▲ 136 points
back
412 comments
"Back when I was a Catholic-school kid in northern Wisconsin, my school lessons briefly focused on the metric system. This was in the late 1970s."
Man, the progressive school (Comanche Elementary in Overland Park, Kansas!) must have had a huge impact on my life. In addition to open classrooms (I was in Unit 5, not 4th Grade), team teaching, a focus on experimental science, a circular layout to the school with a sunken (architecturally) library in the center…
Yeah, we went over the Metric System that whole year. I can still sing the "Metric Family" song from the film on metric units ("Kilo", "Milli", etc.). And to my young and impressionable mind, the U.S. was joining the rest of the "Free World" in a kind of Star-Trek-like casting aside of the old things that divided us—joining each other with a focus on progress, science, space…
President Carter came along around the same time or shortly after. And I have a photo of a family road trip to South Dakota, Montana: the sign that indicates the altitude of a particular mountain pass has both feet and meters. I Google-mapped the same location recently and of course it's no longer in meters.
I feel like in my elementary school days (the 1970's) the U.S. was on the cusp of a future of optimism—no doubt buoyed by having put astronauts on the Moon, but I was wildly on board for it.
But then some kind of shit seemingly started to poison the country. I don't feel we have ever returned to that level of national optimism. Perhaps 1976, the Bicentennial, was the end of it. (Recently watching the film "Nashville" brought me back a bit of the vibe of the times.)
I've been missing it my entire life since.
It was there again in the 90s after the wall fell. Fukuyama was boldly proclaiming the “end of history.” Newt started to kick at the edges with his combative policies but the inertia continued until the dotcom crash and 9/11 came along, and fully ended with the Great Recession.*
* (From my viewpoint as a millennial. Gen Z might think the golden years were during Obama, or just pre-COVID. To some extent every generation has a point in time that they see with rose tinted lenses.)
> Yeah, we went over the Metric System that whole year. I can still sing the "Metric Family" song from the film on metric units ("Kilo", "Milli", etc.). And to my young an impressionable mind, the U.S. was joining the rest of the world "Free World" in a kind of Star-Trek-like casting aside of the old things that divided us—joining each other with a focus on progress, science, space…
I’ve always found this peculiar because at times I have felt the same, but reflecting over the years and I guess as my mind settling on lived experience and opinions I’ve come to appreciate the Imperial system far more precisely because of its absurdities but also because of its history and usefulness without instrument.
As someone who, well, finds say Renaissance or Impressionist art to so far be the peak of human artistry, I find the imperial system fits in better with that warmth of humanity in contrast to Frank Lloyd Wright, Banksy, minimalism, and the cold calculation of the more “scientific” metric system.
Underneath that all is also this view that the United States at least needs to “join the world” and adopt Metric, and soccer, and such and I find myself increasingly rejecting both and other similar notions in favor of cultural uniqueness and fun over conformity.
I hope we never change sustems, and I don’t think we will anytime soon. If we do, however, we should not switch to Celsius because the useful scale of Fahrenheit is far superior 0-100 versus 0-32. Celsius isn’t very Metric-y.
The US Metric Board was cancelled in 1982 by one Ronald Wilson Reagan (anagram: Insane Anglo Warlord).
RWR and the charismatic traditionalism he espoused have caused a great deal of harm to American society.
Metrication is not at the top of that list, but it is one of many examples that we still live with today.
>> But then [post-1970s] some kind of shit seemingly started to poison the country.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ - the oil ran out and the post-war boom ended.
I understand existing-tool-holder opposition to a new measurement system, but sweet mother I hate fraction math.
> I've been missing it my entire life since.
Childhood Zeitgeist is a perfect term for this. We all pine for it.
I think it was Reagan turning all backwards orientated
>no doubt buoyed by having put astronauts on the Moon
NASA did this using customary units
>I've been missing it my entire life since
Surely you've learned by now that you're missing childhood, not an actual thing about the US? I'm asking this as someone who does think this era was peak Americana, but for totally different reasons than you present, and having not been alive then myself.
Katherine Carpenter Elementary, OP, KS for me, in the same era -- just a couple miles from your school.
I share some of the same disappointment, especially going back and noticing disinvestment in the schools, which were one of the gems of the area.
