I am looking to start a conversation and gather opinions of others for one of my presentations:
Give me three (3) good reasons why we (U.S. of A.) should NOT make the complete switch to the International System of Units (Metric System).
Thank you in advance for everyone's professional input.
BTW: "We tried and it did not work then" is not a valid reason, There could be great lessons learned, but not a valid reason to not try again.
With regard to manufacturing, my sense is that the U.S. has largely changed over the metric in order to remain competitive globally. But there's essentially no incentive to change land title units in the U.S., so it would have to be a forced change with no apparent benefit. That's a recipe for failure.
I am looking to start a conversation and gather opinions of others for one of my presentations:
Give me three (3) good reasons why we (U.S. of A.) should NOT make the complete switch to the International System of Units (Metric System).
Thank you in advance for everyone's professional input.
Sorry, I can think of NO reasons.
I have been using metric for all field work for 40+ years. If the client wants some kind of foot as a deliverable, I convert after processing. Note that I do not normally do boundary or other surveys that require a drawing to be produced.
A lot of my work is for the federal government and they generally call for/accept metric.
I do occasionally get a request from a rebel agency for UTM in feet. Rare, but it happens.
In my opinion the NGS should have skipped the US Survey foot to International foot issue and just gone straight to metric. We are headed for some mass confusion in states that are now US Survey foot when they go to International foot.
@jim-frame Not that I would disagree with you, but can you put your finger on two (2) more solid reasons to NOT make the switch (noting your comment about no benefit as one potential reason). And thank you for your input!
We are headed for some mass confusion in states that are now US Survey foot when they go to International foot.
Boy howdy are we.
I had to write a paper on this very subject in college a couple years back ( a few decades ago), and if I remember right, I had to write two papers, one for each side of the argument. I no longer have those papers.
Because 12 splits better (2,3,4,6)
Than 10 (2,5 only)
Are you planning on changing the units for time (hours) and degrees (360) also?
America: threw off the yoke of Imperialism - but got stuck with the units
I have 3 good ones, but first I'd like to thank GaryG for digging up my favorite Simpsons quote, and I'd like to point out that grandpa Simpsons' 40 rods to the hog's head is about 10 feet per gallon, not too good. That leads into my first point:
1. Americans have lived within the imperial system of measurement our entire lives, and think in said system. We know what's good gas mileage, what's a long distance, etc. We think in these units, it's no different than a language. You might as well ask me to quit thinking in English and start thinking in Esperanto. Can I do it? Sure, I speak 1.5 languages already, I can learn another, but I'll never THINK in anything but English. A common expression is that "it loses something in the translation". What you lose in the translation between metric and imperial is my 30 years of professional experience and 50+ years of life on this earth as a human being thinking in feet. I can pace in feet very accurately (for pacing), I can look at a curb stake marked in feet and envision the cut or fill and tell you if the subgrade is built close or not. All of that experience is gone, or lost in conversion, if I'm forced to work in meters. For example: if you told me the next point to be staked is 269 feet that way, I'll pace it off and be within a few feet before we even involve the EDM or the RTK. If you tell me it's 82 meters that way, well you're going to have to wait while I round that to 80, multiply by 3.3, and then round again to 260, and then pace that off and then when I get there I'm probably 5' or 10' from the correct location. The same is true in every profession that uses measurement. Carpenters can add or subtract 1.5 inches to account for the thickness of a 2x4 without thinking. They'll all have to relearn how to add or subtract 38 millimeters if we go full metric. And are we going to sell 38x88 lumber, or will we round that to 40x90? Will we actually retool every lumber mill to make 40x90, or will they really be 2x4 which is really 1.5x3.5? That leads me to item 2:
2: How many speed limit signs are there in the US? How about distance to next town signs, and mile markers? Oh and if we change the mile markers, we'll have to renumber all the exits. That means more signs to replace. That's just the roads. How are we going to tell every city, county, state and federal agency that they have to go through every law and replace all the instances of measurement with metric units? Just imagine the zoning code to rewrite. All the minimum lot sizes are now in square meters or hectares. And you know that even if you get them all to do it, half will just convert and give some stupid odd number for every required measurement, and the other half will round it to an even metric unit. Not a big deal except now every subdivision that's in process with a 15' setback is now either 4.572m minimum setback, or 4.5m minimum setback. Do my house plans fit or not? Not sure, I need to go back to the architect and have them convert all the site plans (and foundation plans, framing plans, roof truss plans, etc.) to metric so I can find out. The cost of all this will be more than it cost to win world war 2 and go to the moon (both of which were done using imperial units).
