50 Comments on Why the U.S. Does Not Use the Metric System
we don’t use the metric system because it is just too hard
5
I remember the Carter years being so bad that changing over to the Metric system during this time would have been the last straw…
16
Of course now you have to keep two different sets of tool sizes in the box.
Sigh*
We somehow split the baby on that one…
19
‘Cuz WE DONT GOT NO FOREIGN RULERS!
U.S.A! U.S.A!
*sigh*
…if only that “Foreign Ruler” part were true…
25
Let us not forget BULLET CALIBERS!
18
We use mixtures,e.g., tire size 155x50x19, where tire width and profile measurements are metric and tire diameter is in inches.
15
The metric system is extremely course for close tolerance work/design.
19
We do! What do you call 5.56 or 9mm? I bet that chaps those Euro weenies ass. The only metric shit we do is ammo.
12
I use both all day long, as some machines are made in USA and others overseas. Scaling for servos and robots tend to be programmer’s choice, but rarely both in the same machine.
But I started out having to use decimal, binary, octal, and hexadecimal numbers anyway, plus using other measures like kPa, bar, psi, and so on, so going back and forth between Imperial and Metric isn’t going to rustle my jimmies…
12
Running has a mix of both.
5K & 10K races along with 13.1 half & 26.2 Mile marathons (42K).
The 5K is a good distance for charity races since most can do that easy.
8
This tired fucking question again? The metric system is used when it’s needed. End of story.
And just to answer the other question that always seems to pop up. It’s called football, because when football was created, the forward pass did not exist. The ball was advanced on foot, ya fuckin’ simps.
11
One thing you can bet on: When the US goes metric, merchants will raise prices to capitalize on the confusion.
10
When I was a little kid about 60 yrs ago teachers said we would have to learn both systems as we were changing to metric very soon! I did wonder after a couple years when nobody tested us on metric
13
i guess 17.78 sounds better than 7….
2
SNS, I had to learn all the regional engineering units when I used to commission machinery overseas.
Pressure, flow, temp, etc…
I edited their HMIs to show what THEY wanted, not force our standards on them.
It wasn’t that difficult once you know the ranges in your mind.
6
@LocoBlancoSaltine:
Of course now you have to keep two different sets of tool sizes in the box.
Or three. If you’ve worked on old English cars or especially motorcycles, you’ll have cursed Mr. Whitworth more than once.
17
No shit Uncle Al?
That’s interesting.
Funny but a lot of guys I’ve worked with mostly just use a damn pair of channel-locks…
Douchebags!
3
What do that call that system/size Uncle Al?
What is it based on?
1
Uncle Al AT 7:03 PM
“@LocoBlancoSaltine:
Of course now you have to keep two different sets of tool sizes in the box.
Or three. If you’ve worked on old English cars or especially motorcycles, you’ll have cursed Mr. Whitworth more than once.”
…but you can have a dozen tool sets, and STILL have no 10mm.
14
So, bottom line, Most politicians back then couldn’t get their shit together either. With a few notable items excepted…
4
blow me; try 7.62mm, 9mm, 12.7mm
What are rock bands going to do? 22.8 centimeter Nails doesn’t have the same ring as 9 Inch, does it?
9
I used to have a set of King Dick Whitworths… they were sold with the MG. I didn’t figure I’d ever use them again.
8
LocoBlancoSaltine AT 7:01 PM
“SNS, I had to learn all the regional engineering units when I used to commission machinery overseas.
Pressure, flow, temp, etc…
I edited their HMIs to show what THEY wanted, not force our standards on them.
It wasn’t that difficult once you know the ranges in your mind.”
…I go the other way, we get stuff from all over the world and I make it conform to what our operators are familiar with, even to the extent of redesigning HMIs to have visual and functional similarities where and as practicable, so an operator can fill different roles and not need extensive retraining between them.
