I also had an after school job at a supermarket that used a time clock that recorded time in hours and hundreths and used a 24 hour day, i.e. 3:15pm was recorded as 15.25 hours even though the clock face showed regular 12 hour and 60 minute time.
This really simplifies things for the office when it comes to figuring people’s hours.
Of course, today time recording is most likely computerized in any business bigger than a mom-and-pop store. The employees just scan their badge or card and a computer calculates the hours and cuts the check.
What is this nonsense of measuring to 90.44 m? Do you do that with prehistoric units? Would you measure a punt return to 90.44 yards? If not, why not?
I guess you’ve never played sports…
Of course it’s NONSENSE…That’s why I was pointing it out…If we all converted to METRIC NOW (including sports)…Either we setup new dimensions for the fields (like football i.e 100 meters instead of 100 yards) and start establishing new records…or we keep the current size (90.44 meters…100 yards) and then we just convert all the records to metric…Either way it’s stupid.
Converting existing football stadiums to 100 meter fields would not only be stupid, it might be very expensive. Goalposts would have to be moved and some stadiums would have to be expanded, and it wouldn’t turn it into a better game in any way.
"A friend has a 2001 Dodge Stratus. The bolts holding the brake caliper are metric. I would think this “made in America” Chrysler would be one of the last holdouts for fractional size bolts."
Chrysler (along with GM) were among the last holdouts for fractional size bolts. But they still changed a while ago. My 1985 Chevy Celebrity had some messed up ones, like a gas pedal bolt with metric head but fractional threads (Because they’d started to metricize parts on it but hadn’t finished…) No wonder I couldn’t find one at the parts store (and had to get one from the junkyard!) Countries that still use English system: USA, Myanmar (a.k.a. Burma), Liberia, and UK (which is metric, but made metric sizes illegal for road signs and beer.)
All automotive manufacturers are fully global in their sales, suppliers, and designs. They all converted years ago. Remember to that Chrysler was married to Daimler for a short number of years, and components, chassis, and technology was “shared”.
Having been in the import car parts and repair business for a long time, I’ve been dealing with the whole metric/inch situation as it has developed. The obvious reason for the mixture of sizes on some cars is simply that new tooling has been made in metric sizes since the late 70’s, but older tooling was not replaced. The Japanese went through the same thing early on; the early postwar Nissan/Datsuns were copies of British designs, and there are still a few odd bits here and there that are still inch, or even old British Standard–like the oil pressure switches on almost all Jap cars are BSP thread. The British car industry went through a changeover to American hardware after the war, and then “went metric” starting in 1975, but again, didn’t retool older parts. (The Swedes, however, did retool, so we wound up with odd things like water pumps that were identical, early and late, except for the hub bolts.) You can make quick, fairly accurate conversions by using 25mm=1 inch, and 1mm=.040". Even when I was taking physics and chemistry in college we did American units just long enough to find out what they were and then dropped them forever. There is an incredible amount of inertia in old tooling, however, and it looks like we might as well live with using whatever’s convenient for the purpose.
All of my tools for years have been calibrated in SI metric (torque wrenches in newton-meters, etc.) Even my tire pressure gages are calibrated in bars, typically 0-4 bars. (One bar = 100 kilopascals, 1 pascal = 1 newton per sq. meter.) The English unit of pressure, one atmosphere, has recently been redefined to be equal to 1.01325 bar, exactly (just as the English inch was redefined many years ago in terms of the metric centimeter). The bar is now the primary unit of pressure in the world; the English units of atmospheres, psi, inches of Hg, feet of water (!) etc., are all secondary units.
The NASA Mars lander FUBAR involved rocket thrust requirements at Martian touch-down: the Lockheed engineers, being engineers, specified braking landing thrust in pound(force)-seconds; the rocket scientists at JPL assumed, as any scientifically minded person would, that the rocket thrust requirements were specified in newton-seconds. Whoops!
The next time you are in a hospital getting an MRI scan or whatever, take a look at the manufacturer’s name on the equipment: it’s usually Siemens, Philips, or an equivalent. Did you know that Robert Bosch, at the age of 18 years or so, came to America from Germany in the early 1900s to learn from American engineering prowess? That doesn’t happen anymore — America is becoming a nation of scientific/engineering Luddites.
And don’t ask me about the average American’s views on global warming.
“So, we only closed factories and moved them to China because the alternative was metircating them? And somehow it was all Reagan’s fault? Really? Are you sure that if America had adopted the metric system a long time ago and someone other than Reagan had been president, this would not have happened anyway?
Get with the times man. Reagan as a scapegoat is soooo yesterday. Today’s official scapegoat is RAYYYYYY-CISM. That’s right, we didn’t go completely metric because we are RAYYYY-CISTS.”
Does it really matter by what means metrication is achieved? Even if the main reasons for exporting jobs are different the result is still metrication. If some company feels the need to metricate in order to sell in the bigger world market, and can’t economically metricate the American factory, there is always the option of an overseas plant.