3: I didn't exactly flow into this one, but here it is: metric units suck. That's not a "get off my lawn" statement, it's a fact, they are configured for some lab tech in controlled conditions using a set of calipers and a 3 beam scale, not working in the real world. Metric is all based on a 19th century math problem (distance from the equator to the pole divided by a big number (incorrectly I might add)), with no regard to their usefulness to those working outside lab conditions. As described above I can pace, as can most surveyors. I do so using the natural ergonomics of my body, which are what the imperial system is based on. I defy anyone who's not at least 2 meters tall to pace consistently in meters. Further and more importantly, the sub-units are the wrong size for surveying. A millimeter is too small for cut/fill stakes for most construction, and a centimeter is too big. Sure we can work to whatever makes sense but the writing of the stakes to 2 or 3 decimal places implies a significant figure that isn't true. The same is true for bearings listed to the arc second, and we deal with that as a profession, but not when dealing with others who are actually building things from our work like we do with construction stakes in the field. I can't speak to other professions but I would imagine the same is true for them as well.
Hope that all makes sense
There is really no reason that surveyors could not use metric. But surveyors are far from the only people using systems of weights and measures. And most of those other people are non-technical types. So give me a reason that the government should mandate a switch from the system in long standing common use. The common reason given is that the rest of the world is using metric. So what. This countries very founding principles are based on a system that no one else in the world had ever tried. Things have worked out pretty well.
I'm not the least bit afraid of metric. I was 15 years old and living in Canada when that country switched to metric in 1975. I've lived it. I can't see that Canada gained any particular advantage by so doing.
I spent my first 6 years in this business working in metric. There was a f'ton of legacy survey records dimensioned in feet. All the dimensioned lumber was in feet and inches, as were all the building plans. We converted back and forth all day, every day. Got so I could do it without a calculator.
As for US Foot to Int'l Foot. That will be a thing for about 2 weeks. It's a one time setting in your dc and other software.
I have 3 good ones, but first I'd like to thank GaryG for digging up my favorite Simpsons quote, and I'd like to point out that grandpa Simpsons' 40 rods to the hog's head is about 10 feet per gallon, not too good. That leads into my first point:
1. Americans have lived within the imperial system of measurement our entire lives, and think in said system. We know what's good gas mileage, what's a long distance, etc. We think in these units, it's no different than a language. You might as well ask me to quit thinking in English and start thinking in Esperanto. Can I do it? Sure, I speak 1.5 languages already, I can learn another, but I'll never THINK in anything but English. A common expression is that "it loses something in the translation". What you lose in the translation between metric and imperial is my 30 years of professional experience and 50+ years of life on this earth as a human being thinking in feet. I can pace in feet very accurately (for pacing), I can look at a curb stake marked in feet and envision the cut or fill and tell you if the subgrade is built close or not. All of that experience is gone, or lost in conversion, if I'm forced to work in meters. For example: if you told me the next point to be staked is 269 feet that way, I'll pace it off and be within a few feet before we even involve the EDM or the RTK. If you tell me it's 82 meters that way, well you're going to have to wait while I round that to 80, multiply by 3.3, and then round again to 260, and then pace that off and then when I get there I'm probably 5' or 10' from the correct location. The same is true in every profession that uses measurement. Carpenters can add or subtract 1.5 inches to account for the thickness of a 2x4 without thinking. They'll all have to relearn how to add or subtract 38 millimeters if we go full metric. And are we going to sell 38x88 lumber, or will we round that to 40x90? Will we actually retool every lumber mill to make 40x90, or will they really be 2x4 which is really 1.5x3.5? That leads me to item 2:
2: How many speed limit signs are there in the US? How about distance to next town signs, and mile markers? Oh and if we change the mile markers, we'll have to renumber all the exits. That means more signs to replace. That's just the roads. How are we going to tell every city, county, state and federal agency that they have to go through every law and replace all the instances of measurement with metric units? Just imagine the zoning code to rewrite. All the minimum lot sizes are now in square meters or hectares. And you know that even if you get them all to do it, half will just convert and give some stupid odd number for every required measurement, and the other half will round it to an even metric unit. Not a big deal except now every subdivision that's in process with a 15' setback is now either 4.572m minimum setback, or 4.5m minimum setback. Do my house plans fit or not? Not sure, I need to go back to the architect and have them convert all the site plans (and foundation plans, framing plans, roof truss plans, etc.) to metric so I can find out. The cost of all this will be more than it cost to win world war 2 and go to the moon (both of which were done using imperial units).
3: I didn't exactly flow into this one, but here it is: metric units suck. That's not a "get off my lawn" statement, it's a fact, they are configured for some lab tech in controlled conditions using a set of calipers and a 3 beam scale, not working in the real world. Metric is all based on a 19th century math problem (distance from the equator to the pole divided by a big number (incorrectly I might add)), with no regard to their usefulness to those working outside lab conditions. As described above I can pace, as can most surveyors. I do so using the natural ergonomics of my body, which are what the imperial system is based on. I defy anyone who's not at least 2 meters tall to pace consistently in meters. Further and more importantly, the sub-units are the wrong size for surveying. A millimeter is too small for cut/fill stakes for most construction, and a centimeter is too big. Sure we can work to whatever makes sense but the writing of the stakes to 2 or 3 decimal places implies a significant figure that isn't true. The same is true for bearings listed to the arc second, and we deal with that as a profession, but not when dealing with others who are actually building things from our work like we do with construction stakes in the field. I can't speak to other professions but I would imagine the same is true for them as well.
