chrissybabe Loc: New Zealand

Or the next time the landlord orders glasses he asks for 600ml ones. He may have to suck it up (slightly greater volume) for a few months but in the end it will come out OK. So the old fellows ask for a pint still but get fractionally more and the younger more switched on folk will ask for a 600ml. In 10 years time that is another industry converted and sorted.
As has been noted cordials and fizzy drinks (Coke etc) seem to be universally swapped over (and rightly so otherwise the US would be paying a higher price for their plastic bottle manufacturing and bottling plants).

We still have US sourced fluids coming in tins labelled 1 Quart (US)/ 946mls. Think of the savings if the tin manfs only had to make 1 size of 1Ltr.

Manglesphoto Loc: 70 miles south of St.Louis

Crescent wrenches are a last resort for me, I have them but rather use a proper fitting wrench or socket.
As far as changing to metric, it will happen, hopefully not in my life time. I have lived with metrics but only because I have to.
I remember working on French and german cars, Italian machinery and such in the early 1960's and mid to late 1970'S I soon discovered the fastener heads were the same but the thread pitch was different, each country had their own pitch so at that time there was no standard, on problem unless you had to rethread a bolt or re-tap a hole. I know of one Renaults that had bolt holes re-tapped to SAE and bolts replaced. I think they finally got over that.

traderjohn Loc: New York City

The ratchet means nothing the socket is the bad boy.

OlinBost Loc: Marietta, Ga.

The first talks happened in the mid 50's. Cost was the main concern. The British have their own version for threads that just happens to be in the middle of ours and the metric. It will work with both systems. They call it the British National Standard. Almost all new cars and trucks are metric.

machia Loc: NJ

I like that we have both. I use both.
But it’s probably because I’m rooted in fractions. I understand fractions and it’s taken years to actually understand metric as it relates to the non-metric physical world without a conversion chart.
If we want to go completely metric, it will take time. My opinion.

Modnar Loc: Batley' West Yorkshire, UK

I graduated with a degree in Physics at a British University in the late 1950s. Many of the textbooks set for various courses were bu US authors, published by US publishers. They were without exception metric based.
However here in the UK we have a curious mis of Imperial and metrics measurements. For example I fill up at the pumps in litres but measure fuel use in miles per gallon. The weather forecast on TV gives wind speed in miles per hour but temperatures in degrees C with the conversion to degrees F for those who cannot, or will not adopt the metric mode. Milk and beer are drunk in pints but often sold by the litre. However construction, science and engineering are totally metric.

andesbill

I remember when it happened. Canada knew that they would have to switch over as well, so they asked us if we were really, truly going to convert to metrics. Our government pinky swore that we would so Canada converted. Our politicians chickened out because the public didn’t want to change. Change is hard.
So soda companies converted so that they could export, as did liquor companies. Meanwhile they charged more for the extra 1.5 Oz quarts to liters, than they needed to (what a surprise).
Milk is still by the quart, because it can’t be exported.
American cars stayed using the same English system of sockets. I don’t know if they still do, but foreign cars need metric sockets.
In the 70’s, and maybe 80’s, it was almost impossible to get your foreign car repaired except at a dealer.
The only thing I hate about the metric system is kilometers instead of miles. I like the mile as a distance in racing, and I prefer to see distance on roads in miles. The metric system makes places seem farther away.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

(somewhat OT until the end of this post)

Since I ranted about the change of drywall screw drives from phillips/square to "hex spline" (torx) several people stood up for the torx drive. I also looked a bit closer at what I was using. I was calling them "drywall screws" because that's what I started with when I first began sticking bits of wood together. Drywall screws were cheap and plentiful and they were easy to use. Eventually I started putting the bits of wood I stuck together outdoors, and the screws I was using didn't really hold up well. Drywall is used indoors, and so drywall screws are not weatherproof or even weather resistant. So I found another screw to use. To my untrained eye it looked the same as the drywall screws I had been using, but it was really designed for decking, generally an outdoor application. The screws held up under weather significantly better.

So I can see why the torx drive was used. As noted by others, torx is a stronger drive, and decking screws go into material that is heavier than drywall so it's probably a better drive for the application it was designed for. However, as I have noted elsewhere, when you have a new tool you find all sorts of uses for it, some of which it was never designed for. I was still just sticking bits of wood together for the most part, not generally using decking or cement board. I used a lot of rough cut lumber, not kiln dried, which made it softer and easier to place a screw into. Harder materials will benefit from using a tougher drive.