To those who cling to customary units because...
1. "They're more intuitive". They're not. You're just familiar with what 70 F feels like. If you're used to metric, 70 F is meaningless, but you intuitively know what 20 C feels like.
2. "Metric leads to lots of awkward numbers." All systems will fortuitously have round numbers in some contexts and awkward numbers in others. Customary units are different in that there are awkward numbers baked into the system. e.g. 5280 feet in a mile. 128 ounces in a gallon.
3. "It's too much trouble to change." You're already using metric units. U.S. customary units have, metrologically, been defined in terms of metric units since the Mendenhall order of 1893[1]. i.e. A meter is defined in terms of how far light can travel in a period of time defined by a hyperfine transition frequency of Caesium. If you needed to know exactly how long a meter is for a very precise measurement, a reference meter could be produced in a lab by aliens who have no idea what a meter is by using this definition. No such definition exists for a foot or yard. Nobody maintains physical reference yards (the old-school method) anymore. If you want those aliens to measure out a yard precisely, you tell them how to measure out a meter and then tell them 1 yard = 0.9144 m.
I'd part with cups and teaspoons/tablespoons and the like, but you'll pry inches/feet/yards and fahrenheit from my cold, dead hands. They're both more convenient for daily use. I think I'd prefer to keep miles as well but I don't have a good reason for that one.
Fahrenheit has more precision without using decimals for the thing 99% of people are using temperature measurements for: air temp. Where I live, we generally experience 5 degrees F - 100 degrees F at different points of the year. That's 95 degrees of precision with no decimal. In C, that's -15 to 37.8, a mere 52.8 degrees. The difference between 75 (usually a beautiful day) and 85 (hot) is 23.8C to 29.4C. Everything packed into this tight range.
Inches/feet being base 12 divides better into thirds and fourths, which is very useful in construction.
For science, sure, I'll use metric.
> U.S. customary (the more accurate name for what’s sometimes the called the British Imperial system)
For those wondering why there is this distinction, the British Imperial units were created by the Weights and Measures Act 1824; US customary units follow the Winchester Standard of 1588.
The US being stuck in imperial is such a meme nowadays with "freedum units" and the like. It's yet another odd thing that makes it easy for the rest of the world to laugh at the US. In these isolationist times I doubt this will change soon though, but it'd definitely help international collaboration.
>They specify dimensions in feet, inches, and fractions of an inch. But not all of them do.
There are many more fun and exciting non-metric measurements you might encounter than plain old fractional inches.
A fabricator might encounter sheet metal thickness in "gauge". Wire sizes, ammunition, and machine screws also come in "gauge" sizes but all four are different scales. US drills come not only in fractional inch sizes, but letters and numbers as well. Furnace efficiency is often specified in percent, but air conditioner efficiency comes in SEER. Water softener capacity is in "grains". Pipe threads come in "inch sizes", but that usually means NPT. Metal hardness and rubber durometer measurements have their own scale which doesn't really belong to either camp.
To be fair, a lot of these are categorical units. Screws come in #2 or #6 or #4, but you'll never need to worry about #3.7.
A wise professor once told me "All these different units will not be going away within your lifetime, so you better get used to working with them."
An argument can be made that we should blame Pirates of the Carribean for the fact that the USA is not metric. O:-)
https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/pirates-caribbean-...
We're in such a stupid time. I'm an EE, I typically do all my engineering in millimeters, but most of my coworkers prefer the clownshoes unit "mils". Half our soldering irons are set to Fahrenheit, the others Celsius.
In ordinary every day life, I've found that I use metric for measurements under an inch or under an ounce. At a certain upper limit it makes more sense to use metric for large values too.
So I have to suffer with the magic constant 25.4 bouncing around my brain every day forever and constantly converting trivial measurements into worse units.
I will never convert a measurement to fractional inches. If you must have inches as an input you can suffer a damn decimal point.
If you specify all your bolt heads as 19mm and 13mm, then a 3/4" wrench or a 1/2" wrench is usually good enough to get the job done.
Similarly, a 1/4-20 bolt will fit in a M6 tapped hole if you use a large enough hammer.
