[Mogger]

Visit the American Precision Museum in Windsor, Vermont and you will get a lot of knowledge of how we out paced the rest of the world.

[pierrem15]

The American definition of an inch and the British both used the meter as the ultimate reference, but differed by a few thousandths.

However, when they sat down together in 1941 to examine possible parts discrepancies between the allies arising from this difference, they didn't find any: the Swedish tool maker who manufactured the world's standard measuring instruments had emigrated to America in the teens and had decided to just use the American definition. As the Brits bought his tools, they had switched over to the American inch without knowing it.