Why the heck does America still use outdated measurement and date units?

[dukebound85]

Not sure why people think this is an issue

In engineering and the science, SI is commonly used (as is imperial). There is no issue

In day to day, I appreciate the Imperial system. I can easily visualize 60mph or 100lbs or 76F

 

[Micky Do]

Not sure why people think this is an issue

In engineering and the science, SI is commonly used (as is imperial). There is no issue

In day to day, I appreciate the Imperial system. I can easily visualize 60mph or 100lbs or 76F

Sure why this is an issue

In engineering and science and trade SI is commonly used (as is Imperial in Liberia and Burma, and US Customary units in the USA). There is no issue (other than the need to convert for commerce etc. between them and rest of the world).

Day to day, having grown up with the Imperial system I can visualise 60 mph and 1 cwt (112 pounds), and 76F, and just as easily visualise 100 km/hr and 50 kg and 25C……. however I find the latter units easier to use and more convenient to work with, in keeping with 99% of the world’s population.

 

[polyphenol]

Indeed. I wish more US roads would follow suit:

Interstate 19 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It was madness for the UK not to have changed to kilometres back when motorways were first built. And on to kilometre-based speeds.

In the bit of the UK where I live, road signs often show distances in milltir - which is actually a very old unit that is 6,170 metres - but they actually refer to standard miles of 1,609.344 metres. It is taken as the Welsh translation of miles.

And countdown markers on motorways, colloquially regarded as being 100 yards apart, are actually supposed to be 90 metres apart. Indeed, pretty much all road signage is defined in terms of metric measurements even when they display miles, yards, feet and inches!

 

[polyphenol]

Day to day, having grown up with the Imperial system I can visualise 60 mph and 1 cwt (112 pounds), and 76F, and just as easily visualise 100 km/hr and 50 kg and 25C……. however I find the latter units easier to use and more convenient to work with, in keeping with 99% of the world’s population.

When it comes to temperature, many seem to be happy using Fahrenheit for summer temperatures - especially 80, 90 and 100 degrees. (Very often sub-editors trying to exaggerate a headline!) But I really do wonder how many nowadays are comfortable with freezing point being 32 and the whole terminology around "degrees of frost"? The phrase "below zero" is essentially tied to one system or the other.

 

[Doctor Q]

We've been having "triple-digit temperatures" on the U.S. west coast. We're lucky that's Fahrenheit, because triple digit heat in Celsius might be a little harder to live with.

 

[polyphenol]

We've been having "triple-digit temperatures" on the U.S. west coast. We're lucky that's Fahrenheit, because triple digit heat in Celsius might be a little harder to live with.

Switch to Kelvin and we can all have triple digit temperatures. Whatever the weather.

 

[AZhappyjack]

People sure re

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.

People sure freak out about some strange things... everything going on in the world, and this is your lightning rod? What happened to "live and let live"?

 

[pianostar9]

People sure re

People sure freak out about some strange things... everything going on in the world, and this is your lightning rod? What happened to "live and let live"?

I feel bad for OP though, they posted that like five years ago.

Edit: By that, I mean the original post. It would be really annoying for someone remotely active to keep getting a "somebody quoted your post" notification...

 

[Micky Do]

A couple of Americans' thoughts on using metrics.....

"Two thumbs up"

"It's easy" "It's quicker"

"That is the original kg standard of the US"

 

[smirking]

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.

There was a recent Planet Money podcast episode that discussed a related case of switching to the metric system and the costs involved. It's the reason why to this day Eastern Canadian provinces sells milk in plastic bags instead of jugs. When they switched to the metric system, the costs involved of changing all of the packaging to metric resulted in the decision being made to use plastic bags to sell milk instead of more solid containers.

They don't go into detail about what kind of costs would be involved for the US to go the same route, but mention that the incredible costs of switching to be one of the key reasons why we haven't done it.

