When are you USA chaps going metric

[Don Woodward]

Dear all

 

I am building a Cozy 4 but it feels like im building a steam engine, because all you USA chaps are still on imperial not metric unit.

 

Do you think USA will ever go metric?

 

[adouglas]

Ask the Carter administration.

[deronjthomas]

I don't think it will be in are life time. However some of are cars are built in the USA with metric, and some a mix. Go figer. My 1996 Dodge Carevan is like this.

[Jon Matcho]

I am building a Cozy 4 but it feels like im building a steam engine, because all you USA chaps are still on imperial not metric unit.

Come on now! Isn't it enough that the plans refer to some measurements in "decimal inches"?

[adouglas]

I'm thinking of converting all the measurements to cubits, just for the mental exercise....

 

[Spodman]

"...it feels like im building a steam engine..."

 

If you were building a Chinese steam engine it would be metric!

 

I don't think United Statesians realise how quaint it seems that they cling to the ancient cr@ppy imperial system.

[Norm M]

Everything we build is metric, and has been 100% for 15 years, and for the previous 10 years was only english where there were existing carryover designs (the mixed years). Now, the only time I see anything english is with things like pipe threads (apparently there is no metric equivalent, and we don't use a lot of pipe threads anyways).

 

As far as the plans go, you have to consider that they are 30 years old. I'm sure that the aircraft plan sets developed in Australia, Germany, and Japan are all designed in metric.

[Len Evansic]

When I started out as an engineer, I had to often deal with designs that were passed back and forth to our UK subsidiary for fabrication and installation throughout the EU. It became painfully obvious that it was not the US, but the rest of the world that was swallowing the jagged little pill called the metric system.

 

At first, when making drawings for european consumption, I made the mistake of going through the mess of soft conversions. A 4" x 4" x 0.25" wall square tube had it's dimensions changed to a 100 x 100 x 6mm wall tube. This seems sane enough, except that the metric size does not exist! You see, unfortunately for the metric world, we in the US were too successful in standardization of raw material stock sizes. The actual metric tube that is available is a 102 x 102 x 6.35 mm tube, which is absolutely identical to our 4 x 4 x .25 tube. Inch measurements with a hard conversion to metric. Add to that the fact that locating holes through the centerlines now require odd measurements like 51 mm, and the metric version becomes quite messy.

 

Now, which of those two measurements is easier to remember and use, given that the metric standard is not metric in the first place?

 

-- Len

[Len Evansic]

I don't think United Statesians realise how quaint it seems that they cling to the ancient cr@ppy imperial system.

We call it the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) system. It's quite modern in that it uses English, the current international language, rather than the passé French (Système International).

 

Even if the entire world converts to metric, the SAE system will not go away. There are too many embedded standards that use it. Take the Schrader valve (tire valve) for instance. All of the threads in one of these valves, both internal and external, are a combination of SAE and SI units. Metric diameter with inch pitch. Every automotive pneumatic tire in the world has used this valve standard since the late 1920's, and it will not go away anytime soon.

 

-- Len

[yankee]

Yea

That English to metric thing really messed up that Mars rover didn't it.

[argoldman]

Bring back Whitworth

[Len Evansic]

And another thing....

It wasn't until very recently (the last five years or so) that true dimensional metric metal stock became available. As recently as 1997, I was ordering 102mm bar and tube stock for a european project, which is identical to our 4" stock. Common sense would dictate that 100mm stock should exist to make metric fabrication easier, but it didn't. No dimensional metric stock existed for over 100 years after SI became a standard!

 

-- Len

[H.Zwakenberg]

How metric can you go? It wouldn't be complete without abandoning the standard 360° for a full circle, as this caused the derivation of a nautical mile, which happens to be the awkward 1.852 meter...

 

cheers,

Hans

[RGlos]

Eventually, in the end the metric system will be adopted as it hs been in the rest of the world. My business is measurement and I see more and more conversions every day in US factories

 

In the meantime I have also heard of a conversion in Europe to Euroenglish

This is what I have picked up on.

 

The European Commission have just announced an agreement

Whereby English will be the official language of the EU

rather than German, which was the other possibility.

 

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesties Government

Conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement

And has accepted a 5 year phase in plan that would be known

as “EuroEnglish”: In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”.

Settainly, this will make the sivil servents jump with joy.

 

The hard “c” will be dropped in favor of the “k”.

This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less

Letter.

 

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year

When the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with the “f”.

This will make words like “fotograf” 20% shorter.

 

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan

be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated

changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal

of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to

akurate speling.

 

Also. Al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent “e”s

In the languag is disgrasful, and they should go away.

 

By the 4th yar, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as

Replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with ‘v”.

