Hacker News Reader

To be honest, the U.S. really should have switched during the late 19thor very early 20th century before the benefits of the industrial revolution gave us so much stuff that needs to be converted. Even if we converted tomorrow, we'd still be dragging around imperial measures for decades, maybe a century.

I can't see cooking or property measurements making the transition within my grandchildren's lifetimes. In most countries that have metricized, property remains a very stubborn holdout.

Commercial products could convert much quicker, it's mostly a label change during the next minor packaging refresh, followed by the next major packaging refresh adjusting the size to make the unit look better. (1lb -> 453.592g -> 450g)

Paper might take decades, companies have significant investments into handling standard paper sizes, from production to clipboards to file rooms. Going paperless is probably more likely. My local mechanic is now almost entirely paperless for example, but the final bill is still printed out on 8.5x11 paper and a copy filed away.

I agree that manufactured goods should just set a date and switch on the next model year. Eventually the older imperial items will just rust away, with a few examples kept alive by very dedicated hobbyists.

But some niche craftsman fields will probably never switch. Printers still use points and picas despite trying to metricize for a long while. You end up with incredibly awkward metric units for these things when you try to convert, and lots of the handiness of customary units (easy fractional divisibility) comes into play.

There is an interesting case of old unities remaining in use for centuries in Brazil: "arroba"

This is wikipedia in portuguese for arroba through Google Translator (good enough to understand, just consider "arrogance" = Arroba): https://translate.google.com.br/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=y&p...

Basically is a mass unit (in Brazil and Portugal), originated at the imperial system (with an arabic name ar-arub meaning "the fourth part") of 25 pounds. The times changed, but it is still used in our metricized society for livestock weight. But adapted to a rounded number in kilos, nowadays 1 Arroba = 1 kilogram.

If 1 Arroba was 25lbs, wouldn't a closer metricization be 10 kilos? This would be ~22lbs.

Was there some other history to make this significant of a change?

Well, there were other arbitrary changes along the way. I think the wikipedia article deals with it. By the time someone changed it to kg, wasn't even 25lbs anymore. Who knows who decided it would be 15kg - but that is kind the point of the oddities when change measurement systems.

Yeah, you find all sorts of odd measuring systems in specific fields, we still use "hands" when measuring horses for example.

> I dislike having to own wrenches in both standard and metric units

I think you mean "I dislike having US customary and standard metric units".

When it comes down to it, everybody else in the world managed to buckle down and just switch to standard metric units and ISO/DIN paper sizes. There is nothing special about the US that makes it any more of an imposition for them to switch over. Many of the issues you've outlines are the same as ones that countries like the UK, Canada, and Ireland have had to deal with when switching over to metric everywhere, and we somehow managed it!

What is special about the US is that it has a huge population that uses a single set of units of measurement. Europe had zillions of them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ell) units, often multiple ones per country.

In some sense, the metric system was a blessing, as it was foreign to all countries. Countries would never have switched to, say, the German standard of measurements (counterpoint: they did just that for paper sizes)

And the UK started metrification in 1965 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_of_British_transpor...), but has not completely switched to metric yet; it still uses miles for road signs. Because of that, I wouldn't say the UK managed the switch.

We here in Ireland decided to move away from dual use of units (miles and km) to just km a few years back. Sure, we're not a big country, but we also have more road per capita than anywhere else in the EU at the very least. Given within a relatively short amount of time, the use of miles for non-trivial distances practically disappeared. Now it's only used in colloquialisms (e.g. "it's a few miles away") or for familiar distances (e.g. "the graveyard is a mile that way"); anything else is km, and sooner or later we'll likely be using km everywhere.

I think you can forget that "sooner" part. Colloquialisms are very, very, stubborn. For example, German and Dutch still have the word "ellenlang" (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ellenlang), literally "ells long", but typically used to describe durations (a long boring talk can be 'ellenlang'), even though the meter has been the unit of length for almost two centuries. Similarly, "miles long" is still in use for long, tedious or annoyingly large distances.

They still exist but fewer and fewer people even know the origins of those words.

> Europe had zillions of them

The world had zillions of them, and yet the world (minus some strong-headed minds) switched to it. Centuries ago.