Of Memestocks and Milk Bags : Planet Money

We answer your questions about memestocks, milk in bags, the size of cereal boxes, and products exclusive to the rich, but not for long? | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

www.npr.org

 

[polyphenol]

There was a recent Planet Money podcast episode that discussed a related case of switching to the metric system and the costs involved. It's the reason why to this day Eastern Canadian provinces sells milk in plastic bags instead of jugs. When they switched to the metric system, the costs involved of changing all of the packaging to metric resulted in the decision being made to use plastic bags to sell milk instead of more solid containers.

They don't go into detail about what kind of costs would be involved for the US to go the same route, but mention that the incredible costs of switching to be one of the key reasons why we haven't done it.

Of Memestocks and Milk Bags : Planet Money

We answer your questions about memestocks, milk in bags, the size of cereal boxes, and products exclusive to the rich, but not for long? | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

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Because of choices.

You could easily switch from pint (US) to ml by changing what it says on containers, price lists, etc., from 1 pint to 473ml (or 473.175ml if greater accuracy is needed). Or 568.2613ml if you started with an Imperial pint.

And allow milk to be sold in 473ml or 500ml containers for an indeterminate but long future. Thus letting the move to metric take place over many years. There aren't that many circumstances in which it is important to buy milk in pints rather than slightly smaller or larger quantities. In the UK, we are fully metric. But milk is sometimes (quite often but not always) sold in volumes such as 568 ml, 1 pint. That is, a metric unit which is secondarily also displayed in Imperial pints.

The Canada plastic bag decision is surely only because the dairies were pushed to change to exact 500ml multiples?

We in the UK also saw some dairies change to plastic bags. But it is unclear from where we now are how much of that decision was strictly the metric issue, and how much included other things. Like the weight of pint bottles (they were very much heavier than current day glass bottles). The noise they made in dairies and when being delivered. And the costs of replacing and recycling them. (Especially if older machinery couldn't handle newer, thinner glass bottles. And glass manufacturers probably wouldn't wish to continue making the old design.)

There are some things for which conversion is problematic. Vehicles tyre diameters. Pipe screw threads (much of the world uses British Standard Pipe thread including, for example, France).

Remember, the first step is a metric number system. Which we have all used forever. (OK - a few might use binary, octal or hexadecimal!)

 

[smirking]

Because of choices.

Sure, that's another way of saying risk adverse. I'd be all for switching to metric, but besides the costs involved, there would be great risks too. It should have been done ages ago before more and more decades of legacy got baked into our data systems here. The longer it goes on, the harder it'll be to move on from it. I'm sure it'll eventually happen, but unfortunately, it's not gonna be in my lifetime.

I'm not at all saying that sticking to Imperial is the right choice, but just pointing out that this isn't the open and shut issue lots of people think of it as being.

I mean, just ask that ancient programming language COBOL about this issue of risk and legacy:

How COBOL Still Powers The Global Economy At 60 Years Old

A 60-year-old computer language powers the global economy. Estimates as high as 80% of financial transactions use common business-oriented language, or…

www.tpr.org

 

[polyphenol]

Sure, that's another way of saying risk adverse. I'd be all for switching to metric, but besides the costs involved, there would be great risks too. It should have been done ages ago before more and more decades of legacy got baked into our data systems here. The longer it goes on, the harder it'll be to move on from it. I'm sure it'll eventually happen, but unfortunately, it's not gonna be in my lifetime.

I'm not at all saying that sticking to Imperial is the right choice, but just pointing out that this isn't the open and shut issue lots of people think of it as being.

I mean, just ask that ancient programming language COBOL about this issue of risk and legacy:

How COBOL Still Powers The Global Economy At 60 Years Old

A 60-year-old computer language powers the global economy. Estimates as high as 80% of financial transactions use common business-oriented language, or…

www.tpr.org

As someone who can program COBOL, I am all too well aware.

Back many years ago, one implementation of COBOL even had a special datatype (an implementor-defined COMP- field) to allow the UK's National Coal Board to process their odd timesheets - something very odd like sixteenths of an hour. (I really can't remember the details.)

