The US Actually BEAT Europe to Metric - In One Specific Way
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- čas přidán 26. 07. 2024
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Over here in the US, we catch a lot of grief for having never switched to the metric system, but the fact of the matter is, we tried several times. So today let’s talk about the history of metric in the US, all the times that we tried to make the switch, and why each one failed.
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Intro
2:15 - Why Haven't We Switched?
5:10 - Early US-Metric History
9:50 - Two Competing Systems of Measurement
10:20 - Tangent Cam
11:13 - The Battle of the Standards
13:11 - Metric in the 20th Century
16:36 - Metrification Today
19:41 - Sponsor - Ground News
LINKS LINKS LINKS
www.cnbc.com/2015/06/04/why-t...
www.snoqap.com/posts/2019/2/2...
citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugio_cent
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_fo...
books.google.com/books?id=k-o...
www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/G...
i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4f1397...
• Arizona - Interstate 1...
www.snoqap.com/posts/2019/2/2...
www.cnn.com/2022/06/12/politi...
news.gallup.com/poll/356939/s...
virginialawyer.vsb.org/public...
• Cate Blanchett Thinks ...
• Thomas Edison Did NOT ... - Věda a technologie
Here in Kentucky we've adopted the hillbilly measurement system. Things are measured in drops, pinches and dollops, distances are measured in stone's throws, over yonders, country miles, and "a ways", and finally time is measured in _a while_ and _a while longer._ Everyone should use these, its as easy as pie.
Now I know you're lying, you said "You guys" instead of "Y'all" 😛
Truthfully, any measurement system will work if it's used consistently and accurately. We could send a mission to Mars using cubits - as long as everyone involved used the same cubit.
What kind of pie exactly?
And difficulty is measured in pies.
@@mikeguilmette776 So you use cubits and the rest of the world uses metric? Sounds as silly as the current situation. 🙂
Joe, I'm an American and I studied physics in college and grad school. Always used metric. Then I studied engineering and the hardest thing for me to do was to go back to using imperial units instead of metric. That was the most difficult thing for me.
Ahh crud, these are the exact fields of study I am working towards. I hadn't even considered this.
Yeah. Working in a corporation that does work in the U.S. and in the Netherlands, we use both metric and imperial.
In all honesty, metric is WAY easier.
Sucks living in the U.S. but preferring the metric system. 😂
@@jamesmerutka889 I agree. Multiples of ten and 100 is so much easier
@@PatClevenger0709Another annoying thing... on the side, and as a hobby, I work on cars and small engines...
And it is absolutely annoying that I need two different sets of sockets, wrenches, hex wrenches, etc... if we switched to metric, only one set of each...
And holy hell... it's about money.
Think about how much money companies make, when in many, many professions, tools and equipment are needed for both systems of measurement.
Freaking duh...
@@jamesmerutka889 cars and most things are all metric. I mostly only have metric tools and don't have a problem. You can usually find a metrc size to fit imperial bolts.
In the uk we haven’t actually completely transitioned to metric. Our road signs are still in miles and if you ask most people their height/weight they’ll answer in stone/feet
Yeah, unless you're the BBC.
I typically answer in both, I use KG professionally in my role but used stones and pounds growing up.
@@jamessharpe2625 I’ve not used either in years. Engineering knocked it out of me
I'm an Aussie and a few months back I travelled to the UK for the first time. At Gatwick I hired a car and did a double take when the road signs were in mile units. Australia - a dutiful member of the Commonwealth - migrated to kms back in the 70s. But miles are a real link to the long history of the land in the UK - so it's an understandable exception to metric conversion.
I'm in the Uk (retired engineer, ex-physicist) and I use metric for weights and measures. I don't know my weight in the old system.
One thing I find useful is the similarity between yards and metres - very useful for small-distance road signs in the UK.
The only thing I liked from the old system was the thruppenny bit. A rare treat when I was a youngster.
Switching the industry (manufacturing, tools etc would definitely be costly) but here in Croatia we recently switched to the Euro and one thing that was added is to have all prices in Euros and then in smaller print in Croatian Kuna. We did this for 6 months before the transition and now we have it through 2023 after which we will only display Euros. I think that's quite a good way of slowly shifting the minds of people to think in a different unit. I know that you would have to shift between a bunch of them at the same time but just having it displayed in two units might help in the long run (I don't even know how much this would cost)
I was thinking that would be a good way to do it.. :)
Same here in Slovakia. Before we switched to euro, the exchange rate got frozen on something like 30SVK : 1 EUR or so.
For few months, we still used SVK but prices everywhere were displayed in both numbers so we would get used to them.
Then starting one day, every time you would pay in SVK, you were given a change in EUR. You could also pay entirely in EUR.
Then once all money in circulation was exchanged, we kept double pricing for another year or so, so while everyone was using euro, you could just do the usual calculation in crowns alongside to that.
And just like that, it was done.
They already have theirs and metric units on many things (that are also sold outside the US).
I think all the food packaging has their things + grams on them.
So in my opinion at some point the manufacturers will just nor print the US unit onto the package to save a fraction of a cent, and one by one they will silently switch without the public taking great notice.
(maximizing profit is the single most important thing for US companies, and this way with tiny changes they could do that)
The most difficult will be the ones that are publically constanly on display and talked about: street signs for example.
Peoples height and weight and distances to travel.
For as long as I can remember (and I'm 54) everything sold in the United States is listed in imperial and metric.
Some products I've noticed are "standardized" in metric. For some reason most powdered coffee creamer is sold in 2 KG bottles. I'm not sure why that is. Liquor is sold in 1.75 liter bottles. I guess the liquor industry exports allot and it just makes it easier to metric.
Denmark switched to metrics i 1907. Up till then, we also had foot, but.... feets are different. A US feet is 0,3048 meters, a old Danish feet is 0,3139 meters. And we even had a separate unit for two feets, called an Alen = 0,6277 meters - naturally, most people have two feets.
But it gets worse: A Greek foot was 0,3082 m, a Roman foot was 0,296 m, a Chinese foot was 0,320 m (but varied over the different dynasties), a French foot was 0,3248 m (also known as a Paris foot), and the English foot was 0,3048 meters like the US one, but prior to that used the North-German foot of 0,335 m, also considered the largest foot in the "system of feets".
The smallest foot ever was the German foot from the region of Hessen which was 0,250 m.
No wonder that shoe sizes are so difficult to compare.
Brillant video btw.
I think the most ridiculous part of imperial is the arbitrary number of units to form the next higher unit. For example, the most common small unit of distance in imperial is 1/16 of an inch. Of course, 16 to one inch. There are 12 inches in a foot. Three feet to a yard. 1760 yards to a mile. And volume and weight are no different, with no structure or predictability. If someone asks you how much is 6 ounces, you need to ask if they're talking about weight or volume, as an ounce could be either. Fathoms, furlongs, leagues. Honestly, evolution of measurement systems has been happening for thousands of years. Metric, as of now, is the current system. Embrace the present, and quit being the old people who measure their prune juice in hogsheads.
thats a lot of feet!
Ironically the foot is now defined in metric!
@@Tanson32 , the imperial arbitrary units was actually one of the arguments used during the French revolution, as it was seen as a way to keep the uneducated and unprivileged from understanding numbers and calculations. As formulated: "There was a wish that the units of measure should be for all people and for all time and therefore not dependent on an artefact owned by any one particular elite or nation."
This is likely an artifact of the fact that an inch is the measurement of 3 barley corns placed end to end.
Ok, which variety and under what growing conditions?
🤔
In 1990, a new highway was built in Delaware which had both metric and imperial units and people kept shooting at the metric signs. You know, with guns. There was an editorial in the local paper that called the metric system, "Communist." This was only 30-odd years ago so I wouldn't bet on it happening.
Oh my gosh, this takes me back. My family had to go to Dover to shop all the time from pre-built up Middletown, and I kinda remember seeing those around Smyrna
I have noticed a lot of people throwing the word "communist" around and trying to involve politics into unrelated topics so I would not be surprised if that would happen again
I'd say that the level of dumb that would make someone want to shoot a road sign is a good marker for the intellectual capacity of those that think imperial is somehow superior to metric.
