It's obviously a great idea, and obviously (to Americans) unlikely to happen in the lifetime of anybody reading this forum.<p>Does anybody else from America remember being taught the metric system in public elementary school, and being told that we'd be switching to it over the next few years? I was taught this around second grade (1981), I think based on the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act</a>), which was not just signed by some random interweb tubers -- it was signed into law by the president. But IIRC, it was a toothless and impotent piece of legislation that was effectively stymied by the US auto industry.<p>P.S.
Amusing visual evidence that the US system sucks:<p><a href="http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/metric-system-1024x450.png" rel="nofollow">http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/metric-...</a>
Most of the comments in this thread are talking about the units for personal height, weight, local road signs or for the weather forecast. Those are by far the <i>least</i> important things to be worried about. All of those things are local and there is no carrying cost for them. There would be a cost to change all those signs and forecasts - for no real gain.<p>However, dimensions of physical goods are a constant recurring cost to the economy. Anything that crosses the borders for trade (all resources mined/farmed, everything manufactured) has to be dealt with in both sets of units. There is massive redundancy in fasteners, components, scales, paperwork, etc. It requires companies to keep two sets of tools (and not just wrenches, also drills, taps, dies, cutters, etc).
Before we start with the standard junk about "imperial measures are better because they are easier to understand / better suited to human scale / etc." can I say <i>nope</i>.<p>The only advantage that imperial measures have (for some) is that they are familiar. That's the sum total of it. People where were raised metric find these apologies for imperial measures to be pure gibberish.
I moved from Belgium to the US last year, and one of the things that surprised me was that metric measures actually see a fair amount of use in the States. It makes a convoluted system even more weird, but it's also just plain fascinating.<p>2L bottles of coke and 9mm bullets, miles except when people suddenly switch to kilometers, 50 meter pools and 5K jogging runs but a 120 yard football field, 2 oz shaving cream but eye drops come in a 20ml bottle and so on.<p>Guess that's what globalization does for ya.
Only vaguely relevant, but I grew up in a rural area in Canada which caused me to learn a strange set of units. For me, highway distances are measured in kilometres, but country roads are measured in miles. Groceries are priced per kilogram, but my weight is in pounds. I readily swap inches and centimetres for measuring small sizes and distances (sometimes on the same project). I am more comfortable with Celsius, but the thermostat in my parents' house was in Fahrenheit.<p>Just to throw an additional wrench into things, prior to official metrification (which technically predates my birth), Canada used "imperial" (i.e. British) units, not "standard" (i.e. U.S.) units. Because of this and the close proximity to the U.S., one had to be careful about just which gallon or pint you were talking about.<p>People younger and/or more urban than me seem to be 100% metric. I am starting to learn my weight in kilograms, but I still have no idea what my height is in cm without converting.
At the risk of being lumped in with the negative/unhelpful/HN-is-on-the-decline comment crowd, and I hate naysaying here but...<p>Seriously?<p>1) If you haven't seen enough of these White House Polls go by yet (and there is a never ending list of inanity, for example: <a href="http://www.modernman.com/12-dumbest-whitehouse-petitions/" rel="nofollow">http://www.modernman.com/12-dumbest-whitehouse-petitions/</a>) let me clue you in. They do nothing. Nothing. No one reads them. Just go back to wishing on a star.<p>2) The belief that something like this would ever be on the White House's radar/todo list is honestly just retarded.<p>3) Why is this even here? This isn't Reddit. The focus of HN is pretty nebulous these days but this is well outside the realm of entrepreneurship and programming which I believe has always sort of been at the heart of HN.<p>4) <i>Rabble rabble</i> HN is in decline.
There's a couple of things you'd want to consider converting to metric: long distances, short distances/dimensions, volumes, weights, and temperature come to mind.<p>Long distances: swap out a bunch of highway signs, consider that 60mph (a mile a minute) ~= 100km/h, not too hard on people but a lot of signage needs to change. Feasible.<p>Volumes: people are used enough to 2-liter bottles of soda, expect the 3.78 liter milk to stay around for a while because of supply chains. Gas prices will be modestly interesting for people, but really easy on the industry.<p>Short distances/dimensions: now things get tricky and potentially expensive. There are a lot of fractional-dimensioned parts out there in industry in different supply chains.<p>Weights:
2.2lb = 1kg and you're pretty good. Nobody <i>really</i> uses ounces anyway!<p>Temperature:
Here's the thing about temperature: converting would be relatively useless because Real People don't do math with the temperature outside. Even scientists don't do math with the temperature outside all that much. For most people, a scale that starts at 0="civilization shuts down because you can't ice the roads" and goes up to 100="heatstroke territory" is a <i>fine</i> representation of humanity's day to day temperature. Why would we bother changing it?