The phillips drive can come out when you are driving a screw if you don't push quite hard enough. The torx is resistant to that. But the torx has to be placed in line with the screw while a phillips will work slightly off angle. An advantage when you are working in a tight space or at an awkward angle. Also, the screws I had been using all used a #1 phillips drive. The torx decking screws used two different sized drives depending on the screw length. So now for new "construction" I had to have two drive bits and switch between them, and for repairs I had to have those two plus a phillips drive. Juggling three drivers. I went back to my phillips where I need only one. There are a lot of repairs that are done at the top of a ladder, and changing drivers frequently is a pain (not to mention being a safety hazard).

This in a way illustrates the SAE/Metric problem. The screws are neither SAE nor metric, but it's the tools used that present the problem. You have to have a larger assortment of drivers in your tool box to attack a problem. Things put together with nuts and bolts can work with either SAE or metric. Things put together with bolts going into a tapped hole require the same system. I will admit that, when a bolt broke on a farm implement, I had the choice of traveling to the hardware store to get a bolt of the right kind, or re-tapping the hole for the bolt I had on hand. I generally chose to re-tap and use what I had (generally SAE) because it was quicker and time is money. So I have a number of farm implements that are put together with whatever style bolts presented themselves first.

llamb Loc: Northeast Ohio

I jump back and forth using any system too. There are too many exceptions to "standards" for any of them to be pure. In the '70's when the US was supposed to go metric, my wife and I took an adult education class "Understanding Metrics" All it covered was the math of converting. We were looking for information such as what a man's 40 Long suit would be called or other common articles' sizes. At the time I was using many 1/4-20 and 3/8-16 fasteners. What was a common metric replacement? My wife was a bookkeeper and I worked on computers/electronics and we really didn't need the math training.

~Lee

Toby

Really????

sueyeisert Loc: New Jersey

I bake and I weight my ingredients sometimes needing to divide multiply and using grams is much easier than ounces. It would also be easier to use meters and centimeters is measuring.

RichieC Loc: Adirondacks

Hubble problem was a not a metric conversion/metric issue at all. The 2.4 meter primary mirror ( Note that it was measured in the metric system) was ground to a perfect shape- but not the one NASA expected in its design.. It was the testing equipment provided that was a millimetre (international spelling- btw) off ( Note that the error was likewise measured in metrics).

Well here:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12717301-000-the-testing-error-that-led-to-hubble-mirror-fiasco/

so millimeters or millimetre is just a system to measure. Does not mean there won't be mistakes or that it is perfection.. :)

Good news was that the Hubbles' mirror interacts with other smaller lenses, and once it was discovered what the problem was, it was easy to fix it perfectly.

rcl285

My dad, who was a mechanical engineer at UC Lawrence Labs which used the metric system, told me about a request from the Livermore lab which asked that only English measurements be used when transferring specs. The request was satisfied by referring to flow rates in “Firkins per fortnight.”

fetzler Loc: North West PA

I am conversant in both measurement systems and conversion (at least roughly) in my head is easy. What you want to use depends on what you are doing. For electrical units the whole world uses the metric (SI) units - volts, amps ohms etc. One can go nuts using the English units here. For buying a a bottle of soda 2L and 2 quarts are functionally the same. As the English system is usually based on halves, quarters, eighths, it is easier to implement with primitive technology. It is easy to divide quantities into halves but difficult to divide into tenths. (Yes, I know there are 3 feet in a yard). Many years ago, when I worked on bicycles , English bicycles used soft conversions (nearest metric equivalent to English units) while French bicycles use hard metric units.

Interestingly, metric time units are not in common use except for computer calculations. A metric clock has 10 hours per day, 100 minutes per hour and 100 seconds per minute. The huge advantage is that any time of the day can be expressed as a decimal number which has units of decidays. Noon is thus .50000, Midnight is .00000 and 6 AM is .25000. The decimal time combined with the modified Julian day number gives a continuous numerical time scale. Excel uses decimal time internally.

One should note that the official system of units in the United States has been the metric system since about 1790 (The inch is defined to be 2.54 cm). Our government, unlike other governments, has chosen not to force a conversion.

Bob Werre

I learned the basics of Metric in high school chem and physics in the 60's--and was very happy with it. Photography was half metric except when it came time to mix chemistry. We used 1 gal & 3 1/2 gal processing lines for film, so that was confusing. I became a lifelong friends with a mechanical engineer and he hated the metric system he'd rather call out measurements in .001". Of course I use drill bits with numbers (080 to #1) as well as electric wire by gauge. Then try figuring out tap sizes 2.56. 4.40 and the like. So things are just like our politics -mixed up and confusing! However it much more impressive when you say you have a 350 cubic inch with 300 torque feet of power in your 66' Chevy rather than it's equal in metric! <G>