The Medway Handyman wrote:
michael adams wrote:
"Jules" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:06:58 +0100, michael adams wrote:
But when using a tape measure surely most people use the top scale
for accurate measurement ? Same as using a ruler when measuring a
line on a piece of paper. So why are the inches always still on top
?
I suppose it'd be worth knowing what other markets the same tape
measure's exported to, and what they use. It's all Imperial here in
the US still (thankfully - even though I was brought up on Metric I
find it a lot easier to work in feet and inches when building
things) so if the same measure's also sold in the US you've got a
potential market of 300 million there using primarily inches vs.
60-odd million in the UK wanting cm.

In the UK Stanley probably still have the lions share of the market
as being the single biggest remaining prestige brand in hand tools.
Including steel
tapes. And they probably sell the same lines in both markets. They
certainly are
the leading name brand in at least one of the three biggest DIY shed
chains B&Q .

I have noticed that US origin tapes like Stanley have Imperial in larger
font than metric & European tapes have larger Metric font.

I can't visualise in mm or cm to save my life. If asked how many cm
tall I am
I'd have to work it out from being approx. two metres tall and do the
multiplication. However when it comes to marking stuff out from scale
drawings metric is just
so much easier I find. Having to double check that I've not confused
mm and cm
and not made anything ten times bigger or smaller than it needs to be
is a bonus
in a way

Whats the convention for metric measurement BTW? For example should one
write 150.2cm or 1520mm or 1.52m?

In the aerospace industry, we always used mm.


Dave