Re: What is happening with metrication?

Wayne Lundberg wrote:
Thank you one and all. I think one of our advantages (of the few that we
have left in this country) is our steadfast abhorrence of the metric system
since virtually everything we do in the shop from design to final product
has evolved via the inch/pound/hp system. For us to change to adhere to the
so called world standard would be to lose our advantage. I can do so much
more with decimal inches and fractions, hp and Watts, than I can do with
metrics and I was brought up in a metric world.

I'm going to call BS on you here - sorry. I agree that the US has too much inertia in imperial units (and associated hardware) to change to metric just to do it, but mks units work just fine.


> Had to learn the crazy 
Imperial system, but once working in it have seen unlimited horizons not
possible with metrics... or not easy due to the confusion of zero placements
which invariably lead to errors. As in the Mars landing.

The Mars landing screw up was the result of laziness: it is all too common to use numbers w/o units, and it hit home in a big way because they botched the initial burn as a result of just such malpractice. I will admit that the risk is slightly higher when exchanging data in electronic form, but that's all the more reason they should have checked.

Units will all cancel out, but the numbers left behind are valid only if the units indeed match.

Bill
.

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