Guns with calibers in millimeters?
Bet they where using 9mm ;-)
I was in my twenties when a big part of Europe, including my country, adopted the Euro as a currency. It took some adapting and in my experience mostly older people sometimes still have to convert to the old Belgian currency to get a feel of the value of something (mostly large sums). But it quickly felt natural to me and I never really noticed much “cultural inertia” in my surroundings. I also don’t recall many practical problems (except for getting familiar with the coins and many prices seemingly rising somewhat).
Yeah my dad would always ask "what's that in old money?" For us was the Irish punt
I've heard similar stories from a lot of European countries, and it's always fascinating to me. You must've had very low inflation before and since to have such a clear picture of prices. Here in Brazil inflation from the past 10 years is 111%. My notion of money is always from the last few years, so everything always sound expensive and I can't really remember old prices, save for a few items. For instance, I know a pastel I buy once in a while used to be R$8.90 some years ago. Now it's R$20.50.
No one in Finland does that anymore. Milk costs what it costs (one store sells it at 1.4€ and one sells at 1.5€, no higher maths needed).
-Gasoline costs what it costs, you need to refill to drive. Doesn't take long to see what station has the smallest numbers on the board and pick that one.
-Buying TV, check the adds and pick the lowest price! Those TV's were not even sold 20 years ago so no point in comparing to those times!
-Houses are bought very rarely and looking at the first 10, you get pretty good estimate on market prices.
I mean this all happened some 20+ years ago! If someone hasn't learned that milk carton costs 1.5€ and has to convert it instead to 8.5FIM has some serious soul searching to do...
@@MichelleEvans_CatLady Ireland also only moved to metric in 1972, using the same 240 pence to the pound as the UK, so depending on the age of the person, they'll have lived through 2 dramatic changes in currency. The change to metric currency kept the large denomination coins, so a shilling became 5 new pence instead of the traditional 12 pence. The old coins - the sixpence, three pence, penny, hapenny and farthing (quarter penny) were all retired and new half penny, penny and 2 pence coins were made, with the half penny being phased out in the '80s and 20 p and 1 pound coins being added.
Ireland's biggest mistake when moving to the Euro was keeping the wrong side of the coins, so instead of beautiful pictures of Irish wildlife, celtic knotwork and livestock on one side and a harp on the back, every Irish Euro coin has the same boring harp on the country side and the same generic Euro coin value side as every other country on the front 😞.
Incidentally Ireland converted to km/h speed limits and km distances without any difficulty in 2005, but EU law had made km/h indications on car speedometers mandatory anyway (And people wanted them anyway so they could take trips to continental Europe), so not really a problem. The dumbest thing about the application of US customary units is the massive gulf between feet and miles (5280 feet/mile), combined with peoples insistence on measuring altitude in feet but linear distance in miles.
The legacy of the US pound being a force and a mass unit now means that even though the metric system was designed specifically to avoid this problem, US manufacturers trying to use metric units have created the abomination that is the kilogram force, so by staying on the US Customary unit system they've actually made the metric system worse.
I know my family (as a Brit) will still say the exact same thing as @MichelleEvenas_CatLady said, "whats that in old money". Even though they were in their 20s/30s back in the 70s.
Honestly I'd personally prefer the UK went all in with the metric rather than the half in, half out system we personally have now. Its just so much easier (yes yes I hear the "it made you better at maths" arguement alot too) and while the UK won't be adopting the Euro anytime soon (sorry guys =( most of us want to come back), the £ and € are pretty similar so would be a pretty easy switch mentally.
The one that really annoys me is when the weather will randomly switch from C to F because "it sounds hotter" & since imperal hasn't been taught in schools in the UK since the 70s, most of us under the age of 60 are pretty lost.
I was in elementary school in the late 70s, and I remember a push to go metric. At first, I thought it was cool. Quickly though, I found it confusing and became resistant. Now that I'm (much) older, I would support metric conversion today. It makes more sense to me now. And most people are a lot smarter than me, so it should be a breeze for our nation now 🙂
The big confusion factor was that no one used metric units outside school, so there was no use for such measurements.
Uh… you found “confusing” to divide and multiply by 10 while you were at school? Are you serious? What kind of elementary math is teacher in the USA??
@@giannapple the math was simple. The confusion was any intuition as to what was being measured. Is 15C jacket weather? Is 20kg a lot of weight?
@@highlorddarkstarIs 20 kg a lot of weight? Just pick it up and feel - you eventually get the hang.
@@douglasclerk2764 eventually is the key. When you’re 10 and everyone measures in pounds, you don’t get many chances to even figure out 20kg is 44lbs, much less try and lift it. That was very many years ago, I can convert quickly but it’ll never be intuitive for me.
I'm from the UK: I was taught metric in the 1970s and we STILL have people coming into the hardware store where I work and ask for 1" screws. Fifty years and we STILL can't quite make the transition. So don't let anyone from the UK mock you - we use mile per hour for speed and car distances, but we fill up at the gas station (or petrol, if you will) in litres. It's mental.
To be fair maybe some of them actually need a 1" screw.
I'm 29 years old, a UK citizen and I have grown up using both imperial and metric.
@@enzycal I just need a screw, but 1" ???
@@enzycal lols. 1" is 25.4mm. We sell 25mm screws. 😁
Most young people are more metric. I've never known a gen z refer to their weight in anything other than KG, and I imagine all those people asking for '1" screws" are probably boomers.
I used to work for Vestas a Danish wind turbine producer with factories in the US and everything was done in metric there and it was much easier to work with than imperial, we should switch ASAP
I feel like that's the only way it'd really happen in the states, a gradual globalization of foreign companies telling their US branches that they can't use monkey units
MAny US industries are fully metric already. The Car industry for example, has been for some time.
I am an canadian immigrant. Came from metric country 12 years ago. 1) i saw 2-3 Canadians who was complete Imperial and they looked like having issues to recalculate to Metric for me 2) i worked in construction for some time and didn't experience any issues with converting to inches-feet 3) having 2 systems is actually fun game that you play every day
Very informative video, Joe! Thanks
Spoken like a true fellow canadian playing life on the edge
I'm in Canada and we have a combination of metric and imperial. There are some factors for why that is, but one of them is the integration of the Canadian and American markets. So certain products aimed at both Canadian and American markets end up with imperial units, like all of our ovens. But again, it's a mix, because we measure long distances in metric, but short distances and the height of a person in imperial.
Moved to Canada last year and this is one incongruity that is difficult to adapt to. My house surface area measures in sqft, highway distances are in km, but most measurement tools work in imperial. How not to make up one’s mind…
@@yanis905 You'd love the UK then, we have three systems, imperial, metric and antiquated, your weight can be in pounds, kilograms, or stones depending on where you are.
"Some" Canadians measure short distance in imperial. A smaller and smaller proportion every year. First gen born Canadians like myself, rarely use imperial ever since we did school in metric and our parents at home never used imperial.
I'm surprised he didn't talk about that the fact that the US is in fact metric (at least to my understanding). surprising i know. the US Weights & Measures Division bases everything off of Metric Units, then converts it. public scales that you use (think grocery stores, postage scales when you ship a package, the scales they use to measure your luggage at the airport etc) are all calibrated by this body, or a local body, and then converted to imperial units. when we buy products manufactured overseas its in metric units, we just convert to imperial so the general public never sees it and doesn't complain.
I'm also surprised that Joe doesn't mention this in the script. Maybe he thinks it would be too complicated for his audience 🤦♂️
@@tj2375or maybe he thought that most people already know since most of his audience also watches massive CZcamsrs like Veritasium (sp) and other who have talked about that at length.
The US government being metric, is different than "the US" being metric. I mean, it's a fun bit of wordplay as an introduction to your story, but it demonstrates how alienated Americans feel from their government.
@@squirlmy you do have a point there. i just find it interesting how much effort we put into not using it here in the US. i mean, i've heard that the legislation passed in the 70s required industries show an "intent to change" which is why American cars have both metric and imperial bolts requiring mechanics to have 2 sets of wrenches instead of 1. good for the tool industry, bad for manufacturers and mechanics alike.