I wasn’t blaming Reagan for anything, but in the same breath that he dissolved the US metric board in the early '80s he also opened the gates to allow companies to relocate overseas and import their products back into the US duty free.
Now, each time you purchase a product that is imported, it was made using the metric system where if it was formerly made in the US it was in USC.
PHgamer said: “We are not the only country on the English standard. There is US, and Myanmar. (Burma for all you folks over 40)”
Not entirely true. That is an often repeated urban legend from the '70s. Visitors to both Burma and Liberia have experienced advanced metrication, even though their governments never officially announced any plans to metricate. This is do to the fact that these countries do trade with their metric neighbours. They are way too poor to demand non-metric products and have to take what they can get.
Recently there has been pressure on Burma from its neighbours to complete metrication and Burma will do so as a means to increase its living standard to that of its booming neighbours. Those who refuse to metricate only assure themselves of continuing poverty.
BLE said: “Converting existing football stadiums to 100 meter fields would not only be stupid, it might be very expensive. Goalposts would have to be moved and some stadiums would have to be expanded, and it wouldn’t turn it into a better game in any way.”
Mikeinnh said: "Exactly…which is just plain STUPID. No one is going to do it…So sports like Football is going to stay in YARDS and FEET. "
You can’t say that, unless you have a crystal ball and can tell the future. Actually football can be changed from yards to metres without any movement of the goal posts and no expensive expansion. The American field is just shy of 110 m x 49 m, including end zones. If each end zone is 10 m, that leaves the playing field 90 m x 50 m. Each present 10 yard line would become 9 m (unnoticeable from the present 10 yards). The centre of the field would become the 45 m line.
Opponents to the metric system love to claim that older unit relationships challenge the mind, so here is an opportunity for Americans to increase their math skills by learning the multiplication table of nines. It would even make sense if the expression about the full nine yards becomes the full nine metres.
The advantage of metricating football is it would attract international attention.
B.L.E. said: "I believe that it was Pratt and Whitney, pioneers in precision measuring, that standardized the inch as 25.4 mm during the Civil War. Before then, there were as many different yards as there were yardstick makers.
The Mendenhall Order of 1893 made 25.4 mm the legal standard for the inch."
Wrong! The definition of 25.4 mm = 1 inch didn’t come into existence until 1960. It was during the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58 that the non-metric units were found to be out of sync with their definitions and a redefinition was proposed. Previous to that there were various definitions and revisions.
The Mendenhall order established the yard as 3600/3937 m and thus by definition, the inch became 1000/3937. The foot became 1200/3937 and the difference between it and the redefinition in 1960 was significant enough that the old foot had to be retained for surveying, thus the US surveyors foot.
You can’t say that, unless you have a crystal ball and can tell the future. </b.
Of course I can’t say for 100% certainty…but I’ll say there’s a 99.9999999% chance they’ll NEVER EVER change the football field from yards metric. Football has had over 100 years of tradition and records that it’s NOT going to change for the sake of change…and that’s the ONLY reason why it would be changed. There is no LOGICAL reason what-so-ever to change it.
MikeinNH said: “There is no LOGICAL reason what-so-ever to change it.”
Actually there is a very logical reason to change it. Its an educational tool. It exposes the population to the word metre and its uses. It breaks down the resistance to the use of the metre and other metric units when encountered in other aspects of life.
Those opposed to metrication are the only ones who claim no logical reason simply because they don’t want the greater part of the population to learn the metric system by seeing and using it.
Records can be converted and traditions either have to be updated and modernize or they die.
Records can be converted and traditions either have to be updated and modernize or they die.
You live in an unrealistic world. Oh yea…People who religiously watch (all 106 million) and play football are thinking that “Gee…wouldn’t it be GREAT for education if we converted the football field to metric!!”
It can be a great educational tool in the classroom…But that doesn’t mean it will ever effect the game.
Records do NOT fall easily. And they are NOT about to be just changed or thrown out. Obviously you’ve never played sports or follow any sports. People who do play and follow them are NOT so willing to change them. Track and field was easy because the rest of the world was metric and we competed with them on the international stage…But football is USA home grown and we pretty much have exclusive rights to the game (with the small exception of Canada).
If football were to be invented today…it probably would be metric…but to change a 100yo tradition because it MAY expose the population to the word metre is just play stupid…and WON’T happen…
“Recently there has been pressure on Burma from its neighbours to complete metrication and Burma will do so as a means to increase its living standard to that of its booming neighbours. Those who refuse to metricate only assure themselves of continuing poverty.”
Here is an example of the logic flaw known as the “false dilema” aka the black or white argument.
A false dilema sets up the choice of A or B and does not consider that the answer may be neither A or B or both A and B.
The claim that Burma is a third world slum only because it uses miles and gallons etc. can easily be refuted by the fact that we could spend all day citing examples of countries that are hard metric yet are third world slums anyway.