I always use basic colors, flashing red and solid green just as you’d expect worldwide, and keep text on the buttons to a minimum because we have so many friends from around the world. I will also swich screens automatically in some cases so they have the right screen up for certain alarms. Gotta keep it stupid simple and let the PLC deal with the numbers internally to the greatest extent possible, and just show numbers when they are required to record them, in the format they need to be recorded in. They do have to make some numeric entries but this, too, is kept as visual as possible…
5
The company I work for follows metric. After 26 years I still have to scratch my head and contemplate what 2.54 mm really is.
4
Yes SNS, I try to have everything scaled in the PLC.
That said, some HMI’s allow Unicode so they could switch between other languages like French or Spanish, etc.
This also allowed changing from F to C, PSI to kPa etc.
As long as the scaling is right you are good.
You can still run into issues if VFDs and other instrumentation are configured improperly.
Good thing 0 to 100% is still universal…
.100 bro. But then you knew that. When we get a metric o in we convert, machine, inspect. And then on final q.a. flip the switch on the old CMM and marry it back to the original print.
6
“We”, the engineers & scientists in the US, use metric all the damn time. We just convert it back to Imperial for all the normal’s.
😀
KR
9
Jethro
It’s those damn metric angles that get me. Lol
8
Metric Sucks!
Trust me I’m living it.
Incidentally, Justine Turdeau’s FUCK WAD Step Dad Pierre Elliot Turdeau jammed it Down our throats. French Speaking Foreskin suckers!
There’s that FUCKING Last name again…
12
With woodworking and tile I use metric… and welding back when I did some of that. With guitar setups I use SAE.
It used to drive Rich crazy that my folding rulers are metric on one side, and honkey on the other.
4
Remind me again which Metric spacecraft have landed on the moon, please?
Metric lost to USC in WW2.
Because America, that’s why!
7
The funny thing about Metric is that it makes calculations easy and everything else hard or imprecise.
10
I always feel that any competency tests should include questions like:
1) Draw a 1 inch line
2) Draw a 1 centimeter line
3) How many feet in a mile?
4) How many pounds in a ton?
5) At sea level, water freezes & boils: F? C?
6) How many dead democrats vote in presidential elections?
11
LocoBlancoSaltine AT 7:31 PM
“Yes SNS, I try to have everything scaled in the PLC.
That said, some HMI’s allow Unicode so they could switch between other languages like French or Spanish, etc.
This also allowed changing from F to C, PSI to kPa etc.
As long as the scaling is right you are good.
You can still run into issues if VFDs and other instrumentation are configured improperly.
Good thing 0 to 100% is still universal…”
…my Allen Bradley terminals do have multilingual support, but my polyglot lot includes the staples like French and Spanish, but also Thai, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Russian, Farsi, Egypitian, Hindi, Pashtun, and I even have a literal Welshman and some Africans that speak some clicky language that I’m not even sure HAS a written version, not to mention Somalis that have only had a written language since ’73 so its not super nailed down, and that’s BEFORE you get into dialects and argots and creoles. African French bears little resemblance beyond the name to the funnybook kind they teach in high school, and the 40 odd Latin American countires don’t really use Castilian Spanish as much more than a starting poimt, so if I start down THAT rabbit hole I’m gping to end up so deep in the Tower of Babel thT I’d start crapping with an accent, and that’s not something that its really practical to do.
…but let me say this about 0-100 percent.
While it IS universal, it doesn’t always pay to be HONEST with it. We have a pair of servos comprising a YZ gantry robot for example that was not well designed, using timing belts to move too much weight. This works fine below 90% but starts to overtravel and jam above that, and it can be a bitch kitty to restore and a big down time hit. Unfortunately it also has a recipe setting from 0-100% and the manager of the month generally isn’t familiar with the equipment but wants everything to say 100% all the time so he feels like he’s doing something.
It being impossible to reason with production managers, I cut this Gordian knot by having it DISPLAY whatever is input, but ACTUAL servo output is clipped in the PLC to 90%.