We should use a unit of measurement that is equal to .01 arcseconds on a great circle on earth (or something that is very close to that measurement).
Admittedly I almost never listen to your sponsor segments, but I listened to this one because it genuinely caught my interest. The news climate seems like every news outlet has an extreme biased with none of them even trying to find middle ground. It’s exhausting. I’m definitely gonna check out this weeks sponsor.
Ditto, and that segue was smoooooth!
I use ground news, it's the only service I've ever been advertised on CZcams that I already use, it's great, not only does it give you more balance and break down media silos/bubbles, it also makes consuming news easier as it puts it all in one place and you can have a widget on your phone that gives you live headlines to make it even easier to keep in touch with what is going on in the media and all while helping break down your unconscious media bias.
Been using imperial AND metric for nearly 45 years now and have tools in both, designed machinery in both since we buy robots from a Japanese company. In the late 1980's I designed dies for stampings in imperial units for parts dimensioned in metric. So, it's been here a long time, I just incorporated it into my daily life as an additional unit of measure.
Bingo! Let the machinists do it the way they are most accurate. Engineers can deal with a little extra math, that's what they do
@@daveb3910 Except the engineer can destroy a 120 million dollar rocket and satellite when they get the "little extra math" wrong.
@@krashd I remember that!
I work for a distillery, and while packaging is in milliliters, excise taxes are based off of proof gallons, which are different from wine gallons (the regular gallon you know and love). It's a bit maddening.
I’d love for CZcamsrs (especially in the science, tech, education scene) to use metric by default and then overlay imperial units. Same way people learn foreign languages by seeing subtitles.
I really like this idea!
Depending on context this does happen, but it is typically temperature, velocity or distance and other things are less common to have both.
The only sciences youtubers I watch are paleo youtubers and thank god they generaly use both
I think it's less about wanting to switch, and more about...we have SO MANY worse things we need to worry about
Maybe it‘s just the thing needed to start a “butterfly effect” that will cause all the other problems to evaporate 😆
Druglords in Mexico are already using the Metric and now it’s killing us
You can do two things at once :-) just think all those millions you would save that you could use for infrastructure etc. imperial system has an on going cost to run.
Whilst your at it, what about switch date formats too, to fit in with literally every other country in the world? 🤣
Not to mention numbers are hard for a huge portion of America.
@@lucashouse9117It’s because numbers are hard for the huge parts of America, we should go for the switch. Metric system is way easier to calculate. Getting rid of all the fractions of an inch for starters. 1/8, 3/8? How can you even picture numbers like that?
I remember the effort to switch to the metric system when I was in elementary school in the 70’s. It failed miserably, but the one thing I still remember being taught is that a centimeter is roughly the width of your pinkie finger nail. This has helped a lot through the years to convert to metric measurements.
I was in elementary school in the 1970s. I remember we had to learn about the metric system because the US was going full metric soon; it never entirely took for me. And all the banks around me which had time-and-temp displays had the temp in Fahrenheit and also in Celsius. And then it just stopped. Nobody talked about metric any more, at least outside of science class.
I feel the same way today about "lumens" as I did back then about metric. Obviously a higher number is more than a lower number; but I have no idea how bright "800 lumens" is. But if you say "60 watt equivalent" I know exactly what you mean.
Funnily enough it is the opposite for me, I find lumens to be quite straight foeward, while every time i buy light bulbs based on wattage the result ia very inconsistent due to the manufacturers sometimes using equivalents and others just writting the actual wattage in the box, I'm assuming things are different outside of Mexico tho'
@@elisehalflightEvery box I see says something along the lines of "800 lumens, 60 watt equivalent, 8 real watts." Whatever the particular brightness of the bulb is. There might be manufacturers which skip the "X watt equivalent" line but I haven't seen them. Maybe my mind edits them out like an inverse blind spot.
The lumens argument might be good at showing how your brain gets used to relate to something; but in many ways it is a bad analogy. Lumens is a meassure of visible light, and watts (which happens to be metric) is a meassure of power, as in the amount of energy the bulb uses every second. Bulbs should have never been meassured in watts, they should have always been meassured in lumens. Becuase different light technologies have different efficiencies and consume different amounts of energy for the same lumen output. The lumen output is the most import charcteristic. How mush power it uses is also important; but changes with technology.
I'm an American that moved to Europe last year. It was confusing at first but it finally clicked for me when I went on an 8km walk. That sort of grounded the system in my head and it all made sense. Obviously the math itself is easy to learn in a few minutes but having that referential memory to think about it in a physical sense helped quite a bit. At this point, I don't care what the US does anymore. I'm staying here and metric works great.
So the problem is in the unwalkable american cities, again ;-)
@@tenJajcus 🌎👩🚀🔫👨🚀 Always has been.
Ah yes the good ole 4.97 mile walk.
Thats why i like yards since yards almost equal meters.
You can go bit by bit.
We use metric, but stuff like weight and volume have generally been measured in imperial.
Gas pumps used to sell in gallons, they eventually switched to liters.
Grocery stores sold meats by the pound, now it's by gram, but both are labeled, and a lot of stores have the conversion rate plastered on the walls.
Exactly. Enact a law that for the next 20 years any time a road sign gets replaced the replacement must carry both miles and kilometres, then in 20 years time enact another law that says any time a road sign gets replaced it has to contain only kilometres. Over 30 years or so you would have converted the population to kilometres through virtually no cost. You could do the same for just about anything, no one says conversions have to happen over night.
@@krashd thing is no one really looks at the signs anymore, bc gps is a thing and quite prevalent (aka phones) so signs aren't really doing much. And for supermarkets u realize how much more annoying it will be? Ppl can't even bother reading the price of stuff (largest number on a label) u think that would actually do much (i work in a supermarket and i can't tell u how many ppl insist one thing is a certain price despite the price tag saying otherwise). Now for serving sizes it would be more annoying bc unless u have a measuring cup that has metric, it will be hard to calculate something like oh i need 500 ml of milk in this cereal and x grams of cereal, yeah barely anyone even reads serving sizes on stuff like that
I wish the official switch to metric would take place. In the military, we use metric for everything (I guess cus NATO and ISAF is/were a thing). I did however get really good at memorizing conversions in college, which I think should be a staple of all college degrees
I remember getting quarter-decked for being stupid enough to answer a question posed by my kill hat in boot with meters instead of yards.
NATO and similar cooperations. Just imagine you'd have a norwegian forward observer relaying artillery coords to a US artillery group… who does the conversion? Because while I'm rather certain some brass entertained the thought of making all NATO (and all other allies) go Imperial, this of course had no chance of getting implemented. So… risk converting between metric and imperial? With, obviously, potentially *very* dire consequences? Or just have the US military go metric?
@ I think teach us metric from the beginning, but have us learn conversions pretty early on in MOS training too
as a retired RN, switching from inches outside the of medicine was a pain when having spent 12 to 16 hours going by 10 by ten by 10 was so easy!
My grandmother was an acquisitions specialist at a law library and my grandfather was a tool and die maker at a company whose products were sold internationally. Both were familiar with the metric system and both hated it. When I asked my grandmother why she disliked it so much she confidently explained that an inch was 2.54 centimeters and, in her words, "2.54 is s silly number when 1 is so much easier." I tried to explain how flawed that argument was but she just couldn't wrap her head around it. My grandfather could use either but in his words "I can't afford to replace all my measuring tools." I've always regarded that conversation as a microcosm of the US resistance to conversion.
Here in Mexico we use the metric system, still tools come in inches, and we handle it just fine
the cost of tools and stuff like roadsigns that need to be replaced is the only reasonable argument and the only real thing that would stop this from happening.
All the people around the world who make fun of us still using the "imperial" system should instead pity us. We have to spend twice as much on tools, since we need to have on hand both SAE and Metric tools.
Seriously, I think the only trade that would have a hard time is building construction. Remodeling or making an addition to a house built in inches and feet using metric dimension materials would be a major headache. How does Canada put up with it? They're a metric country but export lumber to the US dimensioned in feet and inches.
There is no difficulty.
It's just it's not their idea.