Sad it only has 237 votes as of my visit (waiting for my acct to validate so I can sign).<p>The problem is, I think the US has already declared itself to be metric to little effect.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act</a><p>It's not the do-nothing congress this time, it's the learn-nothing public.
It's nice to be reminded that there will always be fresh waves of not-yet-cynical people to take up issues like this. But boy, am I cynical about the chances on this one.<p>The wikipedia article on Metrication in the US [1] isn't the best article ever but is worth reading for mentions of previous efforts.<p>A few things:
- the US Congress has in various ways 'blessed' the metric system, more than any other. However...<p>> <i>Proponents of the metric system in the U.S. often claim that "the United States, Liberia, and Burma (or Myanmar) are the only countries that have not adopted the metric system." This statement is not correct with respect to the U.S., and probably it isn't correct with respect to Liberia and Burma, either. The U.S. adopted the metric system in 1866. What the U.S. has failed to do is to restrict or prohibit the use of traditional units in areas touching the ordinary citizen</i> [2]<p>Did you know that Jefferson proposed a decimal system for the US before the SI system had come about? (See e.g. [2].) There were also proposals to measure land in decimal units rather than in 640-acre sections.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_State...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html</a>
I was born in Russia and used the metric system until i moved to the US. Imperial system is so archaic it's amusing to see a developed nation use it. A few centuries ago Russians used to measure weight in "handfuls" and short distances in "elbows." (scratch that, it's "cubits") When only a fraction of the population had any sort of education, it was easier for everyone to understand an anatomical measurement. Eh, some things never go away. I don't anticipate US dropping this... ever.
The way I explain this one to my European friends is:<p>Do you remember the transition to the Euro? How you had to mentally convert prices at first? And how old people had more difficulties with it in some cases? Now, imagine that, not just for one unit, but weights, lengths, temperatures and volumes, all at the same time.
I look forward to everywhere using metric.<p>I'm in the UK, 27 and still struggle at times to comprehend lbs, ounces, stone, feet, inches, yards, miles etc., when everything I was taught in school was in metres, litres, newtons and kilogrammes.
From the petitions.whitehouse.gov petition kindly submitted for comment here:<p>"The United States is one of the few countries left in the world who still have not converted to using the Metric System as a standardized system of measurement. Instead of going along with what the rest of the world uses, we stubbornly still adhere to using the imprecise Imperial Unit - despite the fact that practically every other country that we interact with uses Metric."<p>This petition has the same problem most petitions submitted to the White House have--its factual premise is incorrect. I'm an American who has lived in another country (Taiwan) for years. The National Institute of Standards and Technology reports that "The United States is now the only industrialized country in the world that does not use the metric system as its predominant system of measurement."<p><a href="http://www.nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/upload/1136a.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/upload/1136a.pdf</a><p>But the same government report notes that<p>". . . . In 1866, Congress authorized the use of the metric system in this country and supplied each state with a set of standard metric weights and measures.<p>"In 1875, the United States solidified its commitment to the development of the internationally recognized metric system by becoming one of the original seventeen signatory nations to the Treaty of the Meter."<p>In other words, the United States has treated the Metric System as official and legal since before my great-grandfather was born. The customary measurement system is, by contrast, simply customary, not mandatory. The United States has been metric since 1866 "in the sense that Americans have been free since that time to use the metric system as much as they like."<p><a href="http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html</a><p>If a particular individual or corporation engaged in manufacturing or trade wants to use metric measurements to meet customer needs and gain a profit, no one in the United States is stopping that. If someone desires to use customary measurements out of sheer habit from long-established custom, no one is stopping that either. My late dad the industrial engineer was aware of plenty of industries in the United States that from the 1970s, at the latest, had gone fully metric simply because those industries were involved in vigorous international trade. Perhaps the best governmental nudge that can be given for more use of metric measurements in the United States is more encouragement of developing international markets for domestic businesses.<p>I note that customary measurements are often used in other countries even long after metric measurements are adopted officially. For example, the Republic of China (the regime that governs Taiwan at present) has been officially metric since before I was born. Japan (the former governing country in Taiwan) was metric from the 1920s. But the unit of weight for vegetables bought in an open-air market in Taiwan is still the traditional 斤 (<i>jin</i> "catty," or Chinese pound), although that is now standardized at 500g. Prices are given in monetary units per 斤 for most fruits and vegetables to this day in markets in Taiwan (and in China).<p>A Facebook friend with a scientific education recently told me about the saying "A pint's a pound, the whole world round." If the United States begins using metric-standard units more for selling foods and the like, then perhaps a half-kilogram (500g) package will be considered to be one new "pound," just as a half-liter (500ml) package will be considered to be one new "pint." It is interesting to me that traditional Chinese culture and traditional British culture both had weight units in that range, about a half kilogram even before standardization to metric units. How are grocery measurements treated in Britain these days?