What is special about the US is that there is still some commercial value in converting from standard metric units to this specific US system.

The UK took a while and still hasn't switched some units. Our speed limits are miles per hour; beer on draught in pubs is sold in pints and half pints (and it is not legal to sell it in other units even if clearly labelled with conversions).

I know that, I'm from Ireland. However, in comparison to the US, the UK is practically France as far as metrification goes. We still sell by the pint here too, and people still use imperial units casually (mostly inches/feet for human-relative distances, pounds/stone for people's weight, and pints for draught beer and cider) but everything else is metric at this point.

The UK should probably bite the bullet as far as roadsigns and speed limits go. It's about time, really.

Just an interesting aside, measurements in construction are almost always given in either metres or millimetres, never centimetres (at least in Australia.)

So that would be 914.4mm and 1219.2mm respectively (or 1.2192m I guess).

The wisdom of this was explained to me by my builder father that metres and millimetres are orders of magnitude far enough apart that you can usually figure out which is which without too much difficulty in a specification even if they are not annotated properly. Centimetres fall close enough to inbetween that it can be confusing. Plus only using two standard units of measure (one for small stuff, another for large) is less potential confusion then using three.

---

In Australia we started metrication in 1971[1] with 1974 being the effective tipping point when all road signs were changed.

Being born in the early 70's, I have a rough understanding of imperial measurement units. I can roughly understand if something is a few inches or a few feet, but can never remember how many inches in a foot, and have no concept of relation between feet and miles. Miles I understand as a bit over 1.5kms. The only length measurements we tend to still give in imperial is a person's height in feet and inches. The concept that over six foot is tall, and under five is getting to be short (for men at least) has such utility that it's stuck. Official documents will use metric though, usually centimetres.

Weight is similar. Kilograms rule, except when talking about the weight of newborns which will still often be given in pounds and ounces informally. But give me anything else in pounds and I have no idea (very frustrating when that happens in movies.)

Similarly Celsius rules. I know 100°F is a hot day, but wont boil an egg, and 0°F is colder than a mother-in-law's kiss, but those are rough approximations, and anything between those two I have to convert.

Gallons is a foreign language.

However all the colloquialisms such as giving an inch and taking a mile are still common.

And yet somehow despite all this, the world continued to spin.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia

It's not like America is the only country that will have ever transitioned. Many other countries have gone through all those issues without much complaint. It's not some untested experimental process being advocated.

It's not like the US is going to be using weird-arse inches, furlongs, horses and stones forever.

Wow you must not have read my comment at all. I explicitly said we should convert, but that there are some considerations that need to be made. I even said that now is a better time than ever.

Perhaps I'm not being zealous enough with my "hey lets be careful about this as we do it" type statement?

Now isn't going to happen and later might be better. We're transitioning more and more to computers. The transition could be handled more easily if we have a generation of computer programs that can easily handle either. Pervasive language support for units would probably help.

America is like the fat kid who's the last to jump into the swimming pool; everyone else is shouting the water is fine, it's warm, it's fun, but you're sitting there worried about the consequences of being wet. As if you were the first person to ever get wet.

You don't need to be careful. Just look at everyone else who jumped in without injury and jump yourself.

Yep. Nope. You've outed yourself in an unfortunate way. Everyone wants to do business in the US and everyone is prepared to jump through the hoops to do that business. US regulation accomplishes a bunch of things, including adding friction to non-US companies doing business in the US.

With that hyperbole, I'm willing to bet you've never stepped a foot outside the USA. Don't you realise it also adds friction for US companies doing business in the everywhere else?

We're by far the largest country (in terms of population) to attempt a conversion. That counts for something.

The amount of effort required per capita is still much the same.

So the USA is the largest country still not using metric?

Not something to be proud of.

From an economic standpoint, the rest of the world is a big enough market so that it's worth supporting too. And everybody gains when markets join.

About tooling, yeah that's bad. But everybody has 2 sets of tools all over the world, because both US and rest of the world are big markets. A transition won't change a thing, the only thing that changes is that a few decades from now, everybody will stop needing one of those sets.

Paper is also already a nightmare. All equipment supports both ISO and US standard, and is more expensive because of that.

