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Why the heck does America still use outdated measurement and date units?
- Thread starter garirry
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Kelvin is Celsius done properly...
The only time Americans use metric is for engine size and bullets.
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We use them that way because we like them that way - and - we're stubborn. I remember years ago the Federal Highway Administration tried to force the change by, for instance, posting highway speed and distance in both miles and kilometers. But it didn't take. Us folks just didn't want it. After a while they gave up on us.
When I was in the semiconductor industry sixty years or so ago there was a mix, certain diameters were in thousandths of an inch - mils (now in nanometers), depth was metric (microns, angstroms). Over the years it became all metric.
When I was in the semiconductor industry sixty years or so ago there was a mix, certain diameters were in thousandths of an inch - mils (now in nanometers), depth was metric (microns, angstroms). Over the years it became all metric.
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I think in the US today, American traditional units are used only for consumer-facing measurements. All engineers, scientists, and medical professionals use metric and even car manufacturing is metric. The construction industry seems to still be using American traditional units, I think because buildings have such a long lifespan
For accuracy it's suggested that you place the word 'some' before the word car. Also, anyone who uses tools will keep standard and metric socket sets, standard and metric wrenches, and standard and metric Allen wrenches.
For accuracy, I'd suggest one should at least research a topic, or be an expert, before offering a correction.
What @ChrisA said was accurate. According to this post on Quora by John Cuprisin, who is a Service Training Instructor at Ford Motor Company, US car manufacturing is entirely metric, and has been for some time (the post was made five years ago). [If there are any exceptions, they would be corner cases.] Yes, older cars can be found that are non-metric, but ChrisA was explicitly referring to "car manufacturing", i.e., to what is being made now.
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Now find a Chevy trainer and ask if everything now is metric.
I found the Ford trainer. Now how about you actually do some research yourself? I think it will do you some good.
Note also the Ford trainer was referring to "All cars now built and designed by American manufacturers", not just Fords.
And we also have this from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is the US government agency devoted to measurement and standards:
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I did, thus I suggested you do so too so you could learn that in all U.S. manufactured cars it's not all metric.
There will always be some exception to the rule, but to all intend and purposes they've switched to metric a long time ago.
Yet the tyre industry still uses inches for diameters. (Widths seem to be metric but sometimes presented in inches.) But they also include an unusual element - a percentage - of height to width. And more significantly, this seems to be true round the world.
I didn't. Where did I say that? I'm sure there are some manufacturers who do part of their process in non-metric, but their time will come. `design wise, no way unless you include designers from custom hot rod shops.
I'm English but have lived abroad for most of my adult life. I still mentally measure in inches, but am equally comfortable with metres/cms. Of the complaints mentioned, the one I agree with is the date system... the American one is devoid of logic 😅
What's more annoying though is Europeans that swap the . and , in financial situations. Horrid!
What's more annoying though is Europeans that swap the . and , in financial situations. Horrid!
I grew up seeing dates on letters written longhand as either 10 December or December 10 (with or without "th"). Adding the year can very obviously result in the US system. But why that option should be carried over into purely digital/separator representation defies all understanding. And it seems better to separate the numbers by the word, having 10 December 2023 than December 10, 2023.
But in a computerised age, yyyy/mm/dd (or something like that) seems obviously the best option.
The 'comma as decimal' issue in financial situations is usually fairly obvious so long as you have a basic awareness. Most currencies have two digits after the separator, and three between groups. And very often you have at least a basic idea of what sort of value is feasible.
But in broader science and medicine, it is far worse. The ranges of validity can be much wider, digits after the decimal can be present in any number, and all too often even feasibility is far from obvious.
I think I prefer half-space group separators. Then the decimal separator is less important.
American date system actually makes more sense than the other way. I actually wish this was standard everywhere in the world because 06/02/2024 has a different meaning in US and UK. US that's june 2nd, Uk that's February 6th.
1. It's faster to figure out.
If i have an assignment due March 3, 2024 it is easier for me to figure out the date faster reading 3/24/2024 than it is 24/3/2024 because i already know by default the month is march.
The day also is reliant on the month as for example there will never be a 30/31st in February so it's easier to already know what month we are talking about.
2. My birthday is October 31
When someone asks me when my bday is i always answer October 31st or Halloween(usually this way but for example purpose lets act like it is not halloween).
It make sense i would write my birthday 10/31/1996. Nobody in American english answers that question with "my birthday is the 31st of October" aka 31/10/1996. It doesn't sound write therefore i wouldnt write it as such.
In America it is also common to simply drop the month if we are talking about a date within the same month. Example: Are you coming to the christmas party on the 22nd?
Simply, the American way of writing dates makes sense because it doesnt make sense to SPEAK the date one way and write it another way. We write the dates as we speak it.
Well naturally it is a bit chicken and the egg, is it really because you speak like that? The rest of the english speaking world doesn't speak like that. One persons logical is anothers illogical. To me have dates in logical units like days in months and months in years, or even years have months and months have days, makes so much more logical sense then mixing up the order of magnitude in units.
Anyway, as long as someone is explicit about what they mean in the format to avoid confusion, I'm sure we can all work it out.
If something is coming up early in 2024, then 1/2/2024 vs 2/1/2024 is totally confusing.
There is less ambiguity when the day number is greater than 12. But around two fifths of day numbers aren't.
Day before month has an impressively long history in speech - the ides of March? And if that is someone's birthday they are very likely to say, if asked, 15th March. That is, dare I say, common enough in the UK to possibly count as "usual"?
One of the issues is that if I am asked to enter my date of birth, the computer system needs to be able to identify which convention is being used. mm/dd/yyyy and dd/mm/yyyy are wholly indistinguishable in many cases. So computer systems pretty much have to allow either - then ensure that the date format is confirmed. Or they effectively solicit bad data entry.
But the problem isn't really so much with using either dd/mm or mm/dd - but when used in conjunction with yyyy. Counting systems always put the units into order of size. Ton/pound/ounce, pound/shilling/pence.
One of the other arguments in favour of universal yyyy/mm/dd is that such dates are sortable. Whether entered as text or as spreadsheet dates. And such sorting works acceptably even if the day or month is not specified. (Just adding: This does need the numbers to include leading zeroes, of course.)
Let us move unambiguously ,slowly, peacefully, towards yyyy/mm/dd everywhere.
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I agree completely. YYYY/MM/DD is by far the best system to use and is often used by computer programmers. It would make so much more sense to use that as a replacement system.