[Maringa]

I love to hear people with their tortured reasoning for supporting the "English" measuring system, which by the way is not even American!

Let's see, 16 ounces to a lb....2000 lbs to a ton...

2 pints to a quart, 4 quarts to a gallon.....

12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, 5,280 feet to a mile...

I can just imagine a bunch of Monty Python types trying to come up with all of the nonsensical units that make up the English measuring system....

Metric is clearly the way to go...but no, we like losing millions/billions of dollar/year in trade due to having to adjust the measuring units to fit the metric....

[Clemenza]

Metric is OK for the hard sciences, but don't ask me to give up my pint of beer damnit!

[Lazamataz]

14.3 furlongs to the fortnight.

[Lazamataz]

14.3 furlongs to the fortnight.

[Eurotwit]

FWIW. I think Americas best and brightest have been using the metric system for ages.

The ladies and gentlement at Caltech and MIT are not fooling around with pints, except at thursday night drinks at the bar.

Cheers.

[eddie willers]

Metric is clearly the way to go

I remember that the US would be metric by the 1970s...if we survived the global cooling.

[Surtur]

The English system of measurements was based on instruments that people had at hand, e.g. the "foot" measurement was traditionally based on the length of the king's foot. Since people's measurements are different, those early measures varied. Eventually, by general consensus, those measures were standardized to what we have in today's English system. The metric system was a created system of measure based on the base ten (decimal) numbering system, and the meter was to be 1 ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the north pole. It was a logical system of measurement, and was intended to standardize the world's various measurement systems, but Americans had already invested huge amounts of money in the standardized English measurement system when the metric system was introduced. Since England, and her colonies, was our major trading partner, we continued to use the system long after most of the non-English speaking world had adopted the metric system. Another reason for the resistance among English speaking countries was the fact that it (the metric system) was introduced in France, and the antipathy between the French and English slowed the acceptance. But you probably already knew all this.