A hazardous aspect of US threadforms is that #10-32 machine screws and #8-32 machine screws have the same pitch. So you can fit #8 bolts in a #10 hole and sometimes, they FEEL like they made good torque, because they engaged one side of the tapped hole, when they really have no tension capability whatsoever.
Reference the British Airways flight 5390 accident where the pilot got sucked 3/4 the way out the cockpit window and slammed against the side of the fuselage while a flight attendant clung to his feet and the co-pilot safely landed.
Also note that a British designed and built product was using US threadforms...
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-near-crash-of-britis...
>“I’m currently working on a mounting plate that’s 4.5 by 8 in. that needs a 40 mm bore 1/2 -in. deep located 75 mm from the edge with m10 tapped holes and two 1/4-20 set screws tangential to the bore. Please kill me.”
When I was designing stuff here in Canada, that was basically Wednesday. One big advantage of the USA withdrawing from trade is that Canada will have the opportunity to finally complete the metric conversion.
I read once that all the educational materials produced to help people move from the old system to metric would cover 3 football fields and weigh more than 28 elephants, so it's nice to see it starting to have some effect.
It’s a bit odd in the U.S. because we use a mix of units, largely due to industries that combine metric and imperial systems. Most people are familiar with metric volume since so many drinks are sold in 1 and 2 liter bottles, and medications are typically measured in milligrams. Lengths and weights are more of a mixed bag. Many track and field events use metric units now, though longer distances are still measured in miles. Temperatures are still Fahrenheit, which I tend to prefer because the smaller increments give a more nuanced sense of change. I’m comfortable with the metric system since I was a chemistry major in college and a mountain biker, where measurements like suspension travel are usually given in millimeters.
Having converted science, manufacturing etc, what's the first (or next) true consumer facing thing that could change?
I work across both english and metric all the time (CAD, 3d printing, science, woodworking in the US) - I just mentally switched (age 52) to metric first in my head (specifically, I think "that's 10cm" not "that's 4 inches" when I look at something.
Woodworking became a lot more enjoyable- I don't know why- when I started to think "I need to shave off 1mm" instead of "shave off 3/64 inch" or whatever.
I actively avoid stuff made in the USA, precisely because they don't use metric. For example, you can get a USA bolt with all sorts of threads and dimensions, or you can buy a 100mm M8 that is compatible with every other M8 bolt / nut made in the world. That boils down to bolts made in any country, bar the USA.
Every time the USA manufacturers something that isn't metric, you've made it incompatible with the rest of the world. The USA got away with that when I was young because they were the world manufacturing powerhouse. Now, those powerhouses are based on Asia. They define the units most of the world sees, and they use metric. So if I buy a Chinese mower, all the bolts are metric and I'm guaranteed the local hardware store stocks them.
Time has moved on, the USA is now a follower, not a leader in most things bar digital services. If they want to return to selling those things to the world the speeds have to be in km/hr, weights in kg, sizes in mm or meters, the temperature in Celcius, pressures in Pascal's.
Honestly, the best way to cook is with grams. Throw everything into the same pot on a scale and keep zeroing it out. Way less mess to clean up. All the top baking recipes tend to already be in grams, but there's plenty of others out there that are not
Also a great use for LLMs. I'll tell it to convert recipes from volume to grams by estimating density. It's surprisingly accurate
The highway between Tucson and Nogales, Arizona, I-19, is the only highway in the country that has signage only in kilometers. It has been that way since 1980. It was a pilot project for the Metric Conversion Act. The highway is 102 kilometers long (63 miles).
The fish is the last to know it lives in water.
96% of the world’s population and 75% of its nominal (but not PPP adjusted!) GDP is metric.
All science is metric.
Other arguments simply don’t matter. How fine the Fahrenheit vs Celsius scales are or whatever is pointless, irrelevant debate.
Join the rest of us, or slowly fade into irrelevance. There is no third option.
You’re that one mansion with the doddering old cranky fool still lighting their place with town gas while everyone else has been using electric lighting for decades.
The next time the street is dug up, your pipes won’t be reconnected.
“So what if our spaceships occasionally crash into Mars at full speed because we got mixed up with our units… again? We can afford it!” — apologists.