But storing values like gallons/pints/fluid ounces is horrible in code. Unless you redefine everything in terms of one of the units - and re-process for display purposes.

 

[Micky Do]

Sure, that's another way of saying risk adverse. I'd be all for switching to metric, but besides the costs involved, there would be great risks too. It should have been done ages ago before more and more decades of legacy got baked into our data systems here. The longer it goes on, the harder it'll be to move on from it. I'm sure it'll eventually happen, but unfortunately, it's not gonna be in my lifetime.

I'm not at all saying that sticking to Imperial is the right choice, but just pointing out that this isn't the open and shut issue lots of people think of it as being.

I mean, just ask that ancient programming language OL about this issue of risk and legacy:

How COBOL Still Powers The Global Economy At 60 Years Old

A 60-year-old computer language powers the global economy. Estimates as high as 80% of financial transactions use common business-oriented language, or…

www.tpr.org

Given that 95% of the world's population, living in 192 of 195 countries are metric, the USA of sticking with US Customary units (some of which are different from the Imperial units still used in Burma and Liberia) must result in considerable cost one way and another (trade, packaging, converting, dimensions of goods etc).

As to risk..... there have been a number of documented disasters, or near disasters in space missions, aviation, and no doubt other fields as a result of incorrect conversions and mistaken and/or using a mixture of units.

It is pretty open and shut, the USA would benefit from converting to using the units it recognised with the Metric Act of 1866.

 

[polyphenol]

Given that 95% of the world's population, living in 192 of 195 countries are metric, the USA of sticking with US Customary units (some of which are different from the Imperial units still used in Burma and Liberia) must result in considerable cost one way and another (trade, packaging, converting, dimensions of goods etc).

As to risk..... there have been a number of documented disasters, or near disasters in space missions, aviation, and no doubt other fields as a result of incorrect conversions and mistaken and/or using a mixture of units.

It is pretty open and shut, the USA would benefit from converting to using the units it recognised with the Metric Act of 1866.

And it isn't just the units. Look at screw threads and see how many there are - even if the number in new products is fairly small. The subtle differences have often resulted in damage or failure to hold properly.

The modest number of metric threads means they are much easier to identify with certainty.

All too often, US goods used in other countries are bodged by people using metric screws.

One day, someone will realise that a vast proportion of goods are manufactured to metric specifications. Even in the USA.

 

[stevep]

I'm a UK engineer, and have used the metric system in my work and also at home when I'm playing in the workshop. And I'm old enough to have started out with imperial measurements. I well remember struggling with poundals, BTU's, hp, psi and a host of other weird units that really did make life difficult. When we started to use SI units (around 1973 istr), the structural calculations I was doing at that time instantly became a doddle.

While the general populace in the US still cling to the imperial system, it is a fact that the rest of the world has forced them to adopt the metric system wherever they need to - engineering, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and so on. The risks of errors in constantly converting is just too great in many industries (aviation springs to mind).
Having said that, there are still non-SI units that have been retained for entirely practical reasons - aircraft altitude is still referred to in feet by pilots, ATC etc, and aircraft speed is measured in knots simply because there are 360º in a circle.

I'm afraid that the US will one day bow to the inevitable and convert to metric, though they will have to wait for the dinosaurs to die out first. Their conversion will probably come after the UK finally and belatedly ditch miles and mph.

 

[Doctor Q]

It is pretty open and shut, the USA would benefit from converting to using the units it recognised with the Metric Act of 1866.

I'd say that it's clear that converting would eventually benefit the USA. In the short term, however, there would be huge costs to make the necessary changes, not just in manufacturing and packaging and signage and software but in education. And I'd expect the types of disasters you mention to increase during a transition period.

Unfortunately, the mindset to use what's familiar, the high conversion costs, and just plain inertia are likely to continue to keep the USA from converting en masse. The best we can do, I think, is to switch one product category or measurement system at a time, picking off the best candidates first. Maybe World Athletics will start the process by eliminating the mile run as an official event.

