Why the heck does America still use outdated measurement and date units?

[Huntn]

I grew up with teaspoons and tablespoons. But there were problems.

First, agreeing the actual size. In a typical drawer of mixed cutlery, the differences were sometimes very substantial.

Second, whether they are to be level, rounded or heaped. Some cookbooks tell you always to use one or other. But others leave you to decide for yourself or are inconsistent.


We did, though, use balance-type scales and ounce/pound weights rather than cups.

Nowadays, I use weight for almost everything - solid or liquid. Mostly, adding ingredients to a bowl or jug which is on a digital scale.

The other day I made some panna cotta. We get suitable cream in 300 ml pots. Would be silly pouring that into a cup.

Did you grow up with metric? Just curious. I think we can agree I’ll never turn in my cup for 236.5 or 240ml if you prefer the latter.

Tsp, Tbs, Cup are always based on level measurements. If a recipe author wants to say use a heaping TBS, there would be nothing wrong with that but it would have to be stated.

That said, metric in the lab and manufacturing is superior, no debate. But it has no real advantage for distance and speed does it?

 

[polyphenol]

Did you grow up with metric? Just curious. I think we can agree I’ll never turn in my cup for 236.5 or 240ml if you prefer the latter.

Tsp, Tbs, Cup are always based on level measurements. If a recipe author wants to say use a heaping TBS, there would be nothing wrong with that but it would have to be stated.

That said, metric in the lab and manufacturing is superior, no debate.

A complete mix. I have always swapped around but probably mostly UK measures.

But I specifically remember when they started to dish out plastic 5 ml teaspoons with liquid medicines. At last, the establishment recognised a real issue and did something to address it. From then on, metric was very much in the ascendant.

Whatever the measurement system, I do think that foodstuffs such as sugar, salt, flour, milk, etc., the basics, should be in appropriate multiples/sub-multiples. None of this 227 grams or 568 ml variants if the system is metric.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

You mean the French who have tried to outlaw English words by making new ones of their own?

I'd argue that attempting to maintain the "purity" of the French language is not so much an example of Cultural Imperialism as it is petty/petit Provincialism; certainly not the act of an urbane society. Loanwords (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loanword) are as American as tarte au pomme. As has sometimes been said, languages don't steal, they're influenced.

Imperial powers certainly impose their culture on the conquered, but the cultures of the conquered manage to influence the conquerers in countless ways.

But this whole French/English thing... The Normans cross the Channel and become Brits (then there's the whole Britain/Brittany thing), but the Angles and Saxons they deposed were also invaders, as the Celts might remind us. Regardless, the French prefer Anglaise to admitting to Britain's French Connection. The Normans of Britain held onto their French heritage and Continental landholdings for centuries - Jeanne d'Arc wouldn't be a heroine had she not resisted l'Anglaise. Heck, noble Mr. Darcy's forebears would certainly have been D'Arcy (which has nothing to do with Joan, but I digress... continually). French was the official language of the English court for centuries (nearly until the Hanovers moved to Buckingham and Brunswick/Braunschweig stew got its name), and the tennis courts of Wimbledon are solidly rooted, not in the playing fields of Eaton but the lawns across the Channel (and just how did "court" become English in the first place?).

So in terms of the trans-Channel war of words, which came first, the chicken or l'oeuf (is the score love-15 or advantage - it's all a raquet)?

 

[Huntn]

I'd argue that attempting to maintain the "purity" of the French language is not so much an example of Cultural Imperialism as it is petty/petit Provincialism; certainly not the act of an urbane society. Loanwords (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loanword) are as American as tarte au pomme. As has sometimes been said, languages don't steal, they're influenced.

Imperial powers certainly impose their culture on the conquered, but the cultures of the conquered manage to influence the conquerers in countless ways.

But this whole French/English thing... The Normans cross the Channel and become Brits (then there's the whole Britain/Brittany thing), but the Angles and Saxons they deposed were also invaders, as the Celts might remind us. Regardless, the French prefer Anglaise to admitting to Britain's French Connection. The Normans of Britain held onto their French heritage and Continental landholdings for centuries - Jeanne d'Arc wouldn't be a heroine had she not resisted l'Anglaise. Heck, noble Mr. Darcy's forebears would certainly have been D'Arcy (which has nothing to do with Joan, but I digress... continually). French was the official language of the English court for centuries (nearly until the Hanovers moved to Buckingham and Brunswick/Braunschweig stew got its name), and the tennis courts of Wimbledon are solidly rooted, not in the playing fields of Eaton but the lawns across the Channel (and just how did "court" become English in the first place?).

So in terms of the trans-Channel war of words, which came first, the chicken or l'oeuf (is the score love-15 or advantage - it's all a raquet)?