We may get there eventually just as a consequence of being part of the world economy.
I noticed a couple of years back that my "U.S. Customary" wrenches weren't fitting my new plumbing fittings which were definitely not metric, but metric wrenches did. Probably made in China.
Then last summer I noticed something similar with lag bolts. The U.S. Customary socket fit the head, but it was nearly identical to a metric one that fit just a little better. The threads are designed to go into wood, not a nut, so if they were metric you'd never even know.
US system was good for the expansion in Far West 200 years ago. Count steps and thumbs to measure distance and feel the temperature on your skin. Now it has no utility and the US should "surrender" in a democratic fashion to the rest of the world. Of course any definition of a physical constant is valid, like how long I run with one breath right now. But there is already a majority that wins.
Pure hell of growing up metric and being forced to use inches is
- what's half of 1-7/8"
Metric: half of 44mm is 22mm. half of 45mm is 23mm [1]. half of 46mm is 23mm. Trivial
- which one is bigger 5/16" or 3/8"
Metric: 9mm is obviously bigger than 8mm.
Fractions are just unnecessarily complicated.
[1] Millimeters are small enough that you'll never need to go below that except in specialties like machining.
It becomes my habit pointing out the Metric sign on EB 580 when driving my out-of-town friends to the Premium Outlet.
https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/how-kilometers-appeare...
You can keep your fahrenheit, your feet and your gallons, for all I care, but one thing I will never abide is bolts and nuts and drill bits coming in fractions of an inch.
My elementary school years in the US really pushed metric units.
And every science class I've ever had was exclusively SI units. Except for Thermodynamics, which sometimes uses BTUs and steam engines.
I don't think the title is accurate.
There is no super-slow "conversion" of the US to metric.
There is a super-slow adoption of metric _alongside_ the "customary" Imperial system.
Seems like the U.S. uses metric for most of the important areas and just lets everyone continue to use imperial, whatever they want everywhere else.
With most calculation happening via computer these days anyway, do the advantages of the metric system become less relevant?
It will never cease to drive me batty every time I try find a metric fastener for an automotive purpose at a local hardware store.
There are many reasons I can find for leaving the US, but engaging in DIY projects utilizing local suppliers are what's come closest to pushing me over the edge. Especially in this post-SEARS hellscape of low quality made in china junk the market's flooded with. Now not only can I never find the fasteners I need, the tools suck too!
The problem is that Fahrenheit is a bit more convenient for describing the weather. Inches and feet are a bit more convenient for measuring human scale things and for being easily divisible by more numbers. And we’re used to the rest of it.
Unless someone comes along and forces it on you, for the average person, there’s not enough incentive to switch.
funny related video from Loic Suberville.
People get bogged down in arguments about what's better or more natural, but in my opinion those always miss the point. The truth is, there's no incentive for the US to switch. If you're a typical adult living in the US, you already know all the conversions you will need (12 inches to a foot, etc etc). The math isn't hard, because you always have a calculator at hand in this age. In short, imperial units have zero downside for most people. On the other hand, switching units of measurement does have a major downside as you have to relearn to estimate everything in the new units. That would be fine if metric was solving a problem for you... but it's not, so why switch?
The only people who benefit from a switch to metric are kids (cause they won't have to learn the imperial conversions). And they, for better or for worse, don't get a say. If people really want the US to switch measurements so badly (which I have no idea why anyone gives a shit what our country does, it's not like it affects them), then they need to come up with an actual compelling benefit to adults in the US if they switch. 100 years ago there was one: you can do conversions more easily. But today there is not, and until one surfaces there's going to be zero pressure to switch units.
Obligatory "what it's based on doesn't matter."
Like programming languages and UIs, it's what and how people use them. Imperial tends to be better because it's more "evolutionary."
Hopefully some future president will mandate that the federal government use metric, like Trump getting rid of the penny. The rest of society will gradually come along.
This just reinforces my old saying:
If you want to try to understand why the US is so fucked up, just look at England...
Why change? Imperial was Washington's dream, after all... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk
The metric systems's worse flaw was doubling down on base 10 instead of the plainly superior base 12.
Aren't imperial units considerably easier to calculate on the fly in construction and when squaring? They seem to come more natural for me.