On 09/08/2017 02:42 PM, rickman wrote:

I don't remember that "people just would not go for it".Â* I don't
recall much resistance at all.Â* I think the "resistance" was at
other levels.

Yep.Â* At the time (about 1975), I was working for a company that tried
to switch to metric.Â* This was aided by having the drafting manager
and mechanical designer also serving on the metric conversion council
(or whatever it was called).Â* At one point, we started sending metric
fabrication drawings to various vendors.Â* They were immediately
returned.Â* The problem wasn't understanding the new metric way of
doing things, it was that they would need to replace all their English
lead screws, measurement instruments, gauges blocks, programming, etc
before they could cut metal.Â* They also claimed that they needed
considerable staff training to handle the change (because someone
tried to simultaneously switch to true position dimentioning).Â* We
would need to wait until the shops converted before we could orders
parts in metric.

So, we went back to English units and waited for the "inevitable"
conversion that never happened.Â* It seems that most of the other
customers followed the same pattern.Â* They tried metric, failed, and
went back to English.

Ok second guy in this thread to use the term "English units". Am I to
assume
it's an Americanism then? In England, Australia and New Zealand (the
countries I've lived in) non-metric units are reffered to as "imperial".

Imperial units are not quite the same.Â* An imperial gallon is larger
than the gallon used in the US.Â* I don't know if there are other
differences, I'm pretty sure the inch, foot and yard are the same.Â* I'm
not sure if a fortnight is the same on both sides of the Atlantic...

A US gallon is smaller than an Imperial gallon because the US pint has
the wrong number of fluid ounces (16 instead of 20).

We use the term "English units" because like many of our customs, laws
and general ways of life, they came to us by way of England.

When it comes to tools such as wrenches, I see the term "Standard" often
used in the USA -- maybe just short for the whole "SAE" term, the last
two of whose letters I don't recall the meaning.

Perce