I’m very familiar with this history, and know that in recent history, some French were offended by some English computer/cyber terms that were becoming popular among their citizens. And we in the US have all sorts of words from other languages, no problemo!

 

[Duckyduckbumps]

It’s not really as simple as, “You have your system and we’ll have ours”, because the US is still so influential.

In Australia for example, in many ways we don’t really have a choice about whether or not we have US culture in our lives.

I worked for an Australian consumer products company which had an office in the US. Manufacturing was of course done in China. Fortunately the US staff did use metric measurements, but those still insisting on using US date formats could make things very confusing.

Fortunately, China is officially metric.

 

[SactoGuy18]

While I would love to see Americans go metric, in 2021 the cost would just be bordering on ridiculous. We should have done that back in 1976 to 1983 when it was still relatively cheap.

 

[yaxomoxay]

I those still insisting on using US date formats could make things very confusing.

All countries should just go to the YYYY-MM-DD format and call it a day.

 

[Herdfan]

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

All countries should just go to the YYYY-MM-DD format and call it a day.

When I was working for a museum, I was taught to record all dates as dd mon yyyy, as in 8 Jul 2021. Absolutely no way anybody could confuse that.
As for Pi day and May the Fourth Be With You days, they can only happen in the US.

Interestingly, when I was in hospital they used little plastic cups to give me my pills. Down the side were several lists of volumes -- mls, Table- and Tea-spoons, Fluid Ozs, and, wait for it, Drams.
Now, I never knew how small a dram was, and it gave new meaning to me for the phrase "Just a wee dram/drachm". Honestly, only one dram of a good whiskey wouldn't satisfy even me, a very light drinker, and certainly not a genuine Scot.

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

Now I've just come across this thread, so I haven't read the whole thing, but there are two cases where a mixture of metric and imperial had unfortunate results.

1. The Gimli Glider. Canada was transitioning from imperial to metric, and for safety, the calculations for working out how much fuel is in a passenger plane were legislated. At that time, some of the calculations were in metric and some in imperial. Somebody made a mistake (easy in the situation) and calculated a specific gravity of the fuel of 1.79 (should be less than 1, as it floats on water). Consequently the plane took off with only 2/3 of the fuel they thought they had.
2. Sometime in the last decade (I can't remember exactly when) a robot was being sent to Mars to have a bit of a look around. Some of the calculations were made in metres, and some in feet. As a result Mars was in the wrong place and the robot rocket ship missed.

 

[millerj123]

Now I've just come across this thread, so I haven't read the whole thing, but there are two cases where a mixture of metric and imperial had unfortunate results.

1. The Gimli Glider. Canada was transitioning from imperial to metric, and for safety, the calculations for working out how much fuel is in a passenger plane were legislated. At that time, some of the calculations were in metric and some in imperial. Somebody made a mistake (easy in the situation) and calculated a specific gravity of the fuel of 1.79 (should be less than 1, as it floats on water). Consequently the plane took off with only 2/3 of the fuel they thought they had.
2. Sometime in the last decade (I can't remember exactly when) a robot was being sent to Mars to have a bit of a look around. Some of the calculations were made in metres, and some in feet. As a result Mars was in the wrong place and the robot rocket ship missed.

Oh, come on, it's not like number 2 was rocket science...

I do recall hearing about that 'oops' moment.

 

[Huntn]

Now I've just come across this thread, so I haven't read the whole thing, but there are two cases where a mixture of metric and imperial had unfortunate results.

1. The Gimli Glider. Canada was transitioning from imperial to metric, and for safety, the calculations for working out how much fuel is in a passenger plane were legislated. At that time, some of the calculations were in metric and some in imperial. Somebody made a mistake (easy in the situation) and calculated a specific gravity of the fuel of 1.79 (should be less than 1, as it floats on water). Consequently the plane took off with only 2/3 of the fuel they thought they had.
2. Sometime in the last decade (I can't remember exactly when) a robot was being sent to Mars to have a bit of a look around. Some of the calculations were made in metres, and some in feet. As a result Mars was in the wrong place and the robot rocket ship missed.

That settles it to maintain cooking integrity, we must focus on English measurements!

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

That settles it to maintain cooking integrity, we must focus on English measurements!

An English Pint is 20 fl oz (570 mls), while the tiddly little US pint is only 16 fl oz (470 mls). Technically, you could get drunk quicker drinking pints of English beer, but it's weaker than US beer. But Aussie beer is stronger still, which is sensible because Aussie beer is served in Schooners, which are smaller than an English pint.

I remember reading somewhere about the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, in the early 1930's, well before Australia adopted metrics. Bradfield, the chief engineer, mandated that the only unit to be used was millimetres. FYI, Google says it is 1.149 mm long.