Constuction aparell is always weird. Your 36" doors are certainly not exactly 36" wide, as metric 90cm doors are not exactly 90cm wide. At least here (at Brazil, thus metric) there are several different sets of sizes to choose from, because some people want bigger doors and windows, other people want smaller ones.

I think you overestimate the costs at the US, and underestimate the benefits.

> But everybody has 2 sets of tools all over the world

Do they? I'm not a big DIY guy but I own a toolbox and I didn't even realize until now that a different set of tools may exist.

EDIT: I am not arguing it's not true, I am honestly asking

There are sets of wrenches for example that have both SAE and metric heads

But usually in a home setting you "can" find one size that fits (somewhat) the other

You would notice it in a set of sockets or hex wrenches. You can generally fake a drill bit because the size differences are so small.

> * Tooling that exists in standard units seems to be a bit of a red herring: I dislike having to own wrenches in both standard and metric units - a transition to one set would actually be nice. At a larger scale, i.e. manufacturing, it would make sense to start replacing things with metric on regular maintenance cycles. With very long cycle things just having a label change.

I don't think you'll get rid of that second set of sockets/wrenches for decades. There are going to be just too many instances where there is an old connector, nut, bolt, etc. that needs to be worked with. I think of it as having two sets of wrenches or am buying two sets of wrenches anyway. The metric and imperial sockets come in one set and share the ratchets.

But it shouldn't be all or nothing. For example, although most of the world uses the metric system, I think in aeronautics they still use feet to measure altitude. US could migrate to metric independently of the aeronautic standards.

Additionally, I don't think that changing tooling should be a priority. Even in the countries that use metric system, we use nuts and screws measured in inches. They are usually called 1/4, 1/2 and so on ignoring the "inch" part. Also, in Venezuela, letter is the standard paper used, not A4.

I think a good solution would be for the US to use metric to measure most of the things people and industries interact with (distance, velocity, weight, volume), but you can keep the old measures when convenient.

The amount of nuts and screws measured in inches that you use is probably inversely proportional to your geographic distance from the last remaining non-metric industrial nation in the world.

We don't come across them quite as much in the Antipodes. :-)

I am not sure, if the paper sizes (A4, ...) are belonging to the metric system ... but of course, here a standardization would be nice. At least software producers seem to know (most of them) now, that there are also other formats as the "standard US formats".

A0 is a square meter, and everything in the A series has an aspect ratio of sqrt(2) and different sizes are achieved by simply folding (or cutting) in half. It's actually pretty neat... check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_216

Oh, did not know that!

The reason: I don't think, that this fact is essential to the A series. It is neat, yes, but when do you have A0 paper in your bureau? (When you are not in the printing-business).

The thing with cutting in half is more essential to it, than that it is based on square meter. Also, even when it is an square meter, the sides are something "odd" because the ratio is fixed.

They're not part of the metric system, simply based on it. The 1:sqrt(2) ratio used is extremely convenient as it scales up and down nicely, and the other series are such that an Ax sheet fits nicely into a Cx envelope, and a Cx sheet fits nicely into a Bx envelope.

How are factors of 2 and sqrt(2) "based on metric"?

At some level you could say that the U.S. measurements are "based on metric" since almost all of them are defined in terms of metric units. You just have to apply the proper factor (which is a decimal, but a terminating one --- unlike the sqrt(2) business).

I never wrote that the factors were based on metric. ISO paper sizes are based off of an A0 sheet having an area of 1m². That's it.

The 1:sqrt(2) ratio has to do with subdivision. An A0 sheet subdivides into two A1 sheets, which subdivides into two A2 sheets, and so on. 1:sqrt(2) width/height ratio used in ISO pages sizes allows this, which makes dealing with paper significantly easier when it comes to slicing up pages, folding, packing, &c.

By that standard, the U.S. liquid measures could also be described as "metric". 2 cups->pint, 2 pints->quart, 2 quarts->pottle (rarely used, more commonly called a "half gallon"), 2 pottles->gallon.

You appear not to understand the actual utility behind the page width/height ratio used in ISO/DIN page sizes.

Also, the word "metric" has a very precise meaning: that of being part of the internationally agreed system of decimal measurements. The thing you've mentioned don't fit that definition, and US customary units are simply defined in _terms_ of metric units, but are not metric units themselves.