Ireland has converted mostly to the metric system, we switched to kilometers for speed limits in 2005. To be honest you get used to it pretty quickly. There are a number of items, particularly those that are traded with our neighbours in the UK that are shown as both metric and imperial. You still get a pint of Guinness in the pub but all bottles and cans of beer are in metric.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Ireland" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Ireland</a>
<i>Metrickery is a socialist plot to weaken America. First it's units of measurement divisible by ten, then it's universal health care, then gun control, and finally off to the gulag for the last remaining freethinkers.</i><p>Sadly, there are people who believe more of less exactly what I just wrote.
Every objection that is being raised on this thread was raised when other countries enacted metrication. You are free to read the history of these processes. Nations did not collapse and people learned how to use new units.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication</a><p>I would more support a petition that was well and cogently written, however.
We already have the metric system. An inch is defined as 2.54 centimeters. Et cetera. I can't think of a single way in which we're NOT metric, except that stubborn people refuse to let go of gallons, miles and pounds.<p>Every item you buy in the stores will be measured in metric units. Just because we call it a gallon doesn't mean it isn't actually 3.785 liters. And just because the serving size is a cup, doesn't mean it isn't actually 240mL. And check the nutrition label sometimes. It's all metric.<p><a href="http://www.fda.gov/ucm/groups/fdagov-public/documents/image/ucm225384.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.fda.gov/ucm/groups/fdagov-public/documents/image/...</a><p>So what's the problem again?
It very likely is never going to happen. The main reason for resistance apparently is the various land boundaries that would have to be re-scaled to metric, which would be a source of endless legal wrangling. Already houses in the US have the longest history attached to them, sometimes all the way from the homesteading days if the plot is old.<p>I've used both metric and imperial, for construction imperial is lots easier, for physics and other things that involve frequent conversions metric is far easier.<p>The Canadians officially have metric, try buying a 250x125 sheet of plywood. Everybody will look at you as if water is burning.
> the imprecise Imperial Unit<p>englilsh units aren't any less precise than SI/metric ones. They're just more awkward and less used worldwide. The cases which I find particularly irritating in US units are lb mass vs. lb force, and HP/BTU/foot-pounds/calories/Calories (and kWh) when all you need is a J.
I could care less about using metric, but don't touch Fahrenheit. Celsius (water based) is inferior to Fahrenheit (air based) for those of us whom just so happen to reside in the atmosphere instead of the sea.
Might as well start now - these things take time.
In Norway, we introduced the metric system in 1889, but there's still a lot of non-metric measurements still around, at least in common speak.<p>* Length of a boat are measured in feet.<p>* Lumber is measured in inches, two-by-four and so on.<p>* Most engines are measured in horsepower(though nowadays the kw/h is usually given as well).<p>* Firewood have different measures, most of them derived from the pre-metric system.<p>* distances at sea are measured in nautic miles<p>* Boat speed is measured in knots. (not sure what the status of these last 2 is regarding SI these days).
Water is the most important substance for life in Earth.<p>It boils at 100º centigrades and freezes at 0º centigrades<p>0.1m³ is one liter (1L) of water, so 1m³ is 1,000 liters of water<p>1L of water is 1 Kilogram<p>The imperial system is awful, please bury it.
