It’s obvious that you can’t decimalize it and still keep all the English units. If you decimalize the length using the inch as the standard, you’ll have to throw away or re-define the foot and the mile. You’ll have to measure car speeds with kilo-inches per hour. If you use the pound as a standard weight you’ll have to measure small weights with milli-pounds. Why invent a whole new “decimal English” unit when there is already an international standard decimal system?
By the way, someone mentioned the Mars Climate Orbiter fiasco. Although the metric/English mixup was widely publicized, it’s the least of their problems. It merely reveals that the project was not managed properly. In fact, there were numerous occasions where the mistake should have been caught, but they faild to notice because of poor management and budget constraints.
At the structures lab my civil engineering-major roommate used to work at, they regularly refer to “kilopounds” and “milli-inches”. I actually laughed out loud the first time I heard that.
I guess I should say ditto to much of what BrotherCadfael said. I was hoping not to get into a debate in this forum, but I’ll ask again: how would your own life change if the whole of the United States were to convert to metric? If you’re defending the SI units above, then it’s pretty clear your life would not change – you already use the units that you’re accustomed to, and do quite fine. What real advantage would forcing everyone else to conform have? (this question has a factual answer and is that which I’m asking here!)
In thinking about a factual answer: Again, thinking of daily life in the United States, and even considering Cecil’s article, there’s no reason to compel anyone. No one cares how many drams are in an ounce, or what the weight of exactly one gallon of water is? We as a society get by well with acres, gallons, ounces, and pounds. When these units fail us or become inconvenient, we’re already quite adept at switching to other units. And I have to stress daily life, not what we all do at work, which is a different story.
I agree that the English system is a mess, and that the simplicity and elegance of the SI system is superior from a design perspective. Those of us that are engineers and programmers know that we can certainly be proud of the elegance of our designs and code, but it doesn’t matter a wit to the end user – he wants something that works. For the great, unwashed masses, there’s nothing wrong with the current product.
I’m not against the metrification of the US since I work and function quite well with metric units. But neither would I sign a petition for it, because it doesn’t frickin’ matter one way or the other in our daily lives and I’d just be wasting taxpayer money at some point.
Aside: As for the auto industry as stated in Cecil’s column, I can unmistakenly say that the English system most certainly has not disappeared.
I get where you’re coming from, Balthisar, but it doesn’t have to be a violent change. In the UK in the 70s the temperature on the TV was given in Farenheit. For a few years it was given in both units, and now it’s just given in C. I can think in both, though I’m now more comfortable with C. While I was learning SI units at school, everyone around me was talking in feet and inches. Slowly the transition happened, and it’s still happening today - we still drink pints, road speed and distance are still in miles, but when we talk about short distances, we tend to use centimetres, and when cooking we tend to use millilitres and grams. A more sensible set of units can be ushered in gradually without forcing it on people.
That is an incorrect assumption. If you live in a non-Metric country or buy products from such countries, you are forced to use the English units. For example when I tried to install fenders on my American-made bicycle, I had a hard time finding the necessary 3/16" bolts in Japan. When I want to roast a turkey American style I need to look up in my American cookbooks which are all written in English units, and I need to either convert all the measurements to Metric or use measuring devices marked with English units. It’s hard for me to participate in discussions about bicycle speeds or car fuel efficiencies because I always measure mine in metric, and most English-language message boards are dominated by Americans who use the English system. Believe me, if you travel a lot it’s a significant source of frustration.
Decimal is inferior to dozenal. The problem is that we moved away from a pure dozenal system (twelve ounces to a pound) and need to return to it.
The vast majority of people do not deal in “1/5” or “17/100” of something. They deal in halves, thirds, and quarters of something. A dozenal system handles that quite nicely.
It would have been nice if we had 6 fingers on each hand, and ended up with a base-12 number system. But we’re stuck with a base 10 number system, and I don’t think there is much value in using a base-12 unit system.
Besides, the English system isn’t strictly base 12 either. Small lengths are usually measured by 1/2[sup]N[/sup] inches or 1/1000 inches (“mil”), not 1/12[sup]N[/sup] inches. A mile isn’t 12[sup]N[/sup] feet.
