Metrication advocates are at it again

You do not seem to know what you are talking about. The original (no longer in use) meter was 1/10,000,000 of one quadrant of the earth, the distance from the pole to the equator. Where did you come up with that Paris bit?

From ScientificAmerican.com:

In 1960 the General Conference on Weights and Measures redefined the meter in terms of the number of waves of a very precise color (wavelength) of light emitted by krypton 86 atoms. That revision did not last so long. In 1983 the Conference discarded the krypton standard and redefined the meter in terms of the speed of light--what might be called a theoretical definition. The meter is now officially 1/299,792,458 the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in one second.

You sound like you speak from experience.

Oh shut up and eat you Freedom Fries!

Abrasha

If we follow your logic, then anyone who's ever worked in a stamping plant will need to use base nine measures. Maybe octal, if they didn't learn their lesson the first time.

KG

I meant on total metrication. ;) As you say Jim R. sez, the market has already decided where it is to be in common use.

Ya, took Physics 101 at the college (one free class, w00t :) last semester, everything is in meters, kilograms and seconds. And since all I can find for mass reference are pennies and nickels at 2.5 and 5g each, all my weighing (on a homemade balance) is metric, and I'm not unfamiliar with the concept of a kilogram. It doesn't bother me that there's a little over 2 pounds in a kg (454g/lb). All my linear measurements are in inches and feet of course, as I have no metric scales. The convienience of 1cm^3 of water weighing 1g is tempting. But then, aluminum goes 10 cu. in. to the pound, and I have plenty of aluminum that can be easily enough put into liquid form. :) And besides, any conversion I do just keeps me up on my multiplication and division. :)

Indeed. And as others have mentioned, it'll cost more to re-tool and re-scale the final remainder, to no gained cost. At this point it is getting religious.

... Yeah, what he ^ said. ;-)

Tim

-- "That's for the courts to decide." - Homer Simpson Website @

Damn. Is *that* the reason why? How could I have missed it.

Jim

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As long as this came up, I've got a Champion spark plug with 1/2" NPT threads on it. It's also can be disassembled for cleaning by removing a gland nut. It has dual ground electrodes and uses a copper gasket for sealing the ceramic to the body.

Skeptical? See:

But I can not tell a lie, my plug probably didn't spend any time in an automobile, because on the opposite side of the ceramic there's the word "Maytag", so I suspect it came from one of those gasoline powered washing machines in use before rural electrification.

I suspect the same style plug was probably used in automobiles around the same time. I owned half of a Model A Ford in high school, and I've got vague recollections of the plugs having pipe threads on them, but I could be wrong about that.

Alan Moore wrote:

State DOT's went metric several years ago on construction drawings. This means, in many cases, that the builder has to convert many of the spec's into 'Merican measurements. This gives you hundreds of potential mistakes in the conversion, plus the added labor of doing so. Not to mention other bothersome and time consuming troubles involved. The last I heard, several states had switched back or were considering doing so.

JTMcC.

Maybe

There's an irony here. Does the article say who promoted that standard, and who built the original (two, I think) Krypton wavelength-standard measuring machines? It was Richard F. Moore, founder of Moore Special Tool Co., Bridgeport, Connecticut. d8-)

Ed Huntress

Hm. No, the better term might be 'fired.'

Then it probably doesn't matter. If there were a big disadvantage, it would be obvious what the costs were.

Jim

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They did (use pipe threads at one time).

Which half of the model A did you own?

Jim (being reminded of a really, really stupid joke)

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Bullshit! Avogadro's number is currently: 781-721-1130

Don't believe me?

Try a Yahoo people search for Avogadro in Winchester, MA. Then try searching for Wisnia in the same town.

He lives in our broom closet...

Actually, I thought it would be a hoot to have Avogadro's number in the phone book. So, when we put in a second phone line for the kids.....Gave him MY first initial though....Great fun when the telemarketers used to call that line, we'd tell them he'd died in 1856, and most of the time they'd get flustered and say they were terribly sorry about our loss.

Happy New Year,

Jeff

I think that's why there are 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, 360 degrees in a circle and so forth.

At least I haven't been offered any better answers all the times I've asked.

And as long as we're at it, didja realize that there are occasionally months without a full moon in them? Happens about four times a century, and obviously in February. The last one was in 1999.

I think it's 'cause the astronomical orbits aren't exactly circular and stuff like that.

Jeff

Although at the time, I think they called them "english" measurements. :^)

The germans also used inch measures at the time for much of their stuff, there was a thread here a while ago about somebody claiming that a tookit (containing supposed U-boat wrenches) was bogus, because they were inch wrenches.

I don't recall if the toolkit was genuine or not, but the fallout was that most of the fasteners on U-boats were indeed inch measure.

Jim

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Having to learn a whole new system to deal with anything scientific or international, usually inefficiently as an adult, doesn't seem like an obvious, but hard to calculate financially, disadvantage to you?

I owned the half which required repairs, always by me of course.

My non-techie but handsome blonde buddy Pete owned the seats, on which he smooched (and probably more) with sweet young things most weekends.