"You appear not to understand the actual utility behind the page width/height ratio used in ISO/DIN page sizes."

I do understand it. It's exactly the same reasoning as being able to divide liquid measures in half.

No. Here's what you wrote:

> By that standard, the U.S. liquid measures could also be described as "metric"

The ratio has nothing to do with metric. The base sizing of the A0 page is, on the other hand, defined as having an area of 1m² in that regard, DIN/ISO paper sizes are _based_ on metric. However, _never_ did I state that they _were_ metric.

So no, by the standard that I gave, you _couldn't_ say that US customary measurements for liquid measures could also be described as "metric".

Go back and read my original comment. The first sentence was this:

> They're not part of the metric system, simply based on it.

Here I was making reference to A0 sheets being defined as having an area of 1m², thus the sheet sizes are _derived_ from metric, not _part_ of the metric system.

The next sentence was a _completely_ independent statement about the utility of the page ratio used in ISO/DIN paper sizes:

> The 1:sqrt(2) ratio used is extremely convenient as it scales up and down nicely, and the other series are such that an Ax sheet fits nicely into a Cx envelope, and a Cx sheet fits nicely into a Bx envelope.

I can't fathom how you somehow got from an innocuous pair of statements about paper sizes to powers of two in US customary measurements for liquids somehow being "metric".

U.S. units are defined in terms of metric units.

The official definition of the inch is 2.54 cm (exactly).

An inch isn't a nice round number of cm, but neither is an A(whatever) piece of paper (other than A0). A4 is 21.0 cm × 29.7 cm. for instance.

"The next sentence was a _completely_ independent statement about the utility of the page ratio used in ISO/DIN paper sizes"

And I pointed out that the exact same argument applies to U.S. liquid measures. They're easy to divide or multiply by two.

Ok. I'll be super explicit about this. The page measurements don't matter. What matters is that all the standard page sizes have exactly the same width:height ratio when halved or doubled to obtain the next size up and down. That's the magic property that the 1:sqrt(2) width:height ratio used in the ISO/DIN page sizes gives you. The fact that an A0 sheet is defined as having an area of 1m² is a distraction. It's the width:height ratio that matters.

Your comparison to liquid measurements misses the point. It's irrelevant. Your statement that the US units are defined in terms of US units is irrelevant.

What is relevant is the preservation of the width:height ratio between pages sizes in the ISO/DIN paper size series.

"That's the magic property that the 1:sqrt(2) width:height ratio used in the ISO/DIN page sizes gives you."

Which is very similar to the "magic property" that you get when you have measuring units that are powers of two rather than factors of ten. So, no, I"m not "missing the point" at all.

That you think this is "irrelevant" indicates to me that you haven't done a lot of cooking.

Yes you are, because _this has nothing to do with factors of ten vs factors of two_. This is nothing to do with US customary units vs metric. _The units are irrelevant._ That's what you're not getting. What is relevant is that the same page width/height ratio is maintained between the different page sizes.

You touched on what I see as the biggest most long term piece to transition, American tool and die companies, foundries and fabricators. A lot of these companies are based around giant machines with 20 or thirty year life cycles. Switching to metric would be a factory's worst nightmare short of blowing the place up.

If we switched today, they would still sell the same amount of sae tools for 30yrs.. It's not like the old fasteners would disappear overnight.

US already has many "slightly dissimilar" paper sizes, this Letter, Legal, etc... so at least for A4, one more couldn't hurt right?

Currently you use letter unless you are required to use legal. When would someone use A4?

In both cases :)

Always.

Those mile roads often have odd names like "18 Mile Road" or "12 Mile Road", so even after a transition it wouldn't be especially hard to track (I'm guessing you are subconsciously tracking the numbers, not measuring on your odometer...).

The survey system is a bigger thing to deal with, but it isn't something people confront day to day either. I've seen deeds using geographic coordinates to describe plots, so there is also a relatively straightforward path to not dealing with it.

Where i came from farm land is still measured in acre and hectare, even though everything is metric.

Hectare == hectameter == 10,000 m^2 (while we are at it, could we standardaze the world in comma and dot usage?)

It is metric, is just uses an older name.