@@nfnworldpeace1992 But road signage isn't even an argument, just mandate both units on new signs and as part of ordinary maintenance replacement, wait a century, switch to metric only, wait a century.
Congratulations you switched road signage units at no extra cost except for the new sign's design and legislating it into place.
Sure it takes 200 years but 100 years is about how long it would take the last imperial only person to leave this mortal realm before switching to metric only and replace all the signage once more over next 100.
When I was in Jr high back in the 1970s right after the Metric Conversion Act was signed (que the harp music 😄), our teachers told us, "We're gonna teach you guys the metric system and you'd better learn it because you're gonna need it. It's coming, people, like it or not!" Then they gave us all metre sticks, which we used for all kinds of purposes other than measuring 😄.
When I was at school in the 60's, (in Australia), we were taught the imperial system, but about 1965 we changed to learning the metric system, the coins changed to dollars and cents in 1965. Car speedo's changed to metric in the mid 70's. So it was a slow process. In my 20's work life I always used feet and inches, but later I when back to University and had to learn the metric system. After using the metric system for so long now, I find it so much easier that I would never go back.
One thing I discovered with higher level education is the imperial system just can't handle some of the heavy physics equations, that is, there is no imperial equivalent.
Did I encourage this deep dive into your channel? I've been on a rabbit hole of my own watching your old content lol.
Ireland is the most recent country to go full metric, it's really quite doable when planned properly and much easier in everyday life and business.
Yes and they didn’t make a big deal about the change! It was completed 18 years ago, without much resistance. Once the cars began showing KM and Miles on the dash, people were happy.
Why does it make your life easier?
@@jordandixon6255 Can't speak for him, but I would love to do math by 10 instead of 12. Plus I know that a kilometer is 1000 meters, but I can't remember how many feet or yards are in a mile to save my life, despite the fact I have live in the southern US my whole life. That and I'm tired of watching a European cooking show and having to convert grams into approximate cups is a pain and not always accurate.
Yet you can still go to the pub and order a pint.
I have worked in nuclear power, farming, and the military. The units don’t make any of those jobs easier or harder, but using any units carry well as long as it’s the same, and I find it funny that so many people get angry about us using freedom units. Judging us because it’s different than what they use, and getting angry if we judge them for using something different! LOL!
The biggest problem we had to learn in technical English is the difference between the English billion (10^12) and the US American billion (10^9) . That was around the 80's. In middle school we already got the BiNaS book, that's a dutch condensed reference guide for SI biology and chemistry. And it already stressed the need for mega and giga.
And then on UNI that technical English part that warned us for that. Yeah, when possible I won't use billion.
To be clear: how many of the British here has learned billion as 10^12 and not as 10^9 and thank you Hollywood.
I think the use of different characters to mark the beginning of the decimal fraction is a bigger problem. The ambiguity of “billion” can be resolved in scientific work by simply not using the term, which is unnecessary.
The Heck do you call 10 to the 9th then?
@@User31129Milliard
A lot!
As somebody who grew up in the UK, was 10 when decimalisation took place & who now lives in New Zealand, I agree that it takes no small amount of mental adjustment to switch systems. Currency, distance & liquid volumes aren't so difficult, but I personally still struggle with weights - even after nine years. Every time I'm asked for my weight, I still automatically answer in stones & pounds! My kilogram equivalent just doesn't seem to remain in my head - maybe because it's such a BIG number! lol
Set your bathroom scale to use KG, then you don't have to learn to convert, you just answer what the scale tells you.
Human beings learn through repetition. A bathroom scale tends to do help train one's brain.
We had this weird hodge podge of measuring systems for a lot of things, which often just went away with time. I still measure distance in metric, but ask me how tall a person is, and i might struggle a bit. It's easier, for example to say, oh she's tiny, like 5'2 instead of 1.58 meters tall. I train my brain by getting one of those height measuring stickers they have in schools for young kids.
Also, one more odd habit coming not from colonialism but because of sheer dumb luck- as a kid everyone got compared to dad. So, how tall is say, Gerard Butler? About as tall as dad. Liam Neeson? 2 inches taller than dad. Every poor bugger across the planet had to be compared to dad.
As an adult I'm about the same length as Liam Neeson (193cm) and it turns out way too many of my friends now use me as the measure. For example "we saw this massive christmas tree at their house, it was bigger than you!". I'm personally not a fan of this system but no one is obliged to care.
You just gotta train your brain.
Yo Joe, your vids are top notch!
Scotland Loves you, Man!
Missed opportunity to talk about how Napoleon being small was due to a conversion error between different kind of "feet".
PIn it @joescott
He brought it up and referred to another video of his that covers it. There was no need to double dip on that fact.
When I was in 5th grade, 11 years old, 1977, my school had a poster making contest promoting the metric system. I submitted a poster with an alien and a UFO in the background with the alien saying TAKE ME TO YOUR LITER. I came in second. That was the second time I came in second in a contest at the school. Yes, I’m still bitter.
That also means that I definitely wasn’t in diapers when you started the channel. I’m also not currently in diapers, thankfully.
Ok, now I gotta know what was the winning poster because that pun was awesome.
@@5G5SF5 😂 I wish I could remember now. I definitely only remember my disappointment. The poster was really well drawn too!
Best pun ever how did you not know?
@@foracal5608 *win? Trust me, I wondered the same!
@@BrianAlt who knows
I was in high school when the last push to metric came. They made a big deal distributing learning materials at school and we were all groaning about the crazy of it all, and then it just got dropped. No announcements, no explanations.
the loss of the Mars mission is actually an object lesson in how much more painful switching now would be, because rather than being a great example of the superiority of the metric system, it's a great example of the catastrophic failures that can result from accommodating two different systems. and for sure, any attempt to switch would necessarily come with a protracted period of using both systems. we'd have a Mars lander catastrophe every week, all up and down the entire economy.
Back in the 70s, there was a series of commercials on the metric system. To be honest, I found those commercials a huge help to getting used to it. Like one lady was at a gas station and said "A kilometer is just a little over half a mile"....so when it became a comparison it was more clear to me and not so bad. To this day, I can convert Celsius to Farenheit in my head. But I'm really good at math so maybe that's what helped me.
What they should do is just start teaching both systems in schools. Stuff is far easier to learn when you are younger than when you have old people problems lol.
Cheat sheet for beginners: a kilometer is just over half a mile (.6 of a mile), a meter is just over a yard (about 39 inches), an inch is about 2.56 centimeters so 2 inches is 5 centimeters, a liter is just over a quart. Once you have those down, then it's just a matter of extrapolating to the next. So, if you are talking in miles (it's 10 miles down the road), if you double it, you'll be fairly close to the kilometers measurement. It's not perfect, but it's close enough for referencing.
My UK friends are just in awe that I can switch temperatures in my head. The actual formula is fairly easy to shift.
From F to C: subract 30, then divide by 2. (It's actually subtract 32, then divide by 9/5 but the adjustment to 30 and 2 makes it easier)
From C to F: double and add 30.
Try it and check it through Google. It'll be fairly close every time.
@@bridgetsclamathe schools taught both systems when I was in school in the 90s and 2000s. Emphasis was on metric for science
@@bridgetsclama They do teach both but don't follow through in further education, unless you choose a field like the sciences, which are metric in the US.
When Alabama was trying to get a new Mercedes plant they actually installed kilometer markers along the highway between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa. After they were chosen as the location the state went back out and removed them.
Not the first time we spoofed the Germans.
I'd switch to metric fairly easily. It's a more intuitive system in my opinion, well, with the exception of cooking measurements. I think the trend I've seen, where there is imperial and metric units on some things. Just add metric to everything along side the imperial units, then over years just slowly phase out imperial measurements. That way it's not "Yesterday I was 6'2" but today I'm 188cm, grrr". Having a period of years where everyone sees those measurements side by side and I think it be an easier transition.
Yes, things like this need a gradual change, and that is the correct way, but they want to force them to lazily switch from in one moment to anothet just to get over with it
As an American, I’m definitely in the “switch to metric” camp. I will say that while metric is generally better for temperature, I do prefer Fahrenheit for discussing outdoor temperatures. It has a wider range, so you can say things like “in the 60s” and “in the 80s” and that tells you a lot more about what the temperature is/will be outside than saying “in the 20s” is in Celsius. But ya know, we’ll adapt.
