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Americans will do ANYTHING to avoid the metric system

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zendriver

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Dec 10, 2014
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Indiana
If they would have said " a 9x9 foot hole opened up!" no one -at all, would even have bothered to click or comment, on the article.

We are intellectual lambs being led to slaughter.
 
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mudflap

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Sep 25, 2011
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cincinnati,ohio
No worries...how many meters in a Yard..? Would we have to re build all of our Football Stadiums..? But the rednecks did take to the metric system easy enough..they all know exactly how many 2 liters of mountain dew they need for the family reunion if all the husband in laws, and uncle-dads, and aunt-moms show up.
 
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toolenthusiast

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Jan 21, 2017
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723
...and Europeans will do ANYTHING to cling to the metric system. That’s why they all own 6.3mm sockets, and refuse to admit that they’re 1/4”.
 
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Air21

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Nov 3, 2013
Messages
372
Hey now, we didn't make a 431706352.941 refrigerator trip to the moon and back just to measure things like the French...
 
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Jazz1

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Jan 3, 2016
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Thunder Bay On.
I think tool manufacturers were behind the scheme! Just waiting on them to push a 3rd measuring system upon us
 
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HenryAZ

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Sep 18, 2012
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South Congress AZ
I encountered the metric system big time when I took on the rebuild of an FJ-40. It was also an excuse for another tool box and a complete set of metric tools.:) The metric system does have some very nice features, such as easy to remember sizes for threaded fasteners. I think the metric thread pitch makes much more sense than tpi, for example. Thread gauges have fewer choices to deal with. The only thing that bothered me with the FJ-40 was the use of JIS standards for bolts. Anything from M8 on up in JIS takes a smaller sized wrench/socket than the M8 in ISO. Having to replace a single M8 bolt anyplace, mixed in with M8 JIS bolts, requires you have a 12mm and a 13mm wrench on hand. Other than that, metric makes a lot of sense, and I learned a lot about moving from one system to another.

I am happy for the experience and now having the tools, as I am encountering more and more metric stuff in all sorts of newer equipment. I also have a good supply of metric hardware, due to the fact I found it not much more $$ to buy a bag of 25 or 50 from McMaster when I only needed one or two. Buying one or two at the local hardware store was pricey.
 
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welder4956

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Birmingham, AL USA
I took a temporary assignment to a construction job in the Philippines back in 1997. The drawings were all in metric values, all of our tape measures were metric. Amazing how easy it is to adapt if you to do it. Took me a few weeks to get used to the change, but once I did it was no problem. The problem here in the U.S. is that virtually everything we use, except automobiles, was manufactured and sold using US Customary measurements. Instead of being totally immersed in metric, you have to continue to use both systems to work on legacy items and new metric items. What do you call a 2 x 4 in metric? 50 x 100? 38.1 x 88.9?
 
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hsvtoolfool

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Jul 29, 2015
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Rocket City USA
I got my first golf laser rangefinder a couple weeks ago. The first round I used my new toy, my shots were consistently short of the green. I just figured I was striking the ball poorly. My golf buddy disagreed and thought the rangefinder was broken. About 12 holes into the round I finally noticed the big "M" in the viewfinder. The dang rangefinder had come from the factory set to Meters instead of Yards. Doh! I couldn't switch it to yards without the manual, which was back home. Doh!

Now I am ambivalent about the Metric System generally, but golf, baseball, and football (not soccer!) must be measured in Feet and Yards regardless of where it's being played. Otherwise, you're playing some boring, obscure foreign game like soccer or cricket. Whoever thought that a golf course should be laid out and measured in meters was clearly NOT a golfer.

How far do you hit your 9 iron? Oh, about 130 meters. Wrong! You hit it about 57 washing machines.
 
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Stadger

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Nov 19, 2016
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With the state of our education system today, most people under 40 can't even make change let alone understand volume. Metric or not.
 
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cjarvis

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Aug 30, 2017
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Do you blame us? As soon as we switch to SI, our “football” players will be chasing black and white balls in circles and having midfield menstrual cramps.

:lol_hitti
 
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toolenthusiast

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Jan 21, 2017
Messages
723
Stadger said:
With the state of our education system today, most people under 40 can't even make change let alone understand volume. Metric or not.
Click to expand...

In my experience, the opposite is true. Most older people aren’t capable of simple arithmetic and certainly not any level or algebra. Their excuse is invariably “School was a long time ago for me!”
 
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Wamsutta

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Jan 8, 2014
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10,870
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Amarillo, Texas
You guys might find this interesting:

When I worked at a cabinet and casework company in the late 1980s, they used the metric system. Everything on the engineering drawings were in millimeters. They said the reason for that was less material wasted and a huge savings in material costs. I have to say it definitely made the mathematics easier.
 
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thewatusi

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Dec 27, 2013
Messages
1,256
Location
Philly Burbs
Bigbandguy said:
**** the metric system and he horse it rode in on. They copy everything else, why not our system of measurement?
Click to expand...

