Why the heck does America still use outdated measurement and date units?

[bunnspecial]

It is odd but I am comfortable living in both systems. I own European cars and motorcycles and understand sizes for tools I need for such work. At the same time, I have become used to the US Standard* while doing work in my house with relation to construction.

The use of both has been handy when I misplace my 8mm socket, I can just grab a 5/16 which works in most cases, similar situation with 13mm and ½ inch. Using both systems has actually made me understand relations and conversions without even thinking in many cases.

Most of my wrenching is on an old British car, which actually(much to many folks surprise) is primarily SAE fasteners. SAE, like metric, bolt heads are measured "across the flats." There's an occasional fastener that uses Whitworth/BSF, which uses a weird convention of the denoting the wrench size per the diameter of the shank of the bolt rather than the head. BSF and Whitwork have the same heads but, IIRC, the wrench size markings differ by 1/16". The one I know off the top of my head is 1/4"W is 3/16" BSF.

Some reproduction parts use metric fasteners, which is a pain in the rear especially when you get caught using original and repro parts side-by-side. Last weekend, I rebuilt one original brake caliper and decided to just replace the other with an on-hand spare. The bleeder on the original is, I think, 5/16", while the repro is 7mm. The reproduction rear cylinders I have are 7mm also, and I think that's the size on the clutch slave bleeder. At least they're consistent, even if annoying(and I really should rebuild that other caliper).

The real fun ones are the engines used in the MG T-type cars. In the late 1930s, MG's tooling was worn out for their old faithful overhead cam engine used in the P-type and J-type Midgets. BMC bought an engine plant from France and moved it intact. All the fasteners used in that engine were metric, but BMC decided to use metric thread fasteners with Whitworth heads. I've heard two explanations-the official one being "We don't want mechanics to have to buy metric tools to work on these cars" and the unofficial and probably correct one being "We're British and we'll be G-Ded if the FRENCH are going to tell us what to do."

 

[LizKat]

Only measurement unit I know is the dollar.

That and the infernal penny and you're good to go in America.... Heh, I grew up knowing that if I could uproot 100 dandelions (well getting most of the root out anyway) in my grandmother's lawn near her perennial gardens, I could trade them in for pennies from her as I went along, and eventually count those copper coins out to my grandpa who would give me a dollar bill, which I thought was pretty near a fortune. To this day when I see a single dollar bill lying on a countertop or a desk in my house, I think back to when one of those dollars materialized for my hundred dandelions!

 

[Sword86]

Why does it matter to you? We use what we like use and you use what you like to use. Do you see us bitching why you use the metric system?
We don't care what you system you use and we like our system.

Now go to bed since it's 1 AM (which is ironic since you should have said 01:00 )

No, the correct convention is 0100. S

 

[StarShot]

I like foot pound miles or (fpm). If I have a 3 pound laptop and the gate is a half mile from security, adding my lap to my hand carry is 1.5 fpm extra on my lug to the gate. If I had to convert that to KG and M, I would probably stay home.

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

I hate it when I do work with American companies and they want technical drawings in inches. Everything is designed in millimetres and converted but dual dimensions all over drawings make them a big mess. Just use metric like the rest of the world please lol!!

 

[ThunderSkunk]

There shouldn’t be any confusion at this point why murricuh couldn’t move beyond yet another leftover cultural element from the old dead collapsed British empire. Much of this country can barely even count to ten, and is stuck in a fantasy that the ignorance/aggression of the past is a utopian ideal.

“The American Century” was the last one, and it’s where the US wants to stay. Aside from a handful of individuals and companies in the money, don’t expect much from this colony going forward but further coasting on the plateau & the collapse it’s been dreaming of since the last civil war. If you want to try any new ideas, you’re literally better off flying to Mars & trying them there.

 

[840quadra]

Most of my wrenching is on an old British car, which actually(much to many folks surprise) is primarily SAE fasteners. SAE, like metric, bolt heads are measured "across the flats." There's an occasional fastener that uses Whitworth/BSF, which uses a weird convention of the denoting the wrench size per the diameter of the shank of the bolt rather than the head. BSF and Whitwork have the same heads but, IIRC, the wrench size markings differ by 1/16". The one I know off the top of my head is 1/4"W is 3/16" BSF......

I understand your pain! I have never owned, but have worked on collaboration vehicles that have Japanese and German engines within US made cars. Parts of the vehicle were metric, the other parts were SAE. Not the most ideal when you have limited tools, and in my case nothing SAE at the time.

 

[chown33]

Frankly, I'm a firkin fanatic. Furlongs, fathoms, freddled gruntbuggles: favorites forever.

I'm phairly phond of phonics, too.

 

[fivenotrump]

In the UK one is supposed to only use units in multiples or divisions by thousands. Thus 90cm must be expressed as 900mm. And as for the useful subdivision of a hecto, of ham or cheese maybe: forget it!

The BBC, which is supposed to teach us about such matters, usually expresses temperatures in both °C and °F. Amusingly, they or their pop-scientists sometimes refer to 'centigrade'.