Based on experience in a metric country, if we want to be more specific, we'd just say "in the low 20's".
A wider range? How? It is temperatures. Wait, doesn't Fahrenheit have decimals?
But yes, I just say something like "20 to 25 C" instead of "In the 60s F".
@@SIC647 without using decimals, fahrenheit is more precise.
the fun is that there are idiots out there that call imperial units freedom units ...I mean...wtf. the freedom to follow the rule of an emperor? wtf.
Also the argument that switching to metric would be expensive is totally self defeating if you ask a economics professional with expirience in fast moving technological industries.
Using the imperial units instead of metric is something called "technical debt " the longer you wait to do the transition the more expensive it will become .
it might be true that the USA waited so long that the technical debt aquired now exceeds the value of closing in on everyone else ahead in that technology .
yet the catastrophy is still pushed into the future and the price to pay is still increasing .
There is no debt that never had to be played or a bancruptcy that didn't hurt .
@@TremereTT _" there are idiots out there that call imperial units freedom units"_
As a non-American, I've never heard an American say "Freedom units" who wasn't being self-depreciating or ironically critical of American jingoism. Chill.
You missed two details: the shipwreck that lost the standard kilogram (and other measurement standard objects); and the fact that our imperial units are defined using metric units. Oh the irony on that last one!
Even more ironic when you learn that the meter was defined in the US. Or at least more accurately.
New Zealand switched to metric in 1976, which is fairly recent in comparison to other countries. The switch was not a gigantic cultural issue here, and in hindsight happened smoothly. It makes sense... at some point America will (hopefully?) have to make the change.
With the civil war mentality that took over the USA, they will take at least 300 years to adopt the international system. If we're not all destroyed by nuclear weapons before that.
Very similar to Canada. It's not difficult - they just insist on making it difficult.
I was born before the switch but educated after. I still know my height in feet but not metres and my weight in kg but not lbs. The change happened smoothly but /very/ slowly to the point where, culturally, it's still happening.
I was in high school during the switch. Had to do the same physics problems in imperial and metric. Metric was so much easier! Still reasonably comfortable with both systems.
NZ is like the size of the Milwaukee Metropolitan area and not a single one of its residents has a strong political opinion.
It probably wasn't too hard, no.
Love ya Joe! ❤
I grew up in the then new metric system here in Australia in the 70s, and learned that at school and the imperial system at home. Metric is far simpler and just makes sense.
There’s also a system of measurement in parts of Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory that I believe is still in use where distance is measured in cans.
🇦🇺🐨
Here in Victoria, when metric came in, the primary school FORCIBLY REMOVED all wooden rulers, and replaced them with metric wooden rulers. Having a ``dual scale´´ ruler after that date, got you sent to the head master for the Paddle on your buttocks 6 times.
I did wake up one morning and all of the weights and measured had changed. That’s how it works, you have a change-over date with a huge amount of education before and a huge amount (like a couple of generations) of lee-way afterwards. NZ changed in 1972 (if I recall correctly) and us primary (grade) school kids were the first generation taught the new system. My parents (now elderly) have changed but my grandparents (long since passed) could function perfectly well in metric but when telling stories about their day or recalling past events always used imperial.
Do you have any idea just how bad the US primary (and increasingly secondary) education system really is? You want a disaster?
FWIW NZ changed to metric in 1976 , but did its currency in the late 1960s
NZ also has a population of 5.2 million, as opposed to the US' 330 million. Population density is a significant factor.
@@丫oIn what way?
As an American I sometimes feel trapped by the Imperial system. Like our country is stuck in something that we're too deeply mired in to break out of. And if we can't get out from under the weight of this, what other anachronisms are going to hold us down over the next century?
Anyway, this didn't help! But it was a good history piece all the same. Thanks Joe.
"As an Imperial American..." Shockingly Canadians and Mexicans are also American, just metric...
"what other anachronisms are going to hold us down over the next century?"
maybe your weekly American school shooting?
But you measure most of your ammunition in millimeters... Surely that on it's own is a good enough reason to change everything else to metric too.
@@peglor That's because NATO and the Cold War my man. Well, technically it's because WW2 and supplying countries with weaponry that didn't use our measurement system to fight off Nazis and ward off Commies. Katyushas do not mount well on Studebakers with the wrong screws and all.
HAD YOU guys not burned your continent to the ground and roped us into it twice, I imagine we'd still be an isolationist country using old world barrel sizes.
I am South African and we adopted the Metric system in (I think) 1960. It was an easy sell, because of the anti-British feelings at the time, as we were still a colony (actually a Dominion, like Canada). South Africa became independent (but the Black majority couldn't vote but that's a different story).
A few years ago, I had an American director who was pretty fluent in Metric units, having lived and worked in Engineering in Australia and South Africa and living in Portugal. He didn't have problems living in both worlds.
Growing up in the ‘90s, I recall many instances of teachers, explaining the difference between the meter stick and the yardstick. 😂 They seemed to want to teach both, but it was too confusing.
Reason why the U.S. never adopted the metric system is because we all have a foot fetish. 🇺🇸 🦶
I’m a bench jeweler, and in the jewelry industry we use either jewelry specific units, or metric. I’m in a very rural, very conservative Minnesota community, and when I refer to gem sizes in millimeters no one bats an eye. It’s one small thing I can do to normalize metric units.
Two liter pop bottles have somehow never bothered anyone. That I know of
😂 The writing is double plus funny today. 😂 Extra thumbs up. 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
2:24 "Imagine what it would be like if you woke up one morning and all the numbers you used to measure your life suddenly changed. It would be chaos."
Firstly it would never happen like that, the change would be gradual and the units would be integrated and displayed side by side initially.
Secondly, it happened in my lifetime. I was alive when we went from imperial to decimal here in the U.K.
I don't remember any chaos and despite a bit of grumbling from old people, we just got on with it (with a few stubborn units unchanged 😁), even my grandparents coped just fine.
It's usually politics that gets in the way (coronavirus is a classic example) but science is bipartisan and metric is the language of science.
Just do it.
I grew up in Germany and apart from harley motor cycles and the occasional bicycle screw everything is metric. Bottles are 1L, Butter comes in 250grams, Screws are in mm, wire gauge is in mm diameter, you buy 1cm or 2cm lumber (and it actually is 2cm thick) and so on. Everything makes sense. Now I live in Costa Rica, here we have the metric system too. But I buy water in 18.9l bottles, I buy 2.5cm x 5cm lumber which actually is smaller if you measure it.
We have AWG here which is bonkers and the US pipe measures are even worse (1” steel is not 1” copper is not 1” pvc… and dont get me started on pipe threads).
So despite Costa Rica being technically metric, often we have the worst of both worlds here….
I recently found out that Costa Rica's currency is comically small compared to the U.S. Dollar. I heard they have a 1 million note. Which is like $2,000 or something.
@@User31129 it’s just a number. When I moved here I got 670 CRC for one dollar. Now I get 500 CRC for one dollar. The dollar is very weak against the CRC. Everything above a certain value is just traded in USD here to avoid the big numbers, but the USD lost more than 20% of its value here in the last two years alone.
Pipes are often measured in NB (nominal bore) which pretty much just means 'close to' . I belive this is a legacy from when manufacturing pipe was difficult and accuracy was not a priority.
And as far as plumbing and hydraulics go, almost everything is still imperial. I live in NZ and have only ever known metric until I started working in hydraulics. There's BSPP, BSPT, JIC, NPT which are the most common and are all imperial!
Lumber the world over as far as I'm aware is all still imperial with very few exceptions. It's sold as metric in Europe but is standardized to the same dimensions as north american lumber. IE, we use 2x4in x 8-16ft normally in construction and in europe that would be 45x95mm x 2.15-4.88m instead.
What sizes are commonly used in construction varies from country to country depending on local geology, snow/wind loads, eathquakes, wealth level, etc but its all standardized sizes of lumber most anywhere in the world.