Hope that all makes sense
These are all good, valid reasons. I can tell you that I pace in metric, 1.25 paces is 1 meters. Pretty easy.
I agree it would be a big disruption to change. I think we should do it very gradually. Start with elementary education, teach kids the metric system.
I do agree that it is hard to change THINKING. Yes, as I stated, I use the metric system in all of my work, for more than 40 years. BUT, I still think in miles and feet most of the time outside of work.
The cost and disruption of the change itself will last for at least a generation. This is a very large negative. I don't see benefits that are valuable enough to warrant the imposition. Let the market or general society make the changes where it wants to change. Keep the government out of forcing conditions that are not what people would otherwise choose for themselves.
I used metric at the beginning of my surveying career. I would measure all control in feet, switch to the metric option on the distance meter and remeasure. It became a routine and is still a great way to check measurements. When DOT was mandated to shift to metric, I was a big advocate. Then reality struck and when the requirement for metric was removed there was cheering all over the industry. The main reason to remove the requirement was they found a 15 to 20% rise in construction costs between imperial and metric jobs. Not sure how accurate that number is but I didn't care, it was such a relief. To say the least the change over was eye-opening.
Now I want the foot to remain. I've had sneers directed at me from some Europeans, makes me want it to remain even harder.
Quick, without looking — tell me how many teaspoons are in one-quarter of a cup!
Are we talking about pounds force, pounds mass, or slugs?
I wonder what arguments arose when someone suggested that we start using feet rather than rods in new work.
By the way, the non-metric system of units used in the US is *not* the Imperial system; it's the US Customary system. Both descended from the earlier English system (which wasn't much of a system).
Excuse me while I go drink a few of gills of coffee.
https://blog.ansi.org/ansi/us-customary-system-history-units/
@john-hamilton Your "internal" use of metric units makes me think of the Apollo Guidance Computer used to get to and from the Moon and to land on and take off from it. The software designers back in the 1960s were smart enough to do all the data storage and calculations in metric units, with conversions in the user interface to nautical miles, feet, and feet per second, so as to not blow the minds of the US fighter-pilot astronauts. That probably was a wise mitigation of risk.
The entire cadastre of the US is in feet (rods, perch, chains, ect. being units of feet) and to switch is a more difficult task than I first thought. Can it be accomplished, yes. Do I want to dive back into it, no. Been there, done that, got the tee shirt.
Plus, the foot is a way better measurement unit. It just is. Particularly for surveying and land descriptions.
I seem to recall the brilliant minds at NASA crashed a prob into mars because of this costing millions of tax payers dollars
BTW: "We tried and it did not work then" is not a valid reason, There could be great lessons learned, but not a valid reason to not try aga
Then I'm guessing "I measure in Freedom Yards, not Commie Yards" is off the table as well 🤣
For technically minded people, I'm not sure that it matters. For the average Joe, a measurement system based on human proportions is a big deal.
It's often useful to look at the origins of various beliefs, organizations, practices etc. for insights. The US Customary System (USCS) arose from human proportions and relatability and is tied to the natural world. An ounce of water weighs an ounce; a foot is about the length of grown man's foot, a yard is a pace etc.. The Metric system was designed by French scientists who seemed to prioritize their needs at the expense of the unsophisticated. I'm not sure how one could measure the differences in how a sophisticated or unsophisticated (educated or non-educated) individual would perceive their surroundings with a measurement system that's abstract versus easily relatable, but I'd argue this, until the USA stops being the greatest generator of wealth and innovation, I would not think about messing with anything so fundamental as how we arrange space.
So my three reasons for sticking with the USCS are:
1. The USCS is more relatable for the uneducated and therefore increases their chances of upward mobility. I value grace and beauty and the USCS provides both to a higher degree than does Metric, which has the grace of a robot and the beauty of Soviet bloc housing.
2. Using water as a proximal 1:1 relationship to ounces is beautiful in its simplicity and instantly available to anyone of any education level. Metric liters are vulgar in their unrelatable abstraction.
3. Though unlikely and nearly impossible to prove, it's possible that organizing space with the USCS has contributed to the USA's ability to lead the world in wealth creation. Add to this Rome and England's past success (England adopted Metric around 1965) and I see the potential for a pattern in that the world's greatest empires used naturally relatable measurement systems. To a species whose brain is physically hardwired to process imagery to a much greater degree than sound, feel, taste or smell, subtle distinctions might be important.
On the other hand, converting centimeters to meters sure is easy.
"We tried and it did not work then".
is actually a very good reason not to do it again. Unless you have some new knowledge or there is evidence that the conditions have changed favorably, there is no reason to bang your head against the wall again