That's because our system of measurement is garbage.

feature-3312.jpg
 
L

Lassen Forge

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Apr 26, 2014
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The romantic hills of central Umbria, Italy,
The map above isn't exactly accurate... because some use BOTH. So tell me... why does Britain, home of Whitworth, use the metric system for SOME things but not others? Like - going along the motorway, why are measurements in MILES, not KM?

I'm OK with metric... Or Imperial... or even Whitworth. Because I hope I can figure out the difference. If I think 10mm is the same as 10 inches, then I'm in the wrong profession.
 
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Mr. T

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Central PA
Does anyone here know what the definition of one inch is? As in, what is the inch, and how is that unit defined?


Hate to break your big ol Merican hearts...

One inch is defined as precisely 25.4 mm!

You were using the metric system the whole time, and you didn’t even know it!
 
N

nieuport17

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Joined
Jun 20, 2014
Messages
466
hsvtoolfool said:
I got my first golf laser rangefinder a couple weeks ago. The first round I used my new toy, my shots were consistently short of the green. I just figured I was striking the ball poorly. My golf buddy disagreed and thought the rangefinder was broken. About 12 holes into the round I finally noticed the big "M" in the viewfinder. The dang rangefinder had come from the factory set to Meters instead of Yards. Doh! I couldn't switch it to yards without the manual, which was back home. Doh!



Now I am ambivalent about the Metric System generally, but golf, baseball, and football (not soccer!) must be measured in Feet and Yards regardless of where it's being played. Otherwise, you're playing some boring, obscure foreign game like soccer or cricket. Whoever thought that a golf course should be laid out and measured in meters was clearly NOT a golfer.



How far do you hit your 9 iron? Oh, about 130 meters. Wrong! You hit it about 57 washing machines.
Click to expand...



When I was in Europe, when people use Meters, I just roughly convert that to yards with 1:1. 100M would be 100 yards in my head.

Anyway, I just did a google convert: 100M is 109 yards.
Golf distance needs more precision?
I don’t play golf much, (this is just an honest question) so if I est 9 yards short, the swing would be off ?
 
S

Shelbylex

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Jan 20, 2018
Messages
3,118
Location
MA
We are just one stubborn nation...
Metric system is superior in many ways and I wish we had it!
Even driving would feel better: speed limit of 100+ km/h vs 65 mph : )

... that’s why the banks keep screwing us, we save them with our taxes when they get too grist and than wonder what is happening...
 
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tym

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Mar 5, 2016
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MA
Yeah, but what do they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in France, Jules?
 
0

03.

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Jan 6, 2017
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561
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MNC. N.S.W. AUSTRALIA
In Australia we went metric over 40 years ago. Nobody asked anyone, the politicians just changed it. Cost a hell of a lot of money, and took approx 30 years in total.
The funny thing is, we still have a lot of unchanged things. We go to the hardware to buy some 4x2 or 3x2 , mostly we buy 3.6 meter lengths of it.
Air conditioning flexible duct comes in bags of 3 or 6 metres, be it 8" 10" 12" 14" 16" diameter. The hardware also still sells bolts 1/4 3/8 1/2 5/8 etc alongside metric.
I keep all my bolts and machine screws in imperial, the reason being if the nuts get mixed at all it is damn hard to sort them out, 1/4 and 6mm are very close and you only notice when y go to put one on the other and they don't cooperate.
Nothing wrong with the metric system, but as they say if it ain't broke....
 
C

coleman10

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Nov 12, 2012
Messages
871
Location
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Mr. T said:
Does anyone here know what the definition of one inch is? As in, what is the inch, and how is that unit defined?


Hate to break your big ol Merican hearts...

One inch is defined as precisely 25.4 mm!

You were using the metric system the whole time, and you didn’t even know it!
Click to expand...



This is true. Behind our standard, customary units is the metric system. The Office Weights and Measures defines all of the US measurements by their metric equivalents. How else is one inch from 10 different tape measure manufacturers all gong to be the same? Now, the US doesn’t use the metric system in daily life. It’s clear that the US having a different set of measurements isn’t affecting the country nor the rest of the world. If that’s the case, why go through the change? I can only imagine what that would cost.
 
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joe_pinehill1

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Joined
Feb 23, 2013
Messages
537
Location
Northern Virginia
I'm still getting used to switching from BWS to SAE

But seriously, its silly the US doesn't switch to metric. Any engineering calculation is easier in SI units. The base units, meter, second, kilogram, ampere, mole, candela, kelvin, can all be traced to something physical.

If anyone is interested in how units were derived, and the history of machine tool tolerance, this is a very good book. The author starts with John Wilkenson's machining of cannons to what was then an unheard of tolerance of 0.1 inch or the thickness of a shilling coin. Each chapter goes into the next level of machining tolerance, chapters are titled Tolerance 0.1, Tolerance 0.01, etc.

The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World Paperback – May 7, 2019
by Simon Winchester (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062652567/?tag=atomicindus08-20
 
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