I live in the caribbean for example and work in a few different countries down here, and i've worked with both metric and imperial lumber and its all the same finished dimensions as far as I can tell whether its sold as metric or not.
I've worked with a few guys from the UK and from the Netherlands and a few guys from Africa and they all say its 2x4 or its the metric equivalent there. Asia is imperial lumber as well.
@@k1ng5urfer in germany it's definitely metric and the size is as described. We do have 5x10cm, which is roughly equivalent to a 2x4 because it's just a nice size to work with. But if you buy boards its 1cm or 2cm thick and not 1/2" or 1". And no matter if you buy surfaced or rough lumber, if you pay for 2cm you get 2cm :-) But the UK is different, because the UK has never fully transitioned to metric. With the netherlands I'm not sure, but I would guess they are like the rest of Europe (except the UK) completely metric.
As an engineer, I've been using the metric system exclusively since around 2001. When I get something in imperial units, I convert to metric. I spec everything I do and everything I have contractors do in metric. It would not be as big an adjustment as Americans want to believe. I guess changing road signs would be an expensive pain, but they'll get use to it.
I remember when the UK made their currency a decimal based currency. I modern analog to the old UK currency system is found in the Harry Potter books. The wizard currency seems to be based on 3 6 & 9.
It doesn't. The wizard currency is based on random prime numbers. There were 17 Sickles in a Galleon, and 29 Knuts in a Sickle, meaning there were 493 Knuts in a Galleon.
Switching can be just a matter of using different measurements for the same sizes. In the UK, fence panels are sold in metric measurements (say 122cm), but they are actually 4 foot panels ( or whatever other "foot" size fence panel existed pre metric conversion). and most tape measures and rulers show both units. Beer is in pints, milk in litres. most food tins (like soup or tomatoes) are 4 inches high by 3.5 inches wide (roughly 14 oz contents sold as 400g)
I was a kid at elementary school when Australia switched over to metric in the early 70s... I started learning feet and inches and had to change to metric. It was no big deal for me. There were no riots either. 🙂
This happened to me here in Canada as well; well except that the metric stuff didn't catch with me. I had many fights with teachers for "having the wrong answer" when I did in fact have the right answer, just not in metric. That started in third grade, by fifth they stopped trying to force the issue with me. It wasn't like the teachers didn't remember how to use imperial so they knew I had the right answer anyway.
same in canada. usa is full of people looking to be pissed off at something . they are anti govt . a bunch of them are in the govt right now shutting it down over stupid shit like abortion. yet we are supposed to be free from religious influence in govt.
Same here in the states. Our math teachers were giving us problems in metric units in grade school and starting to have road signs with both metric and imperial, but after 1980, it just faded out.
I was a young kid when Australia was converted to metric. Was a strange timeo as I went to hospital for my appendix to be removed, when I came out all the road signs where in Kilometers per hour!
Obviously, you were transported to our dimension during your operations. In your home dimension, Australia still uses the Imperial system.
Australia switched in 1974. Overnight the road signs across a huge continent changed from miles to kilometres. And the weights in the supermarkets went from pounds to kilograms. It helped that it was not " political".
As an American, I dislike the imperial system. In college in the early 2000s, it was so much easier to use the metric system (for engineering). Much of our classwork was done in both systems. Instructors purposefully switched between them to keep us familiar with both. And which one was better and easier to use? Metric, by far. Then I graduate and...every company uses imperial. 😐 I only saw metric again when we had overseas clients.
I've lived in the US all my life (60+ years). So I was around in the 70's when there was a push to metric. I was excited because even at that young age (10-17 y/o) I could see how Metric was going to be so much easier. So I started learning it early and I just waited... and waited... and, well, I'm still waiting 45-50 years later. Finally I just decided to do it myself. So, about 5-ish years ago I switched to Celsius in my home, car, work (oh wait, I'm a pilot, temperatures are already in Celsius)...
Point being, once I converted I found it was easy.
0 is the freezing point of water (now when the weatherman is saying we're going to have a freeze tonight I know it's going to be below 0C).
When it gets to 10C it's cold outside.
20C is comfortable.
30C is hot.
40C is sweltering and
50C is "Am I in Hell right now" Hot.
Super freaking easy.
(Note: 0C=32F, 10C=50F, 20C=68F, 30C=86F, 40C=104 and 50C=122F)
Distances are a bit more difficult because the signage is all in imperial. Miles vs. Kilometers. Let's see, a Mile is 5280 feet or 1760 Yards. Ok, that's pretty easy. I like to hike and my step is about 1 yard, so about 1800 steps to a mile.
Ok, a meter is about a running step (or 39-ish inches). 1000 steps to a Kilometer. Hmmm.... a 5K run, I can do that in about 5000 steps (or about 1/2 my daily step count, if I'm lucky)...
I'd go into weights and fluids, but you get the point. Super easy (hell, if a 50-60 year old man can do it....)
I guess it starts somewhere. I have several of my friends and co-workers make the temperature conversion (it's easier if you have a digital thermostat) and they say they like it better. Now indoor temps are about 22-23C (71.6 - 73.4F). Note: My friend set's his thermostat to 22.5C (72.5F). Said it was the perfect temperature for his place. Daytime temps have been about 35-ish this summer here in Texas. Working right up there to sweltering (not gonna lie, I live near the coast and with the humidity it's DEFINITELY sweltering this summer)
Sorry, I just realized I wrote more in this comment than I've written in ALL the comments I've ever posted on CZcams. Holy crap, I'm actually passionate about something other than flying. Who'd thought.
And yet I was recently forced to replace the altimeter in my 'plane to one reading in feet, due to new regulations being introduced in Australia to "standardise" altitude measurement in flight. We fly in knots, miles and feet and pump avgas by the gallon, but drive in km/h, using litres of fuel. Annoying, but Americans invented the aeroplane, so they also got to decide which side the pilot sits on and which orientation for a switch is "on".
Ha! Gaaaa!
Love this! I’m from Ohio. Mostly I think in C but sometimes my friends insist I covert for them.
For that 28C = 82F is handy as is 16C = 61F. I like those digit reversing ones.
I’m cheap so I cool my house to 23.5 and heat it to 18 and put on a sweater.
Just do it slowly and gradually, and accept a transition period where you use both systems. And be patient. Think 50 year transition not 5 years. Expect that most will take their measuring system to the grave 🙂
Exactly! Just do it similar to the Euro introduction.
I won't give up Imperial units, even when I'm 1.8288 meters under!
I remember it being introduced in Mr Schmeling’s 4th grade class (1972-73 Indiana) and it seemed to just disappear after the roll out and we never heard about it again.
Funny story: I got to learn the Imperial system backwards when studying at UCLA because they were teaching the metric system people to the rest of the class 😂
To be fair, Canada’s conversion to metric wasn’t as smooth as it seemed. A theory is that it was pushed to hide an actual pinch of a new gas tax, by hiding it in the conversion to new units. Either way, some 40 years later and you’ll still find people who know their height only in feet and inches, and their weight in pounds.
And. The month of Thermidor did not catch on at ALL!
Indeed. And it will never fully catch on until the U.S. catches on. We still use imperial units in the construction industry due to our major trade with the U.S.
And everyone I know, even myself, use imperial for a person's weight and height. It would be nice if we could fully convert one day.
I always wonder why imperial units are called "freedom units", when in reality they're leftovers from the empire that, probably safe to say, oppressed early americans. When they were 13 colonies and stuff, while metric units were born in french revolution, that pursued freedom and equality.
In that sense it is metric units are freedom units, not imperial ones, from which comes only oppression and lack of freedom.
So why wouldn't you, dear americans, convert to the freedom units at last?
because it is a joke
We don’t take edicts very well.
Because of sarcasm?
@@cancermcaids7688 still they were created in the revolutionary france, so in a sense those are the freedom and equality units, no matter that napoleon decided to spread them. Looks like they're were just more practical, or was good to fuel his ambitions.
Seems in line with the US labeling things as "freedom" that are not in the general public interest. Branding is more important than the product.
To clarify one point about I-19, the speed limits are given in mph, not kph. You can imagine what would happen if the speed limit signs said "120."
I love you put the cm and kg on screen when using units. If only all cooking channels did that.
