectograms.


See another area where metric makes sense...

500g of beef can serve 4, or 5 with easy integer answers.

 

[Rick in PA]

It's all about the money.

When I was young, I remember a Popular Science cover declaring the US would be metric by 1975. Still waiting.

The US had and has a lot of investment in inch based fasteners and materials. It would have been and will be costly to convert everything over. So we end up sticking with what we have.

Until there's an economic force to convert to metric, it won't happen. I do see signs of change. The cost of metric fasteners is coming down as the volume of their use goes up. International customers will accelerate the change as they demand metric design and fasteners. Eventually...

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
So? You're in Canada-why would you concern yourself with the unit of measurement that the United States (or any other country) chooses to use?

You got some answers to that, but I'll provide you with more. The measurement systems in Canada and the States have never been synchronized, even before we went metric. We used Imperial volume measurements, which do not correspond well at all to U.S. measures. Here, we went from one incompatible system to another.

 

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: Garak
Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
So? You're in Canada-why would you concern yourself with the unit of measurement that the United States (or any other country) chooses to use?

You got some answers to that, but I'll provide you with more. The measurement systems in Canada and the States have never been synchronized, even before we went metric. We used Imperial volume measurements, which do not correspond well at all to U.S. measures. Here, we went from one incompatible system to another.


Garak,
even worse, we have a street in this town called "inch" street, commemorating the difficulties that were had in building and testing a factory in the states, shipping it to Australia, and trying to build an SMLE to the British design drawings.

This "natural" measuring system didn't work when it was the only system.

There's a reason that SI won the natural selection process