It has a pretty good placebo effect. I had one manager who turned a line up from 90 to “100%”, watch it for a moment, then start crowing in emails about how he optimized line speed.
I didn’t bother to correct him. Whatever makes him happy also makes him leave me alone,so its allll good…
4
“The funny thing about Metric is that it makes calculations easy and everything else hard or imprecise.”
That’s pretty accurate from my little world. Keep moving that decimal point to the left and all of a sudden they move you to Microns. I think one reason Ur Apeons struggle with imperial is because we throw in fractional decimal equivalents. If we just stuck to .XXX it would be much simpler to understand for them. And they would realize it’s light years better. Like I say, to course.
11
As long as we can all set the base point to the fact that Henry Blake’s finger was always 3 inches, I’m cool. Carry on.
5
We will really be screwed when we get into metric time and lignes, cubits, Gunter’s chains for rods, and weight in stones… which is pounds, but pounds sterling, or Guineas being one pound and 12 pence, 12 pence being a bob, and 5 shillings being a crown….
4
I was stationed in Georgia in the 70s when the goobermint started pushing metric. All the km roadsigns were blasted full of bullet holes.
11
I was told in school if I couldn’t write in cursive I’d die in a ditch, with maggots in my eye sockets. Is cursive metric? I don’t know. I was also told there was an ICE AGE coming and WE would ALL be dead by this magical year of 1990. All frozen to DEATH WITH MAGGOTS IN OUR EYE SOCKETS!
And then ACID RAIN. You’d walk outside (it doesn’t normally rain inside) and you’d DIE like some bad Vincent Price film, and MELT, WITH MAGGOTS IN YOUR EYE SOCKETS!
And then YOU better double-space that typewriter shit, yo! Or you will fucking DIE WITH MAGGOTS, and such and sundry.
5
What’s a typewriter?
All well and good. But, can you text like a teenager?
4
My first typewriter was a Remington Model 5. Crackerbaby gave it to my Dad, and Dad gave it to me. The Model 5 was “Portable”.
4
Mom had a Smith Corona. Portable. Nice machine. Don’t touch that one.
Then I scored an Olivetti in the shit bin. That was like magic. The difference between a 1919 Buescher Sax, and a 1959 Couesnon.
I still can’t type, or play any saxophone.
5
Eff the metric system, especially when driving. I like to know that I will be traveling 60 miles in an hour driving 60 mph. In order to do this with the pussy metric system, I would have to have a speed of 96.56064 kph to reach the same distance. Real convenient….
3
Roadwork is metric.
Engineer tapes required to set grade.
1
The metric system is based on the distance from the North Pole to Paris, France, divided by one million.
Why should we give a fuck?
Fuck the French, fuck Europe, and fuck the metric system.
Some leftover shit from Napoleon’s conquests? I don’t know.
mortem tyrannis
izlamo delenda est …
2
Ain’t no Yurropeon who orders 0.473176 of a liter. It’s a pint.
Earf people use base 60 and count to 12. Fags and midgets use the metric system.
2
“The funny thing about Metric is that it makes calculations easy and everything else hard or imprecise.”
You can’t do 12 inches in a foot, 4 quarts in a gallon?
FWIW, a gram is 1/58 of an ounce. What the Hell use is that? Basically, a meter is a yard, a liter is a quart and a kilo is 2 pounds.
How many metric fans talk hectograms (hundreds), dekaliters (tens), decimeters (tenths)? The only prefix you hear for real measurements is centimeters for girls (which makes them sound like they weigh 1000 pounds).
Quarts, pints, yards, and miles are more useful.
3
The Pascal. “The unit, named after Blaise Pascal, is defined as one newton per square metre and is equivalent to 10 barye (Ba) in the CGS system. The unit of measurement called standard atmosphere (atm) is defined as 101,325 Pa.”