Canada began the conversion to a metric standard in 1975. The process was slow and there was some resistance. Some industries and products remain imperial e.g lumber, but the change is practical and possible.
Possible, sure; but with a nation of just under 40 million people, as opposed to the US' 330 million, practicality is a vastly different matter.
@@丫o That is the purpose of the education system. Make it practical for the next generation.
@@丫o I keep hearing that it's a scale problem, but I don't see it. Why would that even matter? Population density might be a factor though, more road signs per tax payer to convert.
As a handy man who frequently has to do division and multiplication of fractions, I’m all for the metric system.
This video had so many jokes in it I kept busting out in laughter and had to pause the video.
When I was in 8th in 1968 my math teacher told us that the U.S. would be metric in less than 5 years. So, he proceeded to immerse us into the world of metric. I memorized all the terms and their values. The metric system made sense because of how measurements were multiples of 10. Though the Country never converted to metric, I still use what I learned all those years ago.
I grew up in Britain as it was changing, I was 7 years of age in 1971! We were taught both systems in school, and I hardly think of imperial! I now live in Poland, and obviously they use metric. But beyond that, it is simpler.
So you've been acclimated to the system for quite some time, then. The country Joe's talking about hasn't.
The point was that both can be taught and changeover can be gradual.
In Canada, we had two roll-outs for the metric system. The first one was a dual system-signage/labelling was done with both metric and imperial units, side by side. After I think 5-6 years of dual systems, we switched again, this time to exclusively metric units. There was almost no push-back from the manufacturing sector, as they used the conversion process to slide in a little bit of shrinkflation by rounding down their packaging to the nearest 10 grams while not changing their prices; and oil companies used it as cover for jacking up their prices too.
With full (quiet) corporate support, the conservative parties just kinda let the issue die, so we stayed metric.
You say that as if much of Canada doesn't still use the imperial system daily. Ask a Canadian how tall he is and you'll get an answer in feet.
Canada's switch happened in the 1970s, there were no Conservative parties in power then.
We had the same issue with retailers here in the UK- four pints of milk suddenly became two litres of milk, yet it remained the same price, even though two litres is only three and a half pints.
We still have to travel to France for a "Royale with cheese" though, as our burgers are still sold by the quarter pound.
It all depends on the context of what's being measured I suppose- having the freezing point of water at 0° and the boiling point at 100° makes absolute sense, but you try cutting a pie into tenths instead of eighths and see how incredibly difficult it is.
That's why it's best to be fluent in both, as people who went to school before you were allowed to use calculators in lessons tend to be.
🍄
@@the_unrepentant_anarchist.I remember the flak when we went decimal: shopkeepers were apparently unable to read the very clear "conversion" rules, and everything got a bit more expensive overnight.
Cutting a pie into eighths might be easier than cutting it into tenths but it's no more useful if there are only seven of you eating the pie.
Why am I not surprised ...
When we switched to Euro, price numbers just stayed the same, despite the Euro being twice as valuable. An instant 100% price increase ... fkn greedy corporations.
I enjoy all your videos and find them fascinating... While my comment isn't about the metic system I was wondering if in a future video you could go more in depth in retro-causality? I know you've touched on it a lot in your quantum physics videos, but I'm perplexed at the larger implications of this theory. No pressure though... I know I'm not yet a Patreon supporter, but it would make mine and others day to see such a video.
I used to work for Ford, and they switched to metric for new programs during the 90s. But legacy vehicles were still built using the imperial system. So for example, the Lincoln Town car had 1/2 inch wheel lug studs while the Continental rolling down the same assembly line had 12 mm wheel lug studs. This required two seperate sets of lug nut installation tools called multi-spindles. One set of these multi-spindles cost something like $300,000. Plus it took double the assembly line space and double the workers needed.
As a 68 year of retired software engineer I decided to get rebellious and switched myself to the metric system. We don't have to wait for the government. I changed my personal electronics ( phone, computer and watch ) to use the metric system. For my woodworking I switched my 3D modeling and CNC router and measuring tapes to metric. I'll never look back. Getting my wife to switch is another story ( not going to happen )
>rebellious
Nothing says rebellious like going with a bland European system used in the rest of the world
Baking is much easier with recipes in metric units...just an idea.
@@thomasalbrecht5914that's true! It's easier to be precise. That matters more in baking than in most other types of cooking. Hadn't thought about that before.
@@thomasalbrecht5914 why is it easier?
for I := 0 to 9 do WriteLn('good for you!');
I’m from the US and like many other commenters here (as a Gen Xer) I was in 4th grade when the 1970’s push to switch happened. We learned both systems in school in preparation for the switch, but then it just faded away. I think the metric system has permeated enough into many industries and facets of our society that it almost feels like we have a dual system at this point. I’m ALL FOR switching to metric EXCEPT for weather. I much prefer the precision and relatability of Fahrenheit for air temps. Celsius is fine for scientific and other uses.
Canada switched to metric between 1970 and 1985. We're still using both units in informal context, but eacj generations is moving one more step away from imperial unit. I'm of the generation who dropped the Farenheight for water temperature, my father dropped the miles, younget people mostly dropped the foot and inches...
I remember the 70s metric push. Billboards and grade school classes about it were everywhere.
I was a machinist for years and we used metric all the time. It shouldn't be a big deal.
As an engineer who makes the drawings for machinists, we switch between metric and inch all the time. Some parts that join in an assembly are made overseas in metric dimensions and some are made in the US in inch. It's never been an issue though, we just learn to think in both systems.
@MusicAutomation I think that's the really important thing to emphasise. You just have to learn the new system, not try to convert in your head every time. I grew up using metres and feet interchangeably and it's never been a bother. I know what 180cm is roughly and I have a good sense of what 6 foot is. But I don't think or 185cm, that's about 6 foot, I just think, okay that's 1.85m etc.
Too many Americans try to convert Celsius to fahrenheit rather than just learning what the numbers correspond to.
@@MusicAutomation That didn't work out real good for NASA m8. 🙂
I agree with you.
I also have a lot of experience in design and manufacture, and it isn't such a big problem.
At the end it is also fun to know by heart most of the conversions anyways 😅
Always found it funny that machinists divided the inch into thousandths (a very metric thing to do) instead of 64ths like carpenters. IMO old time machinists would love using the millimeter if they didn't have to replace all their SAE tools.
The U.S. has been totally metric for many years... with one level of abstraction. The foot is officially defined in terms of meters, the pound is officially defined in terms of kilograms, etc.
Gallons of petrol
Miles per hour
Quarter pounder
3 tablespoons
a pinch
a few clicks
it's 3 hours up north
its 3 swimming pools of (liquid)
that is as tall as a 10 story building
the size of a football field
3 inch thick titanium submarine
pfft.... totally metric.. nope...
My hill is F > C for describing human comfort
"Because cows have.... fewer ...toes?" _WHEEEEZE_ * collapses in gigglefit *
I love you man, don't ever change. You are my happy place
I for one wish the country would just get it over with, and personally I’m already using the metric system wherever practical such as tracking my weight in kg, checking the weather in °C, and mapping routes in km. Most electronic gadgets, many analog measuring devices, and all computers support both and can easily convert from one system to the other already, but they default to imperial measurements in the US and most people are too lazy to switch them. Maybe it would help if we had these devices default to metric regardless of where they’re sold or used so people would either have to make a conscious effort to switch back to the old system or just live with the new.
I check my weather in °c because I wanted to prove to my girlfriend that farenheit is better. And after about 2 years of using °C I have to say that farenheit is in fact much better for weather
It's important to remember why the imperial system was used - dividing lengths and volumes into even units. There are 16 ounces in a pound because you can take a pound of sugar and get an ounce without a scale. Just divide it in half 4 times. 8 / 4 / 2 / 1. Very helpful when you're trying to have approximate accuracy on a farm.
With lengths, it's base 12 do give you even and odd roots. You need to divide a foot 3 ways? 4 inches.
Metric system makes sense with cheap availability of accurate scales, measuring cups, and other metrology. But imperial system is much more useful when you don't.
