Yeah, but only geeks understand electricity, wolf_meister. So the geeks get to decide the units.
(But not in computing, or at least not completely. Which is annoying.)
Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps: Empires of Time, by Peter Louis Galison is, somewhat to my surprise as I read it, a history of ideas that uses Poincaré as a focus to talk about the international movement toward common measurements and systems, and therefore the need for such commonality.
It’s a bit slow and obsessive, so I hesitate to recommend it unless you’re already interested in the general subject. But if you are, it covers ventures - mostly French - that don’t often get talked about in English-language books. An alternative would be Measuring America: How the United States Was Shaped by the Greatest Land Sale in History, by Andro Linklater for the oddly hilarious sections that detail the incredible problems served up by having something as simple as a barrel have six to eight varying meanings - multiplied by thirteen because no two of the original colonies agreed on any of them!
Thanks, Expano. I’m not the OP, but weird history kinda stuff like that is stuff that belongs on my Amazon wish list.
The International Standard, a turn of the century publication.
Great, Padeye. I just spent the last three hours trying to bang a 15.875mm CRS rod into a 12.7mm hole. Thanks a ton, buddy. I finally got the calipers out and measured the damn thing. 
To follow up on my previous post, the US will go metric eventually. I won’t live to see it. As I said before: The economic push just isn’t there. I could make 5/16" machine screws or I could make 8mm machine screws. There are a lot more people in the neighborhood right now willing to buy the standard sizes. It’ll change with time.
No me importa…
Derleth
And maybe because I am a geek, I knew about electricity and watts.
The Metric System is French? Well then by damn it, the only clear choice for any real American patriot is to stick with “our” British Imperial System.
20 oz. coke bottles have been converted into 500ml bottles. That is 16.9 oz., 3.1 oz less than before and yet the same price.
I’ve yet to hear a “base ten systems suck” opinion. I take this to mean that most of us generally agree with the notion of a base ten system. Change as a nation would not only require monetary incentive, but would create numerous legislative changes, in general it would suck alot.
How abot, next year, instead of buying chemical weapon research, we buy futures of standardized measurement? That sounds like a math teacher saying “let’s do quadratic equations rather than watch the fireworks”. Oh well, Americans have always been, and always will be stubborn, unless change is the next cool thing.
Hi all, this is my first post and I hope I’m not making a fool of myself. Where I come from, the metric system is the official standard, although we still use the imperial method too. All that to say that the correct spelling is “metre” not “meter”, being a French system. Personally I prefer the imperial measurements because everyone else does too…
This hasn’t been my experience. Yes I can convert my CAD drawings to specify a 6.35mm hole with 1.27mm thread pitch (i.e. 1/4" 20 threads/inch) but our machine shop doesn’t have such a tap. And if I specify a 3.175mm thick plate (1/8") I’m sure they’d call me back and say “We’ve got 3mm stock here, is that OK?” Maybe your company has a better equipped machinist than we do, but not everyone does.
Bicycles have also largely gone metric. Not completely, and the few non-metric units still used are mostly on mountain bikes.
I have a tube of over-the-counter medicinal ointment that’s labeled 15 g (1/2 oz). That’s not an especially exact conversion (half an oz is closer to 14 grams) and I wonder which it really is. But it’s notable that the metric measurement is given first with the non-metric in parens.
That includes the 9mm bullets used by the drug dealers…
[pedant]
I know it’s the obbligatory Simpsons reference, but that’s pretty bad gas mileage. A car that gets 25 mi/gal goes about 127 rods to the hogshead. Better to use 4.76 furlongs per barrel (of oil), or maybe 65.625 leagues per firkin.
[/pedant]
Link to Russ Rowlett’s Units of Measure page, which explains all about the “switch” to Metric.
Ohhhh … So not only are they trying to standardize units of measurement, they’re also trying to standardize spelling, across different languages as well? :eek:
I say, so what? We’re writing (American) English. How the French spell it don’t enter into it.
I personally oppose the metric system because it was created by the Frech, whom I despise. We should create a counter-part system and encourage other peope to use it instead, so as to erase one of the biggest triumphs of French culture. Damn the frogs!
[ul]
[li]liter, not litre[/li][li]meter, not metre[/li][li]gram, not gramme (with special dispensation given to Huxley)[/li][li]watt, not what[/li][/ul]
This is America, after all.
I spell it “litre,” but because I’m Canadian, not because of anything the French have done.
Until such time that myself and all of my fellow head-frozen brethren are banned from the SDMB, this is an International message board.
Don"t forget that the US Customary System of Units is not the same as the British Imperial System of Units… the British system was standardised in the early 1800s after the US had already broken away, and as a result the gallon and its derivatives are not the same.
1 imperial gallon = ~4.5 L; 1 US gallon = ~3.8 L.
After you went to all that trouble to convert Japan to metric?* Gee, thanks.
*During post-WWII occupation. At least that’s what I’ve been told.
How about how the English spell it. M-E-T-R-E 
But how does that compare to a barrel of ale in London?