We used to call it 14.7 psi. But it’s better to be confusing. I hereby posit the concept of the Maximum And Minimum Amount of Moonshine Whereabouts One May Shit One’s Trousers. I’ll call it the joetato curve.
we don’t use the metric system because it is just too hard
I remember the Carter years being so bad that changing over to the Metric system during this time would have been the last straw…
Of course now you have to keep two different sets of tool sizes in the box.
Sigh*
We somehow split the baby on that one…
‘Cuz WE DONT GOT NO FOREIGN RULERS!
U.S.A! U.S.A!
*sigh*
…if only that “Foreign Ruler” part were true…
Let us not forget BULLET CALIBERS!
We use mixtures,e.g., tire size 155x50x19, where tire width and profile measurements are metric and tire diameter is in inches.
The metric system is extremely course for close tolerance work/design.
We do! What do you call 5.56 or 9mm? I bet that chaps those Euro weenies ass. The only metric shit we do is ammo.
I use both all day long, as some machines are made in USA and others overseas. Scaling for servos and robots tend to be programmer’s choice, but rarely both in the same machine.
But I started out having to use decimal, binary, octal, and hexadecimal numbers anyway, plus using other measures like kPa, bar, psi, and so on, so going back and forth between Imperial and Metric isn’t going to rustle my jimmies…
Running has a mix of both.
5K & 10K races along with 13.1 half & 26.2 Mile marathons (42K).
The 5K is a good distance for charity races since most can do that easy.
This tired fucking question again? The metric system is used when it’s needed. End of story.
And just to answer the other question that always seems to pop up. It’s called football, because when football was created, the forward pass did not exist. The ball was advanced on foot, ya fuckin’ simps.
One thing you can bet on: When the US goes metric, merchants will raise prices to capitalize on the confusion.
When I was a little kid about 60 yrs ago teachers said we would have to learn both systems as we were changing to metric very soon! I did wonder after a couple years when nobody tested us on metric
i guess 17.78 sounds better than 7….
SNS, I had to learn all the regional engineering units when I used to commission machinery overseas.
Pressure, flow, temp, etc…
I edited their HMIs to show what THEY wanted, not force our standards on them.
It wasn’t that difficult once you know the ranges in your mind.
@LocoBlancoSaltine:
Or three. If you’ve worked on old English cars or especially motorcycles, you’ll have cursed Mr. Whitworth more than once.
No shit Uncle Al?
That’s interesting.
Funny but a lot of guys I’ve worked with mostly just use a damn pair of channel-locks…
Douchebags!
What do that call that system/size Uncle Al?
What is it based on?
Uncle Al AT 7:03 PM
“@LocoBlancoSaltine:
Of course now you have to keep two different sets of tool sizes in the box.
Or three. If you’ve worked on old English cars or especially motorcycles, you’ll have cursed Mr. Whitworth more than once.”
…but you can have a dozen tool sets, and STILL have no 10mm.
So, bottom line, Most politicians back then couldn’t get their shit together either. With a few notable items excepted…
blow me; try 7.62mm, 9mm, 12.7mm
What are rock bands going to do? 22.8 centimeter Nails doesn’t have the same ring as 9 Inch, does it?
I used to have a set of King Dick Whitworths… they were sold with the MG. I didn’t figure I’d ever use them again.
LocoBlancoSaltine AT 7:01 PM
“SNS, I had to learn all the regional engineering units when I used to commission machinery overseas.
Pressure, flow, temp, etc…
I edited their HMIs to show what THEY wanted, not force our standards on them.
It wasn’t that difficult once you know the ranges in your mind.”
…I go the other way, we get stuff from all over the world and I make it conform to what our operators are familiar with, even to the extent of redesigning HMIs to have visual and functional similarities where and as practicable, so an operator can fill different roles and not need extensive retraining between them.