 

[nebo1ss]

With the exception of Fahrenheit, which I really don't care for (and then largely because Celsius has an elegant Imperial style logic to it, with nil being when water freezes and 100 being when it boils) I mostly find both systems easy enough to live with. Imperial is designed to be easy to visualise and highly fractal, it's very anthropocentric in conception. If anything Metric is the really weird arbitrary system IMO. One experiment we did in school (we're still taught both in GB) showed most of us could pretty accurately visualise three feet, but consistently underestimated a metre.

Difficult to image why someone could visualise three feet but not 1 metre when they are almost the same and differ only by a few inches.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Why the heck does America still use outdated measurement and date units?​

Laziness? And who uses their SAE wrenches and sockets more than their metric ones, or at all?

The metric system has largely won out. It's a battle of attrition. I did run into a bike trainer that used SAE Allen screws, and had a couple SAE bolts. I was so annoyed. I had to dig out my pristine unused SAE sets just to deal with it. In the bicycle industry, it's extremely rare to run into anything SAE.

Although: I did have a BSO (bicycle shaped object) that came from China that DID have SAE bolts and screws. Freaked me right out. Most of the metric wrenches I had wouldn't work. I had to bring an SAE set in the next time. So strange. Made in China, and not metric. That's been the only one, like ever.

SAE is all but dead. The fat lady done sung that out to the grave. It just needs more dirt tossed in...

 

[bunnspecial]

Laziness? And who uses their SAE wrenches and sockets more than their metric ones, or at all?

All in what you work on.

My SAE tools are used heavily, in fact to the point that I keep "junk" ones around in sizes like 1/2" and 7/16" for when I need to pound on them or do other things that aren't too kind to tools and I won't be heartbroken if they break.

I groan when I have to dig to the bottom of my tool box to find metric wrenches.

 

[Euroamerican]

Most importantly: What volumes do you get your beer in?

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Most importantly: What volumes do you get your beer in?

'Never enough'...

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

All in what you work on.

My SAE tools are used heavily, in fact to the point that I keep "junk" ones around in sizes like 1/2" and 7/16" for when I need to pound on them or do other things that aren't too kind to tools and I won't be heartbroken if they break.

I groan when I have to dig to the bottom of my tool box to find metric wrenches.

What are you working on? New stuff? When I bought a socket set, years ago, I joked that they included the SAE ones because if they didn't, no one would buy them. The salesperson laughed, 'Yeah, you're right!' Like I said, aside from that one bike, I never touch those SAE tools. I can't sell them, just in case I do run into something, but it's so rare, at least for me...

 

[Phil77354]

My VISE-GRIP®'s work great, metric or not:

VISE-GRIP® FAST RELEASE™ LOCKING TOOLS | IRWIN

IRWIN hand tools and power tool accessories are built for performance and reliability. Every tool is designed with the professional tradesman in mind.

irwintools.com

 

[dmr727]

Most importantly: What volumes do you get your beer in?

Usually the Pint, but I'm a huge fan of the Liter!

 

[pokytrokyt]

Okay guys, this is probably my angry 1 AM self again posting here, but this is something that has been bothering me for a few weeks now. I am posting it here because I know this is a website primarily of American people, and I don't know who else to rant this about.


Okay, first off, temperature. We all know what the three useful temperature measurements are. Only one is used in daily use, it's Celsius, and across the entire world. It is the most logical of the three, 0° is water's freezing point, 100° is its boiling point, every semi-educated person knows that. Only THREE countries use Fahrenheit exclusively, and surprise surprise, the United States is one of them. Why? Why is that necessary? Why use a system that is absolutely outdated, makes no sense whatsoever (water freezes at 32° and melts at 212°? yeah, totally makes sense), that is used by basically no one else? Even, excuse me for this term, stubborn countries like the United Kingdom now use Celsius exclusively and primarily. Even Canada, and its influence of the country did not force it to keep Fahrenheit. It annoys me because every time someone says "it's 60° outside!" I have to google and convert it because that means nothing for me, and I don't communicate enough with Americans to bother learning it. I could get away with it if it was something that was used interchangeably in multiple countries, but it isn't, it's outdated.

Second, measurement units. On one hand, you have the most logical system on the planet, the metric system. Simple, each unit correlates with each other, and there are basic prefixes which simply divide or multiply the numbers by multiples of 10. And I will be blunt here, the imperial units are more intuitive and are still somewhat logical. However, once you want to do anything slightly more complex, it becomes annoying. You can't do anything with a system like that. You have to learn the massive amount of words and how each of them correspond with each other. Imagine instead of having to use Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes, you would instead use Floppies, Discs, Drives, and Servers. It seems like the logical option, but they do not work together well at all and you gotta remember all of that crap. Once again, only the United States along with two other small countries exclusively use this system. In fact, when I thought that the United Kingdom was responsible for the same thing, it turns out it's technically the main measurement system of today (even though many people still use the other one), so I've actually gotta give them credit for having the guts to defy a traditional system. Every commonwealth country has adopted the SI, even if some like Canada still offer it occasionally. Seriously, why do this? Sure, I can deal with that, it's not like it's stupid or anything, but NOT when it's officially only used in a SINGLE GODDAMN COUNTRY (I'm excluding minor countries here because they are usually very small and have very little influence on the rest of the world).

