"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote:

On 03/07/06 02:08 am Joshua Putnam wrote:

Someone else wrote

No single person or even a small group decided we didn't need metric.
In fact a few people decided that we did, but millions of people
didn't want to use it anyhow.

IMHO, the great error was in trying to force conversion of popular
measures first. Millions of people were given the impression that they
were going to have to learn a whole new system of measures just to eat,
drink, and cook. Yet it really makes little difference to me whether my
bottle of wine is measured in ml or oz, as long as it's around six or
eight gills, depending on whose gill you're using.

I don't recall the sequence exactly, but ISTR that Australia converted
to the Metric system in stages. E.g., gasoline sold by the liter rather
than by the gallon from one date; other items sold by the (Kilo)gram
rather than by the pound from another date; paper sizes changed to
metric on yet another date; etc. Currency conversion -- from pounds.
shillings and pence to dollars and cents -- had taken place many years
before.

I notice we're finally getting to the heart of the matter. The problem
with the US conversion attempt was that they tried to convert popular
measures (presumably that means commonly-used measures) not just first
but at all. The metric system is only useful when there's frequent
calculations involved and even then it's not always the best measure.

Of course in scientific activities and in metalworking there's a
distinct advantage but as you correctly point out what does it matter
if your wine is metric or imperial? Although given the
internationalization of the product, metric should probably
predominate. Why convert the length of a football field? Or furlongs
for horse racing? Or the mile as in track? It's a four minute what?
Silly! And mph is equally stupid to convert. What calculations do you
ever do with mph? Hmmm...the speed limit is 55 mph...what's that in
feet per second? Yeah, that happens. Actually it was road distance and
mph that was the first thing the metric conversion freaks tried to
push on the US and of course people couldn't see the point and
resisted. I still can't see the point.

In some areas metric is particularly poorly suited as a measurement
and perhaps it should be the Euros adopting the US system rather than
the other way around. Take lumber measurement. Most of the time the
tolerance is at least a sixteenth of an inch sometimes an eighth. Wood
will expand and contract that much in a commonly used eight or ten
feet so more accurate measures are not necessary. Well, what's an
eighth in metric? About 2.5mm IIRC. Exceedingly difficult to see on a
tape. Even if you said 2mm or 3mm it's still hard to see and it's a
kludge. Moreover lots of measurement is in halves so the base 10
measure does very poorly: 10, 5, 2.5, 1.25... whereas the base 2 or 16
or 64 (an even number) is very natural: 1" , 1/2", 1/4" 1/8"... Based
on the strength of "2 by" lumber the 16" OC is an appropriate spacing.
Do it in metric and you either end up with an unnatural value or you
have to round up or down too much.

IMO the US is currently just about where it should be. Convert the
manufacturing and scientific stuff to metric--we've still got a little
way to go in manufacturing but the Chinese'll do the job for us
g--but keep the non-calculation items where they are. There's no
point in conversion just for conversion's sake.