I always use basic colors, flashing red and solid green just as you’d expect worldwide, and keep text on the buttons to a minimum because we have so many friends from around the world. I will also swich screens automatically in some cases so they have the right screen up for certain alarms. Gotta keep it stupid simple and let the PLC deal with the numbers internally to the greatest extent possible, and just show numbers when they are required to record them, in the format they need to be recorded in. They do have to make some numeric entries but this, too, is kept as visual as possible…
The company I work for follows metric. After 26 years I still have to scratch my head and contemplate what 2.54 mm really is.
Yes SNS, I try to have everything scaled in the PLC.
That said, some HMI’s allow Unicode so they could switch between other languages like French or Spanish, etc.
This also allowed changing from F to C, PSI to kPa etc.
As long as the scaling is right you are good.
You can still run into issues if VFDs and other instrumentation are configured improperly.
Good thing 0 to 100% is still universal…
@Jethro — 1/10″ of course! (-:
@Loco — See here:
https://www.baconsdozen.co.uk/tools/conversion%20charts.htm
.100 bro. But then you knew that. When we get a metric o in we convert, machine, inspect. And then on final q.a. flip the switch on the old CMM and marry it back to the original print.
“We”, the engineers & scientists in the US, use metric all the damn time. We just convert it back to Imperial for all the normal’s.
😀
KR
Jethro
It’s those damn metric angles that get me. Lol
Metric Sucks!
Trust me I’m living it.
Incidentally, Justine Turdeau’s FUCK WAD Step Dad Pierre Elliot Turdeau jammed it Down our throats. French Speaking Foreskin suckers!
There’s that FUCKING Last name again…
With woodworking and tile I use metric… and welding back when I did some of that. With guitar setups I use SAE.
It used to drive Rich crazy that my folding rulers are metric on one side, and honkey on the other.
Remind me again which Metric spacecraft have landed on the moon, please?
Metric lost to USC in WW2.
Because America, that’s why!
The funny thing about Metric is that it makes calculations easy and everything else hard or imprecise.
I always feel that any competency tests should include questions like:
1) Draw a 1 inch line
2) Draw a 1 centimeter line
3) How many feet in a mile?
4) How many pounds in a ton?
5) At sea level, water freezes & boils: F? C?
6) How many dead democrats vote in presidential elections?
LocoBlancoSaltine AT 7:31 PM
“Yes SNS, I try to have everything scaled in the PLC.
That said, some HMI’s allow Unicode so they could switch between other languages like French or Spanish, etc.
This also allowed changing from F to C, PSI to kPa etc.
As long as the scaling is right you are good.
You can still run into issues if VFDs and other instrumentation are configured improperly.
Good thing 0 to 100% is still universal…”
…my Allen Bradley terminals do have multilingual support, but my polyglot lot includes the staples like French and Spanish, but also Thai, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Russian, Farsi, Egypitian, Hindi, Pashtun, and I even have a literal Welshman and some Africans that speak some clicky language that I’m not even sure HAS a written version, not to mention Somalis that have only had a written language since ’73 so its not super nailed down, and that’s BEFORE you get into dialects and argots and creoles. African French bears little resemblance beyond the name to the funnybook kind they teach in high school, and the 40 odd Latin American countires don’t really use Castilian Spanish as much more than a starting poimt, so if I start down THAT rabbit hole I’m gping to end up so deep in the Tower of Babel thT I’d start crapping with an accent, and that’s not something that its really practical to do.
…but let me say this about 0-100 percent.
While it IS universal, it doesn’t always pay to be HONEST with it. We have a pair of servos comprising a YZ gantry robot for example that was not well designed, using timing belts to move too much weight. This works fine below 90% but starts to overtravel and jam above that, and it can be a bitch kitty to restore and a big down time hit. Unfortunately it also has a recipe setting from 0-100% and the manager of the month generally isn’t familiar with the equipment but wants everything to say 100% all the time so he feels like he’s doing something.
It being impossible to reason with production managers, I cut this Gordian knot by having it DISPLAY whatever is input, but ACTUAL servo output is clipped in the PLC to 90%.
