ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area US guys, do you use metric yet

If they really wanted something that would stand the test of time they should have gone base 16

I am to old to try and change.

@Alan: all countries that I know of have rounded their pre-metric units. The German Pfund, the Dutch pond and the French livre are all 500g rather than some odd number. None of those units is used officially, but most people know them and use them in everyday communications, just like the dag (Dekagramm or short Deka) in Austria and Hungary, which is a metric unit but as far as I know not used anywhere else. The "douzaine" is the only non-decimal unit still in use in Continental Europe as far as I know (except seconds, minutes, etc. of course *g*).

American cars have had mph /kph speedometers since maybe the seventies. Only really used if you drive into Canada or Mexico.

I have worked on projects in different countries and the ability to work in different units is more than just being able to make conversions. For instance, you may start with basic manufacturing stock of 0.500 inch (12.7 mm) if designing or making something in the US. But in the metric countries, that is not their standard, so you start out with 13mm. It doesn't make sense to go to the next SI size up and machine down to 13mm in US. So until the basic manufacturing processes are changed to "hard Metric", the products we design and the tools we use will seem to follow the basic manufacturing building blocks. It would be great for everyone to be on the same measurements – and the trend is toward metric. The decimal inch does everything pretty well, that is why it has not gone away yet. The liquid measurements we have (other than ounces) is a real mess, and would be good riddance.

Tex, there are still a lot of unconverted non-metric things, as you say.

The Revolutionaires did try a 10 hour clock, [1793-1806] but it proved short lived.


click to enlarge

They also had three 10-day weeks in each of the renamed the 12 months- [another twelvism that survived]! This caused riots when the sans-culottes realised they'd just lost their weekends off! They got round the inconvenience of the Earth continuing to rotate at the same speed after 1793 by slotting in 6 or 7 special days at the end of the months.

There are a few more. The old pre-revolutionary pipe threads have not changed - metric pipe threads are in fact interchangeable with BSP for domestic work. Funnily enough, the American National Pipe threads are not interchangeable even though dimensioned in inches. I wonder if it was the cost of replacing all the French plumbers' taps and dies? As a lad in the machine-shop, all our lathes had a 127-tooth wheel for screwcutting [nearly] true metric pitch threads on British machines.
'G' as you say refused to be neat and tidy, insisting on accelerating at 9.81m/sec2 or about 32 ft/sec2. As a matter of fact the poundal and slug, engineering calculation units based on Earth's 'G' cannot be termed Imperial, for they were invented long after the 1824 Act.

And finally Gold. Still traded in ounces, troy of course. At 12 ounces to the pound!

Ahh yes Alan,
The metric clock!
I have one of these here, that I bought back in 1986.
If you married one of them movements, with the backwards face clocks that were big in the 80's, I bet you could have some real fun down at the pub.

Not forgetting the 12 Disciples, the Dirty Dozen, the 12 Good Men [or Ladies] and True in our Courtroom juries, the 12 Signs of the Zodiac, a Dozen a Day [ = 0.000138888889 hertz! ], or a dozen red roses for that special lady.

Let's be honest, the 10 Days of Christmas just doesn't sound right either, does it?

12 months ,12 tribes

12 pack

the most important # two twelve packs to a case 24 hours in a day how convienent