Dogface is exactly correct. The problem is that we’re switching things the wrong way around. Instead of converting measurements to a decimal system, we should have been converting arithmetic to a dozenal system! Then we’d get the divisional advantages of dozenal units with the calculational advantages of the metric system! 10 inches to a foot, 30 inches to a yard, 3080 feet to a mile, 14 ounces in a pound … um, never mind, it’s not working out like I’d hoped …
(On preview, scr4 beat me to it. But mine’s funnier, so I’m posting it anyway. )
Dogface: While the definition of the gram is somewhat arbitrary now, the original definition of the gram was in terms of a given volume of water. Of course, this method wasn’t found to be precise, and now it’s defined in terms of some block of iridium in Paris, just as the meter is no longer defined to be 1/10 000 of the distance from the north pole to the equator. Check out the following link for more details (flip to page 3):
Actually, a hexadecimal system (or, just possibly, octal) would be best. And this is not just a belated April Fool’s joke (although I realize it sounds like one). When I cook, which I do quite often, I realize that a system based on units that double is actually very convenient. And nearly every country that uses decimal currency, uses steps of size 2, 2, and 2.5 to get from one unit to the next (although sometimes one of them is skipped as the half dollar has virtually disappeared in the US and there has not been a 2c coin as there is in many places). It is clear that step sizes of 2 for coins are also very convenient. And think of your chemical balance that uses masses of 1,2,2, and then 5 grams, where the second 2 would be unnecessary in a system based on a power of 2.
Finally, I will mention (although it is utterly fortuitious) that a calendar based on a power of 2 would simply omit a leap year in every year divisible by 128 and the remaining error would be smaller than the natural variation in the length of the year.
I do some work in machining and design and can say that we are on a decimal system right now. Most design spec’s are decimal inches. My older brother will occasionally mix fractional dimensions in on some drawings, but that is becoming the exception. The general rule, too, is moving to layout and snaps to be on .100" (or some other round decimal figure) rather than the old style .125", or .312", or what-have-you.
From the same site, however, we learn that the kilogram was originally defined as the weight of a cubic decimeter of water. It has since been redefined, but there was nothing arbitrary about the derivation of the unit.
On the history of definitions of the kilogram, this account goes into the whys and wherefores of the original definition in a little more detail than those cited by MikeS (welcome aboard, by the way) and Early Out.
Incidentally, the letters page of New Scientist has recently published an ongoing correspondence on candidate definitions to replace the current one. All rather unconvincing: it’s actually currently a hard problem to come up with a universal mass that can be measured to the required precision.
My favourite contribution to the metric vs. imperial debate is that by Charles Piazzi Smyth. As some of you no doubt know, he was a perfectly respectable (even rather good) 19th century astronomer who was also big into reading nonsense into the dimensions of the Great Pyramid. But he was also very anti-metric and so he wound up arguing that, since it’d been built in terms of “Pyramid inches” and also encoded the history of Christianity, Jesus Himself was obviously an advocate of imperial units.
For one thing, it would make it a lot easier to trade recipes. I have a recipe for really good brown bread that I got in Ireland. Unfortunately, the recipe is useless for me, because I have no idea what units it’s written in. Oh, it’s labelled ounces, and teaspoons, and pints, but are those the American units, or the imperial ones? And even if I knew which it was, I sure don’t know the conversions off the top of my head. If it were in metric, though, there would be no such problem: There’s only one definition of grams, or liters.
I have the same problem with brewing recipies, {b}Chronos**. I have to know the country of origin before I start.
At work, I design ships in decimal feet, then I have to convert it (manually, for reasons I don’t want to get into here) into feet & fractional inches for the mechanics. How much error is introduced by this, or how much it costs, I don’t like to think.
I am an American living in a foreign country. What is bad is that I really have no idea how the “metric” system works, even though the world uses it. Celsuis (Sic?) temp. scale killed me too.
I do know that 100 km. is 62 MPH. When I am in a car, and the driver is going 120 km, I know it is 72-73 MPH. There is also 3.75 liters in a gallon. I know these facts, but my brain wants to convert back to the correct way (British Imperial).
Well, you could have done, but by now it’s too late.
What Jefferson proposed (all those 213 years ago) was a decimalized ‘english’ system:
Unfortunately (for the 'merkins), the French got their act together first, and came up with a system of their own, which is now used everywhere (except maybe the US).
Yup, you’re simply too late to invent a new one. Better stick to the Freedom system [sub]oops, sorry, manny, I dont know what happened, it just snuc in there[/sub]. the French system, that is.
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