Re: OT: Question about highway signs in the country

On Tue, 30 May 2006 10:26:06 -0700, "LuvintheGrape" <LuvinTheGrape@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On May 29 2006 6:26 PM, Joe Long wrote:

Actually, with the global economy, many large corporations would welcome the
change. They understand how their long-term bottom line would benefit.
Alas, even among business leaders there is too much short-term thinking.

Actually, I'm sure most large corporations see absolutely no impact on the
bottom line coming from the simple and routine conversions between grams
and ounces. You see, most of them have availed themselves of these here
newfangled computer thingies that seem to be pretty good at handling such
things.

Computers have simplified conversions, but having to do them at all is still a
cost to business. And sometimes a source of extremely costly mistakes, such as
the Mars spacecraft that was lost due to two different groups using different
measurements -- which would never have happened had the U.S. gone all-metric.

That mishap was surprising, considering that NASA and most high-tech business in
the U.S. already use the metric system either partially or completely. That one
you mentioned, for example (computers).

What really hurts the bottom line, though, is that products made with English
units won't sell outside the U.S. So companies that sell internationally (most
large corporations) must either use metric measurements for their U.S. products,
or manufacture two different lines (very expensive).

So it's no surprise that even much of the U.S. auto industry has gone to metric
measurements instead of S.A.E. It used to be that most tools sold in hardware
stores were S.A.E. and you had to look for (or special order) metric sets. Now,
it's S.A.E. only sets that are getting scarce.

Governments always lag behind, so it's not really a surprise either that highway
signs are still in miles in most places. But even that is changing, as this
thread pointed out. It can't change soon enough for me: I managed a "100
Kilometer Endurance Ride" over twenty years ago in Alabama.
--

Joe Long (AKA ChipRider)
Somewhere on the Range
.

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