Is US the only one with English system left? 3

[Andrzejek]

Since this is an Overcoming Obstacles Getting My Work Done Forum, I would like to address one ‘obstacle’ from my work and get some information from others.

Where I work – state agency in the middle of USA – we mostly use English system of measuring stuff, with all the feet, inches, miles, ounces, pounds, degrees Fahrenheit and all of the nightmare of all the weird and tough to remember re-calculation formulas. We also use metric system, but in very, very limited way.

And here is my question:
Are there any other places in the world where people still suffer by using the measure of a king’s foot, or the distance from the middle of king’s nose to his hand (for a yard) as a unit of distance? Just because you may drive on the left side of the road does not mean you use English system in your every day life or at work, right?

We are already (almost) 10 years into the XXI century and I would like to know if USA is the only country our there in the world stuck with English system? Do people in England moved over to metric system?


Have fun.

---- Andy

 

[SQLSister]

When I was in school, we had to learn metric and they told us that the US going metric was just around the corner and we'd have to know this stuff. I graduated from high school in 1973.

I don't know of any other country that isn't metric, but you may have noticed, the US is a bit ethnocentric and thinks that everyone else should adjust to us not us to them. Oddly most Americans I know find the metric system to be strange and difficult. All in what you are used to I guess.

"NOTHING is more important in a database than integrity." ESquared

 

[Thargy]

Wow, a totally fundamental question.

In the U.K. we now all use the Systeme Internationale (SI)units of measurement for all calculation and scientific work.

We still use miles on our road signs and not kilometres.

I am so old that I can remember feet and inches, and pounds, shillings and pence. We went decimal 40 years ago, and have been so ever since.

The problem with antiquated units of measure is that they cause serious problems. The mars lander crashed because of differences in systems. That's why NASA now requires everything to be done in SI.

Although I don't know if 40 Km per litre is good fuel consumption for a car, I know that 55 miles per gallon is.

Is a 3,500 metre Alp really huge, or a pimple compared with mount Everest at 29,000 feet? Units of measure are such a personal thing. However, for business, stick to SI, and don't ever go back to the dodgy old ways.

If folks require things in meaningful-to-them ways, calculate in SI and then write conversion functions to present in "user friendly" ways.


Regards

T

 

[strongm]

>I don't know of any other country that isn't metric

The UK may technically be metric, but a fair part of its population still work in imperial units. And certain lengths/distances are (currently) allowed by law to remain imperial: the mile, yard, foot and inch

 

[Annihilannic]

I'm learning to fly (in Australia), and I'm amazed how aviation still has such a confusing mish-mash of metric, imperial and nautical units. Altitudes in feet, speeds in knots, runway lengths in metres, manifold pressure in inches Hg, etc.

I lived in Ireland for a few years and was amused by the fact that road distances are in miles but speeds are in kilometres...

Annihilannic.

 

[lionelhill]

Yeah, outside professional spheres, the UK is a beautiful units-mess. Where else do you buy your fuel in Litres, but quote fuel efficiency in miles per gallon? Milk comes in litres, beer in pints. Even a modern child will happily declare that a book is 1cm thick and about six inches tall.

There was a unit used in the UK (I don't know if it is still used) for volume: the square-metre-foot. It was very handy for those digging foundations, where the dimensions of a building were specified in metres, but the depths of foundations were specified by older building regulations in feet.

Personally, I love the fact I can use Excel to convert from cubic angstroms to tea-spoons.

 

[Grenage]

Unfortunately we're still pretty imperial; I have a sneaking suspicion that the only reason we're using Mph instead of Kph is because it would cost so much to change all of the signs.

I don't use inches, feet, pounds, pints or miles, but I need to know what they are simply because most people do use them.

"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area" - Major Mike Shearer

 

[Andrzejek]

In 95 US Federal Government declared that if a State wants to use federal money for building roads, they have to use metric system. So for a few years all plans were developed in metric system. Then construction industry stared to cry that they have to re-calculate all of it to work in English system. Feds gave up and said: “We don’t care what you do” and we are left with a mess: some projects are metric, the rest are English. Keeping it all up is a nightmare.

most Americans I know find the metric system to be strange and difficult

Many years ago I knew the young guy who wouldn’t even talk to me about metric system. English was all he knew and liked (at that time). He was young and student. Then, he was *forced* to listen about metric system at school. Next day his first words to me at work were: “Why the h**^ do we suffer with this English system mess? Metric is SOOOO much easier!”

Fuel consumption for a car (FYI):
English – miles per gallon (the bigger the number, the better)
Metric – liters per 100 km (the smaller the number the better)

I used to ask farmers in US, which use bushels as a unit of measure of stuff: Is a bushel a volume of weight? They do not know. Interesting….