It was a "real" convertible, with roll up glass windows and a rumble seat. At that time there were still lots of Model As in daily use out there in San Francisco. I've heard they stayed on the roads in South America a lot longer than that.

Thanks for the memories. Pete and I still converse by e-mail every few days..

The two of us, circa '52, but without the Model A, can be seen at:

Jeff Wisnia (W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"If you can smile when things are going wrong, you've thought of someone to blame it on."

Here is the complete article:

I know what you mean, my vehicle of choice is a '85 Canadian Land Cruiser, and at night I can't see the MPH on the speedometer only the KPH, so I have to have to do KPH to MPH approximations, so I don't get a speeding ticket.

Before I bought the thing, I asked what kind of mileage it got, as was told about 30 MPG. Imagine my surprise when I did all the conversions after I had been driving it for a few weeks, and was only getting about 20 MPG, still not bad considering the age. LOL

Greg H.

Also, the definitions of our units are being changed to more reproducable descriptions. The inch used to be the width of the King's thumbnail. New King, new inch. The meter used to be defined in terms of the Earth's circumference then the distance bewteen two marks on a bar in Paris. Somebody nukes Paris and there's no more meter. Now it's defined in terms of so many wavelengths of a particular spectral line. This can be reproduced in any well equiped lab anywhere. The nautical mile is now exactly 1852 meters. The second is so many cycles of a particular physical resonance.

When we (Canada) went metric, the speed limits were changed to Km/hr. Not bad but ain't it a pity they didn't use the nanoC (1E-9 x the speed of light). It's easier to write nC than Km/hr and it's even more fundamental. BTW, it's only about 8% different. Oh well.

Ted

Actually is my understanding that the standard of the meter has changed, to something a little more intangible....the distance traveled by a ray of electromagnetic (EM) energy through a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 (3.33564095 x

Greg H.

Living through this change over in Australia, here are some observations I noticed. Some things changed over very quickly, others still haven't changed.

Metric dimensions on machining was pretty easy, because the imperial measurements were usually decimal anyway. Our lathes had new collars engraved for the handwheels, in metric. This was fine unless you needed to traverse more than one rev of the feed screw, when the metric changeover point occured at an odd number, because the feed screw was still imperial. DRO's fixed that.

BA threads finally made sense, but no one used them anymore!

If you need a nicely rounded thread form for fatigue resistance, you have to go to something exotic, which is a pity, because we already had whitworth threads.

Pipe threads stayed put, and so did the pipe, but with really odd metric sizes on them.

Fractional inch measurements went almost instantly, can't recall even hearing a negative comment from the works carpenters ( more like cabinet makers) who were glad to stop jiggling 32 nds around in their heads. Ask them to hand you a pice of 50 by 25, and they would hand you a bit of 2 by 1 though. Some of them would hand it to you faster than others.

Road speed signs, kilometers were accepted pretty quick, don't hear many talking mph these days, unless they have been watching drag races, where metric doesn't seem to fit at all. This also gave more speeds, used to be

Number and letter drills were replaced by metric drills at 0.1 mm steps, thats 4 though a step, no one in our shop seemed to miss those. If you go to the local hardware store today, you will find plenty of fractional imperial drill sets, and just lately, some metric ones. The metric ones are priced higher, because they don't sell many to the average householder.

Tire pressures are still in psi, and show no signs of ever changing. The local garage has a new electronic gizmo that you set the pressure on. It's in psi all the time. I believe this is due to the large difference in the numbers. Pascals are such a small unit, you need too many kPa's in your tire, just don't seem right for some reason???

I regularly mix metric and imperial measurements in spoken conversation, sometimes even in the the same sentence. Drives my kids nuts, they only get taught metric at school.

I notice they still give height measurements for bank robbers in both metric and imperial on the news, because more than half the population can't relate to the metric height, me included I must admit.

Temperature measurement in celcius seems to have been accepted, I guess the zero at water freezing and 100 at water boiling gave the cooks something to visualise, made the old 32 212 measure look a bit silly.

Just this morning on the weather report, I was surprised to hear the (sea) swell measured in feet only, no metric. I knew what she meant, but my kids can't visualise what a foot is, apart from the one on the end of their leg.

Designing a new work shed, had to review my blocks survey plans, they're all in chains and perches, ackk! First time I have wished to see feet and inches for a long while.

I did electrical engineering, my dad gave me his old ee text books for a reference. How he ever made sense of it is beyond me. Anyone who has actively worked in both systems will prefer the coordinated nature of SI units. In fact, if they are initially trained in SI units, it's very difficult to 'think' in the old units. I believe it's easier to change from imperial to SI, than to go the other way.

I believe it was worth the change, and I'm happy to put up with all the issues that it brings, because I know in one or two generations it will settle down to a much more coherent system. The problem I see in the US is that because there has not been an official change, the transition period will be much longer, and more painfull and costly, if the next generation is still getting their fundamental awareness in imperial units.

The official change started here around thirty years ago, I reckon it's got another thirty to settle properly. Probably more like one hundred years in the US, at the present rate, and being caught between the two systems for any longer than necessary is a worry.

regards,

John