 

[poked]

Imperial systems of measurement have made my dyscalculia absolute hell, but I don’t switch to metric because it’s too ingrained that miles, feet, inches, etc are just the… right way. I don’t really understand what a meter equals. Is it a foot? Which is weird, because we have millimeters on all of our rulers. There’s not a mili-inch measurement, so technically our smallest bases of measurement are metric anyway! Weird world we live in. I’ve just given up most hope and use a calculator for anything bigger than adding numbers. As for temperature, I once saw it shown that Celsius is external temperature, farenheight is internal human temperature, and I’m don’t recall what kelvin represented. But I can easily visualize heat & humidity if I go outside. Muggy vs arid, hot vs mild vs boiling, etc. those all have grounded meaning in the way I categorize my world.

 

[smirking]

As someone who can program COBOL, I am all too well aware…

But storing values like gallons/pints/fluid ounces is horrible in code. Unless you redefine everything in terms of one of the units - and re-process for display purposes.

Legit, but as someone who I presume has worked on legacy systems you’ve undoubtedly seen well intentioned attempts to improve broken systems result in even greater deficits and difficulties due to bad methodology being so baked in that introducing good methodology paradoxically increases the complexity.

I’m not arguing for one thing or another. I’m just pointing out that it’s not just social inertia preventing movement. There are also real risks involved in transitioning.

 

[Micky Do]

I'd say that it's clear that converting would eventually benefit the USA. In the short term, however, there would be huge costs to make the necessary changes, not just in manufacturing and packaging and signage and software but in education. And I'd expect the types of disasters you mention to increase during a transition period.

Unfortunately, the mindset to use what's familiar, the high conversion costs, and just plain inertia are likely to continue to keep the USA from converting en masse. The best we can do, I think, is to switch one product category or measurement system at a time, picking off the best candidates first. Maybe World Athletics will start the process by eliminating the mile run as an official event.

Seems the USA was all for going metric as recently as 1975, when the American Conversion Act was signed by President Ford. Then President Reagan came along, saying it was too expensive, and that was about that.

 

[dburkhanaev]

Not even when it comes to learning because you have so many arbitrary units to learn rather than a few base units with prefixes to denominate size in base 10 orders of magnitude.

All that garbage in your brains to link feet inches, hogsheads, gallons, yards, etc. can be junked and just remember the prefixes and base units...

The base units themselves are made up and contrived mostly around something considered universal, like the circumference of the earth, divided by a mathematical formula. There’s your basis for creating units of distance. And they’re either too small to make sense in the minds eye for practically small things or too large to fit well with other practical objects. There’s not really all that much subjective about the imperial system. It was derived in a time where you had to measure the practical things of the world with practical things on or around you. Measure a person in metrics. You have the meter and the fraction one decimal to convey or you have the meter and the tons of centimeters you have to put behind it, because no practical sized thing has a basic unit close to its size to measure. I can give you feet and a fraction but I can give you feet, which we all have, and inches and we all have thumbs. In your minds eye, not hard to think about. And unless you have to be exactly accurate, we can all count ten feet and be roughly close to the same thing, because we all have feet.

Then there’s weight or mass. You have the gram and you can put a prefix on it, but the prefix just stacks your zeros. Every time I think I have the idea of how small a gram is, I look it up and realize it’s smaller still. And instead of having a basic starting unit like an ounce or a pound, metric has to start with a tiny little gram and you have to imagine the weight of say a person, stacked in tens of thousands of these. Like a room where in the center is a pile of sugar, tens of thousands of tablespoons full- that’s like roughly a gram. With imperial start worth an ounce. Need a pound? 16 ounces or two cups. We all have cups just two of them for pound. If you forget what your pound is like you have something else to draw a comparison. Something else you see and use and work around.