I think most engineers would naturally support this idea. The reality is that doing something like this is pretty tough because the current system has so much weight. It's akin to asking a company to abandon a perfectly functioning legacy software system just so that someone can rewrite it.<p>My dad was an engineer with Caltrans and he told me about how California was ready to make the switch. It was going to be a gradual transition where signage would start listing both metric and imperial speed limits. They had actually gotten pretty far along into designing signs, etc.<p>He told me that the state eventually killed it because no politicians supported it and there was no strong desire from the public. While I think this is a great idea, I don't have my hopes up.<p>Apparently the state did a lot of work actually switching over to the metric system (all manuals, standards, etc. were updated to metric) but the plan was eventually aborted in favor of English units and much effort was then spent on switching back. :-/<p><a href="http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric1/DD-12-R1_Final.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric1/DD-12-R1_Final.pdf</a><p><a href="http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric1/metricpg.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric1/metricpg.htm</a>
Metric system is way more understandable and easy to mentally manipulate. The only good argument against standardizing it, is people are used to it for many years. But so were my grandparents with our country's currency before we switched to Euro. There's an awkward "bootcamp" period where you just convert every unit to the old one just to get the feeling of the "quantity" but after a couple of months the new units feel normal.
what a coincidence, just yesterday I saw a comedian making fun of UK&US for not using the metric system and instead something he considered archaic
Measuring metric adoption by counting countries with official adoption is common. Less common is measuring by aggregate PPP-GDP and actual adoption by the public. To approximate actual adoption, I give the US, UK, Canada and Jamaica completely to traditional units and the rest of the world completely to metric.* Using 2011 data from the IMF, I then conclude that traditional units command 31% of usage worldwide.<p>* These are the countries in red on this table
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication#Chronology_and_status_of_conversion_by_country" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication#Chronology_and_stat...</a>
But a review of the UK article shows that the language "partially complete" is pretty fanciful in describing the current situation in the UK. The story in China is more complex...
Don't we have bigger problems than this right now?<p>Our schools are so badly mismanaged that we're not even graduating people who can use either standard.<p>We've got millions of people unemployed who would love to turn a wrench regardless of metric or standard.<p>(Not to cast aspersions at either party, they are both very nearly equally to blame)
Ironic that a post designed to attempt to rid the world of obfuscation and confusion has a UI that commits the cardinal sin of auto loading the signature list so that it's virtually impossible to get to the footer without letting all the signatures load. :)<p>Reminds me of getting classes on water conservation in High School only to walk outside of class and see that they are watering the High School's parking lot.<p>How very often the government evokes the classic hypocritical parent of the old anti-drug campaign commercial of the 1980's where the son finally breaks and yells at his Father "I learned it by watching you Dad!"<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Elr5K2Vuo" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Elr5K2Vuo</a>
Everything else aside, can someone explain to me the obsession with fractions (w/out common denominators, even!) in the imperial system?<p>I love metric, but I have no problem using the imperial system for my work - however, the fact that all objects made for the imperial system are built on fractions makes it <i>impossible</i> to work with. There is no 0.1" there's only 1/8. There is no 0.15", there's only 5/32. etc.<p>Given the bottom is almost always a power of two (2, 4, 16, 32, and 64 at the most) the conversion isn't <i>hard</i> but there is a <i>definite</i> cognitive overhead to comparing 1/8" vs 5/32" whereas comparing .125" to .15" is an order of magnitude simpler.
Regionalized units have the same damaging effect to manufacturing as closed software ecosystems has to software development. The only reason most US citizens do not feel the pain of this fragmentation is that they do not have to buy anything that is not adapted to the US market. Again, this is because the US is the biggest market on the planet and thus it is profitable for big companies to adapt their products to US standards.<p>However, supporting several unit systems is a huge tax on startup companies that work in manufacturing and therefore they reduce innovation and competition, causing harm to everybody along the way.
Maybe it's just me but, while I agree with this, I would like our government to focus on gaining a certain level of basic competence. The last few years seem to have brought to light just how impotent and incapable the US legislature is.<p>The other two branches seem to be doing fine, but I'd like to focus our attention on perhaps changing this ridiculous farce into something that might work, just a little bit.<p>The big problem is that due to our system of govt any change will be brought of the back of legislation, which, unfortunately, will have to pass thru the broken and disfigured legislature.<p>That said, I hope this petition succeeds :)
The US use of imperial units definitely requires a good bit of annoying overhead - owning two sets of socket wrenches and hex keys and never knwowing which one a manufacturer has used is just the first such inconvenience that comes to mind. So I agree that it's well past time to complete the switch.<p>That said, I will miss imperial units if they go. There's a natural poetry to them that metric lacks. Imperial units seem to embody and communicate their own history - history of path-dependence and weird math, to be sure - while metric units seem too perfectly consistent, and therefore somehow sterile.