Finally, this one pisses me off so much I just want to die. The date system. The entire world uses one or the other, either a DD/MM/YYYY system (common in European countries), either a YYYY/MM/DD system (common in East-Asian countries and some other places). Both are perfectly fine, as they represent a proper level of importance. What is NOT fine is when a single country just comes to troll everybody and bring a MM/DD/YYYY system, which completely messes up the order of the dates. The month, then a small part of the month, and then the year which the month takes place in? WHAT? How does that make any sense? WHY IS THAT NECESSARY? WHY THE ILLOGICALITY? I can bear with a January 1st, 2016 date system because it is closer to being a feature of the language, but not when it's a purely written form! At least use YYYY/MM/DD if you want to keep the M/D part! Seriously!


Okay, I understand that this was a bit blunt. But I can't accept that. I can't accept a country where there are people so lazy to adopt systems that are, by far, much more convenient than whatever is present, especially considering we are in 2016 and no improvement has been made to this date. And not to mention I'm sure there will be some idiots defending this system saying that "we are not sheeple to follow other people like that!". Well, uh, then you're sheeple to your own ****ing community. Any thoughts? Sure, you may call be brainwashed if that's what you believe, but I'd just like to point out that even though I grew up in a 24h system and I completely switched to 12h. And now I'm (partially) back at 24h. During this whole time, I barely spent any time outside. How exactly can you prove this against me if that's your intent? Anyway, any reasonable and non-biased explanations and/or defenses? Thank you.

I don't get the rant about megabytes, gigabytes, etc. Computers are binary, not metric. So memory and storage sizes are based on powers of 2, not powers of 10. A kilobyte is 2**10 storage locations (2 to the tenth power). That makes 1024 "bits", not 1000. Don't like things measured in binary? Go back and invent a truly digital computer.

And talking about disks, drives and servers tells you nothing about the capabilities of that hardware. A server can be fast or slow, but a hectare is always a hectare. It's like deciding you need 3 milk producing animals so you buy a calf, a bull and a cow - same species, different capabilities.

 

[Cayenne1]

If your a plumber in Europe I bet they have Imperial wrenches.

Anyway, I've never understood Celsius for temperature outside a laboratory. Fahrenheit (to me) gives an relative indication of comfort level versis when water will boil or freeze.

When I worked in Saudi it often got up to 50 C degrees or more (122+ F which better describes how it feels). Where I grew up 50 was chilly.

Where I grew up it could get down to -40 C or -40 F which are the same in both scales. Damn cold.

So the comfort temperature of 70 to 75 F is 21.1111 to 23.8889 C. Good grief. How do you set that on a thermostat.

 

[Mousse]

And talking about disks, drives and servers tells you nothing about the capabilities of that hardware. A server can be fast or slow, but a hectare is always a hectare. It's like deciding you need 3 milk producing animals so you buy a calf, a bull and a cow - same species, different capabilities.

Brother Hezakiah got your back, bro.

 

[Phil77354]

. . . When I worked in Saudi it often got up to 50 C degrees or more (122+ F which better describes how it feels). Where I grew up 50 was chilly.

Where I grew up it could get down to -40 C or -40 F which are the same in both scales. Damn cold. . .

You understand, of course, that it is all a matter of your frame of reference.

You grew up with Fahrenheit as the measurement scale used. So your frame of reference is Fahrenheit, and 122 degF is hot, not 50 deg.

Someone else grows up where Celsius is the measurement scale has that frame of reference, and 122 deg makes no sense to them as a measure of ambient temperature, and they understand that 50 degC is darn hot.

So saying that 122 degF 'better describes how it feels' is simply recognizing that your frame of reference is Fahrenheit. It is equally valid for someone who grew up elsewhere to make the same statement for 50 degC.

Neither is better than the other, it is not that one is right and the other wrong.

 

[bunnspecial]

At the end of the day, Farenheit is a somewhat more logical/practical system for gauging our comfort level BECAUSE the original definition of 100ºF was the temperature of the human body(and 0ºF the temperature of an ice/brine bath, the lowest temperature then that was consistently replicable in the lab).

Again, it seem arbitrary now, but it was and still is a logical system.

 

[Cayenne1]

You're right Phil. Its a matter of of our life experience.

But I think when the weatherman says its going to be 95 for the week here in the South, a European visitor would guess its going to feel hot.

 

[jeyf]

quite a few countries have retained bits and pieces of the UK
Even when the British themselves have moved on.

 

[Micky Do]

At the end of the day, Farenheit is a somewhat more logical/practical system for gauging our comfort level BECAUSE the original definition of 100ºF was the temperature of the human body(and 0ºF the temperature of an ice/brine bath, the lowest temperature then that was consistently replicable in the lab).

Again, it seem arbitrary now, but it was and still is a logical system.

Nothing logical or consistent about using the temperature of a fever and the ice/brine point in a lab as the basis of temperature measurement. The freezing and boiling point of water (at about sea level) are far more familiar to folks, and more consistent.

Interestingly, American Customary Units have been based on the metric system since the 1893 Mendenhall Order.