 

[Herdfan]

As for Pi day and May the Fourth Be With You days, they can only happen in the US.

Don't forget about April 20th. 😂

 

[R.T.J.]

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.

To clarify something... the United States is not "America", that is like saying Germans calling themselves "Europeans" and "Europe" when in reality they are just Germany.

The Americas are 35 countries, the U.S. is just one. In Europe people were traveling to "America" back in the days, which could have been from Canada to Brasil. It is a slang.

The rest of America uses metric system, gringos (people from the U.S. as we call them in America) uses whatever they please.

 

[pianostar9]

Don't forget about April 20th

You know, Hitler was born that day. Believe it or not, I found that out before the other reasons people here find that date significant...

 

[pianostar9]

30C: die outside because it is way too hot,

Wait, dying outside at 30°C?

To be fair, we expect summers to have lots of 35°C days. Once we were in Paris and we stood outside for ~2 hours at Versailles and it was 39-40°C. Not fun!

 

[polyphenol]

When I was working for a museum, I was taught to record all dates as dd mon yyyy, as in 8 Jul 2021. Absolutely no way anybody could confuse that.
As for Pi day and May the Fourth Be With You days, they can only happen in the US.

Interestingly, when I was in hospital they used little plastic cups to give me my pills. Down the side were several lists of volumes -- mls, Table- and Tea-spoons, Fluid Ozs, and, wait for it, Drams.
Now, I never knew how small a dram was, and it gave new meaning to me for the phrase "Just a wee dram/drachm". Honestly, only one dram of a good whiskey wouldn't satisfy even me, a very light drinker, and certainly not a genuine Scot.

That date system falls down as soon as you switch languages. You might recognise it as a month name but not necessarily which one.

But beware - a dram is not the same as a drachm.

• dram now meant only avoirdupois drams, which were 1⁄16 of an avoirdupois ounce of 437.5 grains, thus equal to 27.34 grains
• drachm now meant only apothecaries' drachms, which were 1⁄8 of an apothecaries' ounce of 480 grains, thus equal to 60 grains

 

[Mousse]

Wait, dying outside at 30°C?

To be fair, we expect summers to have lots of 35°C days. Once we were in Paris and we stood outside for ~2 hours at Versailles and it was 39-40°C. Not fun!

Dry heat or humid heat? Humidity makes all the difference.

I was in Las Vegas a few years back when the outside temp reached 113F (45C). The air was so dry, it hardly bothered me at all for 2 hours of taking pictures of the Hoover Dam. I sweated over a gallon of water, since that's how much I drank at the time. Came back to muggy (80% humidity) 95F (35C) Houston weather. "Curse you Houston. Look what you've done. I'm melting, melting."

 

[mono1980]

Not using metric is inexcusable. But Fahrenheit makes some sort of sense when you think of it as referring climate temperatures on Earth. Zero degrees is super cold. 32 degrees (about ⅓ to 100) is freezing. 66 degrees (⅔ to 100) is comfortable, and 100 degrees is super hot.

 

[polyphenol]

Not using metric is inexcusable. But Fahrenheit makes some sort of sense when you think of it as referring climate temperatures on Earth. Zero degrees is super cold. 32 degrees (about ⅓ to 100) is freezing. 66 degrees (⅔ to 100) is comfortable, and 100 degrees is super hot.

To me, that makes no sense. (Though I understand what you are saying.)

To start with, why consider 0 to 100 at all in relation to a scale which is based on two right angles = 180 degrees?

Interesting that your 32 to 66 degrees gap is almost, but not quite, half a right angle.

 

[pianostar9]

Dry heat or humid heat? Humidity makes all the difference.

Yeah, you're right. I'm currently in the Dallas area, so we don't usually get a lot of humid heat. It was pretty humid this morning though; quite exhausting to play basketball outside in!

 

[firedept]

I was born in the US so learned standard measurements. But then moved to Canada which was still standard measurements. It then switched to metric to come in line with almost all the world. It was done to make trade with other countries easier. Made perfect sense. I am now back in the US and do see small signs of metric but it has not been fully adopted by the US.

I don’t understand why. Metric is so easy to learn and really makes sense for trade. I’m almost positive when the US buys from other countries it buys in metric units.

Just my thoughts!

 

[Kcetech1]

I don’t understand why. Metric is so easy to learn and really makes sense for trade. I’m almost positive when the US buys from other countries it buys in metric units.

It does especially in agricultural products, chemicals and raw mineral. I see lots of shipping manifests on my father-inlaws desk and its all headed south in cubic meters, tonnes, Kg and L

 

[pianostar9]

Metric is so easy to learn and really makes sense for trade.

Indeed. I wish more US roads would follow suit:

Interstate 19 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org