I grew up with the metric system but have now come to largely accept the imperial system as a more humane system.<p>Nassim Taleb actually talks about the benefits of it in his latest book Anti-Fragile as well.<p>The metric system is already used for anything important in the US and doesn't need to be further legislated. Look at any food item you buy in the supermarket it already has grams or ml on it.<p>I wrote a piece a few years ago about this:
<a href="http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/08/28/in-defence-of-imperial-units" rel="nofollow">http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/08/28/in-defence-of-i...</a>
I remember being at a 1971 conference in London, when a Brit asked a member of our party "When will the US go metric?"<p>My buddy quipped without hesitation, "As soon as you Brits learn to drive on the right side of the road!"
I don't think politicians would ever allow this, especially during these times, since the proposed change would cost millions in change of signs and anything where the imperial system is used.
Not the first time it's been tried: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_State...</a>
There were still some kilometer markers on the roads in Alabama when I moved there in 1997. Apparently, the state spent $3.2 million to put up km markers and signs in addition to the mile markers and signs. This proved to be too confusing, and they were all taken down. Most the people I knew didn't miss them.<p><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19971128&id=Q8gnAAAAIBAJ&sjid=SscEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1434,4556205" rel="nofollow">http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19971128&...</a>
Another petition which may be more effecitve would be directed at the more rational/scientifically minded people at Google (in as much as they don't have Rick Santorum on their pay roll) to rename nexus 4/7/10 to be in terms of metric units not inches. That would may lead to a very rapid comfort with metric sizes for a large and influential chunk of the population.<p>This would also avoid the potentially unpleasant comparison to those who hope to eradicate Spanish by demand English be <i>the</i> state language.
Interesting war story around Imperial to Metric conversion errors.<p>Relevant to the discussion...<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider</a>
One thing I never see mentioned is the awkwardness of the metric names. The older measurements are all one syllable, while their metric replacements are often three or four.<p>mile -> kilometer
inch -> centimeter
pound -> kilogram<p>The only one that comes out even is ounce -> gram.<p>Obviously it's not a huge impediment since many other countries got past it, but I'm sure it just adds to the discomfort people have with it.
The real cost is in manufacturing and maintenance.<p>What is the cost of replacing every machine, every factory, every load tolerance specified in every standard? Every screw, every nut.<p>Things that need to work, in place for decades, which we can't arbitrarily take down. Power plants, water filtration systems. How would you roll it out?<p>It's <i>because</i> the US is so large and industrialized that <i>makes</i> it expensive.
One argument some people make against switching away from imperial units - it acts as sort of an artificial trade barrier for foreign competition. It costs non-domestic manufacturers more to package their products for distribution in the United States, making it sort of a "tariff" for foreign goods that international trade agreements can't touch.
I've Given up.<p>BUT, the metric system in the US has ben usurped by base 10 US units. As a civil engineer the measuring tape was in feet and "tenths of feet". A "mil" is a thousandth of an inch.
I worked for the US government civil engineers in the 1990's. They were going to issue contracts in metric years ago. I don't think they ever did.
related question to people from the US: did you actually learn the metric system in primary school? did you learn it besides the imperial units? I believe as Tloewald pointed out that the adoption really depends on whether people are learning it and not what politicians declare to be the standard.
This is fantastic!! They told me in 2nd grade (1968) that the metric systems was coming in 4 years and we had to learn it. This is great news. Finally I will be able to use those metric socket wrenches I bought. Oh, wait I already do.
Just a note: Brazil adopts the metric system, but we measure diameters in inches and land in acres.<p>Adopting the metric system doesn't mean getting rid of non-metric units, some things just <i>make sense</i> to measure in units that follow human scale.
The tech industry has to take the lead by renaming their products: MacBook Pro 33cm, Nexus 18. Using inch for display is a worldwide standard, not just US. It would be strange to look for a 35.5cm notebook or a 100cm HDTV.
The Metric system would probably be ubiquitous in the US by now if Ronald Reagan had not disbanded the U.S. Metric Board in 1982 and overturned laws encouraging schools to teach kids the metric system.
A bit of helpful contrarianism about how Metric isn't always best:<p>Dan Bently, "Metric Doesn't Work", OSCON 2012<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdK-Cr1pe30" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdK-Cr1pe30</a>
I'll just leave this here.<p><a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/metric-system-thriving-in-nations-inner-cities,458/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theonion.com/articles/metric-system-thriving-in-n...</a>
While we are at it, why not standardize:<p>* date and time formats<p>* language<p>* time zones<p>* currency<p>Seems about as easy and has the same kind of benefits.
OMG, I actually learned the metric system in public school in the 1970s. Then Reagan got elected and canceled it.<p>Now American kids have to get into drugs to learn the metric system.