It has a pretty good placebo effect. I had one manager who turned a line up from 90 to “100%”, watch it for a moment, then start crowing in emails about how he optimized line speed.
I didn’t bother to correct him. Whatever makes him happy also makes him leave me alone,so its allll good…
“The funny thing about Metric is that it makes calculations easy and everything else hard or imprecise.”
That’s pretty accurate from my little world. Keep moving that decimal point to the left and all of a sudden they move you to Microns. I think one reason Ur Apeons struggle with imperial is because we throw in fractional decimal equivalents. If we just stuck to .XXX it would be much simpler to understand for them. And they would realize it’s light years better. Like I say, to course.
As long as we can all set the base point to the fact that Henry Blake’s finger was always 3 inches, I’m cool. Carry on.
We will really be screwed when we get into metric time and lignes, cubits, Gunter’s chains for rods, and weight in stones… which is pounds, but pounds sterling, or Guineas being one pound and 12 pence, 12 pence being a bob, and 5 shillings being a crown….
I was stationed in Georgia in the 70s when the goobermint started pushing metric. All the km roadsigns were blasted full of bullet holes.
I was told in school if I couldn’t write in cursive I’d die in a ditch, with maggots in my eye sockets. Is cursive metric? I don’t know. I was also told there was an ICE AGE coming and WE would ALL be dead by this magical year of 1990. All frozen to DEATH WITH MAGGOTS IN OUR EYE SOCKETS!
And then ACID RAIN. You’d walk outside (it doesn’t normally rain inside) and you’d DIE like some bad Vincent Price film, and MELT, WITH MAGGOTS IN YOUR EYE SOCKETS!
And then YOU better double-space that typewriter shit, yo! Or you will fucking DIE WITH MAGGOTS, and such and sundry.
What’s a typewriter?
All well and good. But, can you text like a teenager?
My first typewriter was a Remington Model 5. Crackerbaby gave it to my Dad, and Dad gave it to me. The Model 5 was “Portable”.
Mom had a Smith Corona. Portable. Nice machine. Don’t touch that one.
Then I scored an Olivetti in the shit bin. That was like magic. The difference between a 1919 Buescher Sax, and a 1959 Couesnon.
I still can’t type, or play any saxophone.
Eff the metric system, especially when driving. I like to know that I will be traveling 60 miles in an hour driving 60 mph. In order to do this with the pussy metric system, I would have to have a speed of 96.56064 kph to reach the same distance. Real convenient….
Roadwork is metric.
Engineer tapes required to set grade.
The metric system is based on the distance from the North Pole to Paris, France, divided by one million.
Why should we give a fuck?
Fuck the French, fuck Europe, and fuck the metric system.
Some leftover shit from Napoleon’s conquests? I don’t know.
mortem tyrannis
izlamo delenda est …
Ain’t no Yurropeon who orders 0.473176 of a liter. It’s a pint.
Earf people use base 60 and count to 12. Fags and midgets use the metric system.
“The funny thing about Metric is that it makes calculations easy and everything else hard or imprecise.”
You can’t do 12 inches in a foot, 4 quarts in a gallon?
FWIW, a gram is 1/58 of an ounce. What the Hell use is that? Basically, a meter is a yard, a liter is a quart and a kilo is 2 pounds.
How many metric fans talk hectograms (hundreds), dekaliters (tens), decimeters (tenths)? The only prefix you hear for real measurements is centimeters for girls (which makes them sound like they weigh 1000 pounds).
Quarts, pints, yards, and miles are more useful.
The Pascal. “The unit, named after Blaise Pascal, is defined as one newton per square metre and is equivalent to 10 barye (Ba) in the CGS system. The unit of measurement called standard atmosphere (atm) is defined as 101,325 Pa.”
We used to call it 14.7 psi. But it’s better to be confusing. I hereby posit the concept of the Maximum And Minimum Amount of Moonshine Whereabouts One May Shit One’s Trousers. I’ll call it the joetato curve.