Have fun.

---- Andy

 

[flapeyre]

Bushel is a volume measurement. If you type "bushel" into Google, you get 1 US bushel = 35.239072 liters.

My (American) car can switch over from English to Metric with a simple menu setting (useful, I suppose, if I ever were ever to drive in Canada or Mexico). Newer US cars are metric with regard to fasteners. But license plates (which were standardized in 1956) are 12 inches by 6 inches, with the mounting holes of 1/4 inch diameter being 7 inches apart about 1/2 inch from the top and bottom.

The medical profession long ago went metric (the only exception I can think of being the standard 5-grain aspirin tablet (324 mg).

But English, Imperial, American, or whatever, is so ingrained in the culture, we just can't give it up completely.

To us, 28.3495231 grams of prevention is not worth 0.45359237 kilograms of cure .

-- Francis
I'd like to change the world, but I can't find the source code.

 

[carp]

"The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it."
- Abraham Simpson

 

[Glenn9999]

And quite the fuel efficient car Abraham Simpson has too, if it even exists.

Measurement is not management.

 

[carp]

Some take great pride in a large carbon footprint!

 

[johnwm]

Very big carbon footprint - he will need to tow quite a large bunker to get anywhere. Google gives Abe's car a consumption of 10.48 feet per gallon, which compares quite poorly to the QE2 cruise liner (49.5 feet per gallon)

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[lionelhill]

shouldn't we be talking about carbon-0.3048metreprints?

 

[hinesward]

Why do we still use the metric system?

For the same reason that we still use the QWERTY keyboard.

 

[flapeyre]

English system, you mean?

The QWERTY keyboard did have a practical application, by the way. All typebar typewriters (which were the dominant type out there until the IBM Selectric appeared in 1961) are prone to jamming. The QWERTY arrangement helps to minimize, but not eliminate, the jamming.

Why QWERTY Was Invented

(I used to fix typewriters; both typebar and Selectric, as well as electronic typewriters).

-- Francis
I'd like to change the world, but I can't find the source code.

 

[jAndroid]

All,

'Imperial' IS English, because it was invented by them (just like the Internet and computing was). And if anyone wants to argue that, then do some research first please.

I was taught my initial 'trade' via imperial, then had to move to Metric. The transition was quite difficult, but decimal is a more logical number system to work with (easier for a human to naturally understand) than 1000 thousandths in a inch, (1/32 = .03125", 1/16 = .0625", 1/8 = .125", 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 1760 yards in a mile etc.

Metric is simply logical and easily repeatable - whatever the size: 1000 is the magic number.

I do however to this day - still (instantaneously) mentally convert Metric to Imperial - in order to be able to mentally visualize the actual distance.

The US really does need to stop thinking that it is the centre of the world, and that it can dictate what happens in the world (even at the simple level of 'units of measurement') - if it is to continue to be important. China and Japan became powerful by evolving with change, and they will be THE super-powers in the near future because of this.

The US introducing 'ITAR' and 'protectionist' policies means only one thing: isolation and massive recession in the US.

I wouldn't like to see this, but that's where it will go.

J

 

[CajunCenturion]

'Imperial' IS English, because it was invented by them (just like the Internet and computing was)

Wrong on all three counts.

The Imperial system was not invented by the English, but rather is a system based on Anglo-Saxon and Roman measurements lated standardized by the United Kingdon.

Computing was not invented by the English either. One of the first computing devices was the abacus which can be traced back to Mesopotamia roughly 2500 BCE.

And finally, the English did not invent the Internet. Several technologies (ARPANET, X.25, packet-switching, TCP/IP, among many others) from many companies and countries came together, over time, to evolved into the Internet.

The only real claim that you can make was that the World-Wide-Web was developed by the Englishman Tim Berners-Lee while working for CERN in Switzerland.

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[flapeyre]

Metric is simply logical and easily repeatable - whatever the size: 1000 is the magic number.

The French invented the metric system (the meter was originally taken to be 1/10,000,000th the distance from the North Pole to the equator - at the Paris meridian. They also tried to convert time measurement into their metric world.

However, they soon discovered that their convoluted French Republican Calendar caused many problems while solving none. They gave up after only 12 years, having realized that one cannot amend the laws of planetary physics by decree.

(FYI, today is Septidi, 7 Fructidor 217).

-- Francis
I'd like to change the world, but I can't find the source code.

 

[kmcferrin]

Flapeyre,

You get a star just for pointing out the French Republican Calendar. I'd never in my life heard of it before, and just burned half an hour reading about this obscure (at least to most Americans) bit of trivia. I fully intend to use it as a conversation starter at a party.



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