 

During ze fifz year, ze unessary “o” kan be dropd from vords

Knotaining “ou” and similar changes vud of kors be

aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

 

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl

Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find

it ezi tuunderstand ech ozer.

 

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!.

[Dale_R]

...

In the meantime I have also heard of a conversion in Europe to Euroenglish

This is what I have picked up on.

 

The European Commission have just announced an agreement

Whereby English will be the official language of the EU

rather than German, which was the other possibility.

 

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesties Government

Conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement

And has accepted a 5 year phase in plan that would be known

as “EuroEnglish”: In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”.

Settainly, this will make the sivil servents jump with joy.

 

The hard “c” will be dropped in favor of the “k”.

This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less

Letter.

 

...

 

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!.

That was funny to read.

 

However, actually implementing that way would ignore the

multiplicity of sounds that english represents with two or more characters/dipthongs. How would they spell the sound we

write as "Ch" or its vocalized cousin "z" (as in "azure"). Will

we expand the alphabet, similar to Russian?

 

And the "c" wouldn't have to be _dropped_; it could be used

the same way it is in Czech: "ts".

 

Keyboards will get bigger; we'll need to re-engineer humans

to come standard with 6 digits per hand.

 

Dale

[Strider]

As impolite and un-PC as it seems, I have a standard reply to the question of when the U.S. will convert to metric: "When a French crew comes back alive from a trip to the Moon." When is the rest of the world going to realize that metric is a lost cause, and adopt a human-oriented system: SAE?

[Len Evansic]

"When a French crew comes back alive from a trip to the Moon."

 

That's a good one I'll have to remember. Thanks Kurt.

 

The French aren't all that bad at engineering, just... What is the word? Odd? I mean their automotive efforts were less well-received than Saab's, and only recently has Airbus (with a LOT of French government funding) been able to compete with Boeing and their rather dated designs. Not to say that Boeing doesn't get our government funding, just that they don't for commercial passenger jets.

 

-- Len

[Jon Matcho]

Nice to have you join us again Strider! Coincidentally, there's been some talk on this thread you might be interested in.

 

...adopt a human-oriented system: SAE?

Just so I know, what exactly makes a measuring system 'human-oriented'?

 

How about a system based on Phi? At first I thought (when I was a teenager) the metric system was well engineered because:

 

1 gram = weight of 1 mililiter of water

1 cubic centimeter of water = 1 mililiter of water

 

Now, I don't think there's anything substantial to do with that relationship. I may be wrong.

 

So I come back to Phi -- there's got to be a cosmic relationship between mass and distance using a factor of Phi. Whoever finds it will find the meaning of life, or something like that.

[Len Evansic]

Curt,

 

I'm sorry. Got my K's and C's confused again. It doesn't help that I stare at machine vises made by Kurt all day.

 

-- Len

[Strider]

no problem- just ask Jon or Marc Zeitlin .. i make similar errors as well.

 

I guess I referred to SAE as an "human-oriented" system because it is the descendant of measuring standards developed by and for the common man over many centuries. The metric system seems made to fit the world in to neat little boxes, and the world doesn't fit like this any more than people fit into neat little boxes. Another un-PC attitude I have is that if a person needs the "ease of use" of the metric system in order to handle math, perhaps they shouldn't try doing math. A comfortable, low-cost form of outlaw-ism for me. Or is it?

[Spodman]

If you feel that old crappy measuring systems build character maybe you should lobby for a more character building monetary system as well? 12 pennies to the shilling, 240 to the pound, just think how your frontal lobes will throb with exertive pleasure buying a mars bar or totalling your cheque book.

 

The Imperial measurements didn't get the US to the moon, dollars did. The USSR had the first artificial satellite, the first man in space, the first woman & I believe the only dog. The first moon orbit, and the first landing on the moon and Venus. All done with millimeters

[Len Evansic]

The first moon orbit, and the first landing on the moon and Venus. All done with millimeters

That's what you metric types think. Truth be told, the bowels of NASA have been and still are still in inches.

 

About 15 years ago, a classmate of mine had an internship at NASA, working on some space vehicle program. His job was to take their existing drawings for this long-running project, and convert them to metric. So, being brought up in the utopian metric system, he did calculations and conversion in the soft manner that would yield nice convenient metric measurements, like 4" becomes 100 mm, vs. the 101.6 mm that a hard measurement would yield.

 

So Phil (my friend) finished his stack of drawings and took them to his supervisor, where he learned that what they had expected of him was hard conversions. Even of english threads! Imagine finding a M7.94 x 1.411 thread callout. That was the way that NASA operated. The heavy lifting was done with good old SAE, while SI was smeared on afterwards to make those european partner types happy.

 

-- Len

[Strider]

Besides, I don't need Spodman's abuse. I got people standing in line to abuse me.