NZAmoeba

Echidna is right about the babylonian thing, they invented our current time system around base 60. I learnt that in my world studies class (coolest class ever!)

They're the ones to also thank for 360 degrees.

And yeah, metric is best used for measurements... metric time will never work because its based around rotation and orbits which obviously can't conform with our metric system.

Corona688

I thought the base-60 time scheme was based on the d-m-s scale of angular measurement, which makes sense considering angular measurement is EXACTLY what time is.. 60 was chosen(by the Babylonions, I think) as a good number to use because there'd be no dicking around with bizzare fractions because 60 has so many divisors.. in effect, breaking down fractions into a longer series of numbers.. you get:

1*60 2*30 3*20 4*15 5*12 6*10

So, time is simply an angular measurement and thus not easy to make metric. Could be worse. It could be in radians... *shiver*

Yggdrasill

LOL! I can imagine it now:

"What time is it?"

"Three quarters of pi."

ohwilleke

Certainly the U.S. is in a queer, more or less stable, intermediate state. We measure engine volume in liters, but engine power in horsepower. We describe some guns in millimeters, and others in caliber or gauge. We measure food energy in the metric derived calories, but the weight we put on because of it in pounds (or stones in some parts of the British empire). Marijuana is sold by the quarter ounce, but cocaine is sold by the gram.

Some areas which would seem easy to standardize through government action, like postal rates, are still quoted in ounces and pounds, while others which should be hard to standardize, like soda containers, come in 1 and 2 liter bottles.

Electrical units in the U.S. are metric (watts, ohms, volts, amps).

Many areas would be extremely difficult to convert. For example, almost all real estate in the United States is described with township and range and section and acre measures (a township and range describe a 36 square mile parcel more or less, adjusting for global curvature, which is made up of 36 roughly square mile sections, each of which has 640 acres). Legal descriptions are in feet.

Similarly, almost every house in America, is built to inch, foot and yard specifications, and so even if every new house were built to traditional standards, all old houses would ahve to be built with historic standards. Two by fours can't just be replaced by 50 x 100 mm boards if you want your lumber repairs to fit (although it would be close). Moreover, the appliances that go in houses were built to those specifications, so there were be a continued demand for appliances in those sizes.

The system you use has a lot to do with what are considered "round numbers".

English length measurements also have deep cultural links to baseball, football and basketball.

Most of the Navy has ships that were build to work in nautical miles.

You could convert from Farenheit to Celcius, but why? What is the demonstrable benefit to the average person? Certainly, it has benefits to scientists who use it. But, most people aren't and aren't eager to spend a great deal of effort for little reward.

People don't learn units logically. They learn by example. A typical American knows that 32 degrees is freezing, that 40 degrees means a jacket and hat, that 50 degrees means a windbreaker, that 60 degrees means a light sweater, that 70 degrees is shirt sleeve weather, that 80 means you need a fan, that 90s means you need to wear shorts and stick to air conditioned environments, and that 100 or more is bloody hot. They know that 98.6 is body temperature, that 100 is a low grade fever and that 102 is a solid fever and that 104 is life threatening. They know that hot water from the faucet is 165 which is also a safe internal temperature for lamb medium well, that boiling is 212, that most baked goods are cooked at 350, but that some are cooked a cool as 300 or as hot as 450, and that 550 is approximately a broil. They know that 20 means a winter coat, that 10 means glove and a ski mask are mandatory, and that below 0 means that you can't use salt on the sidewalk with any effect anymore, since 0 is defined as the freezing point of salt water. At very high temperatures the differences between Celcius and Farenheit are immaterial.

Learning Celcius means that you have to stop converting and relearn dozens of reference points by rote. Justifying this effort has never come easy.

Also, there are conversions you can use in the English system. "A pint's a pound the world around" is a particularly useful one, every bit as much as the liter to kilogram equivalence.

As far as time measurement goes, I am a member of a profession that has pioneered the use of tenths of an hour, for our own domestic reasons.

Certainly, some U.S. Customary units have fallen out of favor. Rods, links, chains and furlongs are rarely used even by surveyors these days. Leagues are confined to fairy tails. Gills and pecks have fallen out of use, although bushels remain part of common parlance. Minims, Grains, pennyweights and drams have been replaced by grams and decimal ounces. Hundredweights are out of fashion. Troy pounds are virtually gone, although troy ounces are used in niche settings. Hands have survived. Mils (i.e. /1000th of an inch) are rarely used. Points (as in 12 point type) have grown more familiar with the rise of the word processor. A cord is still commonly used for firewood. The teaspoon and cup are in common use.

Most people don't know it, but the carat is a quasi-metric measurement (200 milligrams), not to be confused with Karat (24ths parts of gold in a mixture). Shots, Jiggers, Pints and Fifths are common, but ponys and magnums are not, nor are jeroboams. The standard win bottle however, is rapidly going metric to 750 mL, from a previous volume much closer to a fifth of a gallon.

Are bits, bytes (8 bits) and kilobytes (1024 bytes) metric or customary?

The same is true to some extent in the metric world. Kiwi carpenters use millimeters and meters, but not centimeters or decimeters. Square meters and sequare kilometeres and even hectares are far more common in use t han ares. Deci, Deka and hecto are unpopular prefixes. Kilo and milli are common. Mega and Giga get good use, but beyond that scientific notation is more common than peta, exa, zetta or yotta. Similarly, zepto and yocto are rarely used in written English, even though micro, nano, pico, femto and atto are common.

The same is true of money. Americans use pennies (0.01 dollars), nickles (0.05 dollars), dimes (0.1 dollars), quarters (0.25 dollars), dollars, five dollar bills, ten dollar bills, twenties, fifties, and hundred dollar bills. They do not use fifty cent pieces or two dollar bills, although both were made in large numbers. Increasingly the hundred dollar bill is limited to use abroad and in immigrant populations, and even fifties are fairly rare in day to day commerce. I suspect that similar preferences will evolve in Euroland which has way too many denominations.

Thor Q. Mada

Both the UK and the US signed to convention for weights and measure, to shift to the far more logical and scientifically easier metric system. This was more tha 30 years ago, when I was in college.
While the UK has done a genuine effort, (and with these things it takes generations to fade-out), as usual the US has just ignored what they signed. The world is used to it by now. Treaties and conventions mean nothing to big brother. It happens all the time. I gave-up.

The Other Michael

Two by fours haven't been 2" x 4" for decades. I have friends who have had work one on their houses built in the early part of the 1900s, and they've had to have lumber custom milled because their 2x4s are actually 2x4.

cheers,
Michael

Max Bane

About the arbitrariness of the base-10 deal, here's a snippet from Thomas Payne's (not that Thomas) "Describing Morphosyntax, A Guide for Field Linguists":

I've been taking Russian this year, and can see the same thing. The word for eleven is "odinnadtsat", literally one (odin) on (na) ten (dyesat). Same for 12-19.

Ninasgrandpa

This is not even true. In the UK "A pint of water is a pound and a quarter"

tensorproduct

In Ireland things are almost entirely metric with the exceptions of personal measurements (height, weight etc.) and, of course, pints. I was once served a half-litre of Guinness and I walked out of that pub there and then.

Fahrenheit is effecively never used, which gets confusing when watching US tv shows and people talk about 40 degrees being cold weather.

On a related note scientists are more likely to use the Kelvin scale than Celsius or Fahrenheit.

Duck!

Butter/margarine is still sold by the pound though. And milk can still be bought by the pint.

And who the hell served you a half-litre of Guinness? Do half-litre glasses even exist in Ireland?


Duck!