And then there’s the temperature. I’ve always wondered what the conversation is like in Europe around the thermostat. Husbands on the couch and wife is passing the thermostat in the hall on the other side of the room. The husbands a little warm he says, “hey honey. I’m a little warm. What’s the temperature set at”? And she replies, “it’s 26”. He says that’s a bit too warm, “better move it down to 25.25”. How does that work? Do you use decimals or fractions to describe what’s comfortable inside? Fahrenheit has many more degrees of temperature change. So, my husband says “it’s at 74 degrees”. I can say that’s a little too warm, set it for 73 or better yet, 72 degrees. simple whole numbers. So easy.

And then there’s construction. Talk to a European who’s worked construction in the US for a while compared with working it in metric. He will tell you that imperial is often easier to set measures for building in imperial than metric. Mostly because studs have to be hung at quarters or thirds and at scale this tends to work easier with a system that’s easily divisible not just by 1,2, and 10. Imperial is easily divisible in most practical cases in 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12.
I only see a real difference where maybe mens egos my be best served by metric, because by its nature of starting measures with impractically small units, men can discuss their endowment in double digits. id guess most men are large enough to measure in inches, they just might not get the results they want. But its easy to naturally imagine imperial sizes to the human body and relative things anyone in the world can relate back to for weight and measure. Temperature is different and only seems to make sense with the freezing and boiling points of water.

And the whole thing with the dates could go either way with me mm/did/yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy. The years the last thing you should be lost about and therefore it’s the least significant value and should go last. Otherwise you could state either date/month order you like. But if you guessed which day of the month you might be between 1-28, you’d have a chance to be equally correct any one of twelve times throughout the year, so why not start with the month?

In any event I convert when using metric for others who need it. I rarely have to. I tend not to use it. I learned it in school when I was young and had a fresh mind, it wasn’t any more conceptually clear then either. Some arbitrary units of measure that don’t correspond to anything else, stacked in tens, hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands- just to weigh and measure something as mundane as a human. And there’s some basics that’s aren’t too bad. A gallon is vaguely 4 liters. A meter is 3.3 feet. That’s an oddball measure. Ones barely big enough to measure most children and two tend to be longer than most men.

 

[jazz1]

I’m an American! We aren’t giving an inch, Er Centimeter, millimeter, on this issue! I’m so confused

 

[dburkhanaev]

Seems the USA was all for going metric as recently as 1975, when the American Conversion Act was signed by President Ford. Then President Reagan came along, saying it was too expensive, and that was about that.

It kinda was too expensive. We spent a ton of money for uniformity with this francophone system of arbitrary measures around a base 10 model. No one learned to read, write, or do arithmetic any better and all the metric system did do was cheated us out of 3.1 ounces of coke per bottle.

Think about it. American beverages used to be bottled at our standard size of 20 ounces which you could get for a buck. We made bottles uniform to one-half liter for small bottle distribution (large bottles were always metric in recent times) and then the bottle moved to 16.9 ounces for the same buck. A great way to hide inflation or just boost your profit margins slightly.

 

[dburkhanaev]

I’m an American! We aren’t giving an inch, Er Centimeter, millimeter, on this issue! I’m so confused

Many centimeters and many, many millimeters. I wonder what typical household items are typically one centimeter or one millimete?

 

[One2Grift]

There was a recent Planet Money podcast episode that discussed a related case of switching to the metric system and the costs involved. It's the reason why to this day Eastern Canadian provinces sells milk in plastic bags instead of jugs. When they switched to the metric system, the costs involved of changing all of the packaging to metric resulted in the decision being made to use plastic bags to sell milk instead of more solid containers.

They don't go into detail about what kind of costs would be involved for the US to go the same route, but mention that the incredible costs of switching to be one of the key reasons why we haven't done it.

Of Memestocks and Milk Bags : Planet Money

We answer your questions about memestocks, milk in bags, the size of cereal boxes, and products exclusive to the rich, but not for long? | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

www.npr.org

I need to make a quick trip around the corner to grab a "bag of milk". That just doesn't sound right...