That's only useful if you want to get to an ounce, or to 4 inches. You can divide metric the same way. Can you tell without a measurement tool what 4 inches looks like? Well, I can tell without a measurement tool what 10 centimeters looks like. The same as 4 inches.
Buy half a kilo of meat, divide it in half 4 times and you get a weird number, but roughly the same contents as what you describe.
So what is the goal? Easy division without a measurement tool? Then it doesn't matter if it's a nice round number, because without a measurement tool, you won't know. But if the goal is getting to a nice round number, you get out your measurement tool, and then it doesn't matter whether you use metric or imperical - because you've got a scale.
@@Judith_Remkes You are ignorant. People used base 12 and 16 for practical reasons for hundreds of years.
Joe you're awesome. I really enjoy this channel because you talk about interesting things and explain it in a fun and rational way. The metric system definitely makes more sense. Example: It cearly makes sense to refer to the freezing point as 0° Celsius. However the freezing point in Fahrenheit in a nonsensical 32°
Every fluid has a different freezing point though that changes with air pressure, there is no reason why water must be zero Celsius other than the fact the guy who devised Celsius chose the freezing and boiling of water at sea level to be 0° C and 100° C respectively. When Fahrenheit was devised 0° F was the coldest temperature known to humans, with the advent of Celsius people now had to deal with negative temperatures such as -17.77° C for absolute cold (0° F).
Then Kelvin came along with absolute zero and gave even Fahrenheit negative temperatures.
I switched my thermostat and vehicle and apps to metric. I’m getting used to it by using it! The car works since the speedometer shows both. My kids and I talk in meters. You can use metric now, too!
The solution is simple:
- ban the words "inch, gallon, pound" etc. Anyone found using them is to be jailed
- burn all books & movies that mention imperial measurements
- extend standardisation to include currencies (use the euro) and languages (use chinese)
When the UK was in the EU many greengrocers were fined for selling vegetables by the pound instead of by the kilogram. Some were imprisoned
@@World_BB Also in UK, anyone speaking Welsh was deported to Australia (although that was probably a good thing)
sounds like the liberal/socialist manifesto
Me in UK watching a laser cutting tutorial...
YT uploader
"Ok im setting the width to - 1 12ths of an inch"
Is it true that the UK pint is bigger that the US pint? If so, I'm emigrating
One of the things I always hated in various math and science classes I have taken in my education was the time wasted on learning to convert between the two systems. I especially hated how in chemistry class we spent all this time on conversions when most if not all science is done in metric. It was a waste of my time and lowered my grade. I wish we had just pulled the Band-Aid off the last time we tried before I was even born.
in my chemistry classes, everything just STAYED in metric. That's really ass backwards that they had you guys convert out of metric to do stuff.
Same thing in thermodynamics. When a problem was given in imperial (British) units, we would convert to metric, do the calculations, then convert the results back to imperial. We complained to the professor, asking him who in their right mind would use imperial units for engineering calculations. His response was “U.S. industry, your future employers.” At least the automakers have made great strides moving to metric (displacement, nuts, bolts, etc.). The key to moving to metric is to emphasize it more in the public school system, and de-emphasize the imperial system. Engineering and science courses are making progress in this regard, but kids who don’t take those courses come out of the school system a little ignorant.
There is a lot of proudly stubborn Americans. It's the same with healthcare. The Kool-Aid makes you belong to...something? Don't tell them metric was invented in France. That won't help.
I live along I-19. I can confirm that the highway signs are all in KM vs miles once it leaves Tucson. :)
considering learning video editing just to get a 3 second clip of joe scott saying "you can get arrested for thinking about a foot"
I have been working in India and Germany in the automotive industry since 2008. Got to see drawings much older than that.
We collaborate with American Engineers frequently as a lot of components are shared across the projects.
Never seen a proper engineering drawing that was not in grams, millimetres and millilitres.
(We seldom need units other than those.)
Milliliters? Really? I'd expect the proper cubic centimeters. Liter is just an accepted SI unit, cubic centimeter is the standard unit (or rather, centimeter is the prefixed standard unit, and cubic is just, well, a cubed centimeter)
@ Millimetre is a unit of length.
Cubic centimetre is a unit of volume.
Length of components are measured/ mentioned more than a million times in the process of making the simplest of cars.
CC/ cubic centimetres/ liters are used a handful of times to measure the amount of a fluid/ lubricant or to measure the displacement of the piston - cylinder(s) in internal combustion engines.
I’m Canadian and I recently retired but before I did I had to train my replacement (a 21 year old) to do my job which required designs to be made and drawn in CAD. Because the majority of our customers are in the States most of our drawings have to be done in American measurements or at least with both measurements indicated on the drawings. Despite knowing mostly metric he had to try and wrap his mind around imperial units and it caused quite a few issues.
I'm in construction, with my father (since I was a teen), and the imperial system has never made any sense. I never fully learned imperial as I was only working less than part time throughout Highschool as it's such an idiotic system....it felt anarchic and honestly beneath educated or enlightened people. When I started full time, I was fortunate to work in a small group or mainly by myself and I never have to use imperial (other than giving my clients a conversion for their reference).
Despite the superiority of Metric, I use imperial measurements for my weight and HEIGHT. It's the words themselves. Miles, pounds, feet: all those words are more pleasant and dare I say enjoyable to say than cent-a-met-er, meter, Etc
i personally liked this video compared to the rest of videos lately , it just feels better than the ones on the background
In louisiana we just use the eye ball method, don’t know how far it is but if I can see it it’s not too far
As a Canadian I'd like to say that we would greatly appreciate it if the US would switch. We are a metric country but we use imperial measurements many times every day, mostly due to the majority of items in our lives being imperial due to US proximity.
It's not just metric for one type of measurment and imperial for another. We use both for the same measurement. E.g. we use km for long distances but ft/in for short ones (but never yards). We generally use lbs for weight but not ounces, for under 1lb we usually switch to grams, for over a lb we will use decimals like 1.3lbs. We use both Fahrenheit and Celcius, slowly moving from predominately the former to the latter.
I mean this in the nicest and most sincere way possible, we don't care what Canada wants us to do. :)
@captainsorders8673 You couldn't be more wrong. Canada is our strongest ally and strongest trade partner. If any country would sway the politicians and businesses in the US it would be Canada. We use their steel, lumber, etc They are a much bigger deal than most Americans realize.
@@copred well if that's the case we are their strongest ally and strongest trade partner, they can switch to standard.
I mean this in the nicest way possible, but standard is terrible. I understood this as a third grader when they first taught metric. @@captainsorders8673
Canada uses Fahrenheit... That is already complicated.
The thing about the cost to switch over is that that cost only matters if you do an "overnight" forced switch for the sake of switching. If companies just starting doing all new things in metric, eventually everything will be in metric. Doing new stuff in metric means development starts with metric and there's no cost associated with changing documents, etc.
As a mechanical engineer, I have worked in both systems, even at the same company. Most machinists I worked with used both, just depended on what "setting" their CNC was on or in the case of analog, if the machine happened to have measurements in one or the other. I've both created multiple versions of the same drawing in different units, as well as just been told by the shop "we can convert if we need to". For the record, with modern CAD software, you can just click a button and the drawing swaps units. Double check tolerances and voila.
It doesn't have to cost anything.
That's ignoring the fact that working in Imperial means US companies often waste time and money converting drawings or having several versions of things for the world market and the US market....
All that does have to happen is the crotchety old people stuck in their ways of thinking need to let things switch over. I got into an argument with my dad about how "he 'knows' how long a mile is but has no feeling for a km". That's true for everyone, no matter what unit, until they use that unit. It was true for him before he 'got a feeling for mile'. You start using kms, and in not much time you'll have a sense for it, even if you're 70.
Care to explain why NASA thinks it'd cost several hundred million? Why not just call them up and tell them they have no idea what they're talking about?
Some terms die hard in Norway. The yardstick, or rule, is still called "tommestokk"
( 1 tomme = 1 inch ), even if it displays centimeters. Some also use feet when measuring depth at sea.
You mentioned other roads in the US having metric measurements on signs. This happens on a lot of roads in the north where we border Canada.
I lived in New Hampshire for a while, it caught me off guard the first time I got closer to the border.