Well, this calls for an excellent quote from "Wild Thing" by Josh Bazell:
<a href="http://imgur.com/gallery/iDOzAa5" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/gallery/iDOzAa5</a><p>Also, Americans of XVIII century were like "We don't want your tea! We don't
want your laws! We don't want your imperium! But the length of an arm of king
Henry I should make a good base for measurement system." (Unfortunately
I can't recall where I read it from.)<p>And to the article,<p>> [...] You can google conversions in seconds.<p>A counterargument to this point should be several failures (some by NASA)
caused precisely by failing to do the conversion. I believe the author simply
forgot to raise this one.