Contrary to what this article claims, I would say that the motivation for such a switch has never been weaker.
- The switch to metric has already taken place in science and engineering (where it's most harmful to have 2 systems), largely because of the horror stories from decades past mentioned in the article.
- Packaging and labeling costs associated with having 2 systems is effectively zero because it's all automated.
- Everyone has a computer in their pocket capable of performing a conversion if they really get in a bind (though this has literally never happened to me)
On the other hand, people are generally content with using the imperial system so a switch would be met with a lot of resistance. This resistance, coupled with increasingly vanishing costs associated with having 2 systems leads me to believe that this switch is not going to happen in my lifetime.
TLDR; The metric crusaders need to find a new cause to pour their energies into.
> The switch to metric has already taken place in science and engineering (where it's most harmful to have 2 systems), largely because of the horror stories from decades past mentioned in the article.
A nontrivial fraction of science and engineering is still done using an unholy mix of US customary and metric units. For example: laser optics frequently have diameters specified in inches and focal lengths in millimeters. Even for science experiments, things like screws and threads are SAE/UTS and not metric. Parts for machining are often specified in US customary units. Torque requirements are often specified in foot pounds.
Non-metric units aren't dead in science, but I sure wish they were.
Truth is, there is a TON of industrial machinery, tooling, fasteners, and more centered on Imperial units. Increasingly, new projects are happening in SI units too. This may start to snowball in the near future. Some of this is driven by global networking effects. Common units are a must, and global engineering efforts are less efficient with Imperial units.
Most of the new work in the major vertical industries is now Metric (SI). That's been a long, painful transition. They still carry a lot of ongoing, sustaining engineering and a supply chain supporting it and it's Imperial units however. I'm not sure the author really appreciates the weight of this legacy. It grows a little lighter every year, but it's still very significant and very costly.
In the US today, there are ~200 to 250K small to mid sized manufacturers. These remain all over the map, and they typically are the last to adopt new units and technology. It's not that they are lazy, or unable, though unable is a factor. It is all about that investment making sense for them. Often, it just doesn't. If what they have works and they can compete they will do that. Machinery investments are often significant and multi-decade long service life is expected.
Older machinery often doesn't work in dual units, and when it doesn't, conversions are error prone and confusing to everyone in manufacturing, which leads to the problems of dual units, duplicate drawings, etc... It's often easier to either continue with Imperial units, or target some switch over date to minimize the problem, and when older machinery remains capable, incentives to phase it out are low. Incentives to rework / upgrade it can be attractive though, depending.
It's a lot better than it was in the 80's and 90's, when I began to have some direct familiarity with manufacturing. Back then, I was a prototype mechanic for a while, and maybe 1 out of 100 jobs was metric. Back then, the first thing most often done was a conversion and check. It was rare to work in the Metric units directly. Most test and measure equipment in use, as well as the machines, were Imperial units and often didn't even have the capability to switch.
I just toured a nice mid sized shop recently. Almost all the equipment in the building was dual unit capable, with a nice mix of units seen in the drawings and data on the shop floor. Some older machines were running new, reasonably advanced controllers too. (Yes, I looked some of that over out of interest as I will be sending that shop some work in Metric.)
The company I manage has just started it's first couple of Metric projects. Reason: comparability with robotics, where Metric dominates.
If you ask me, my hunch is that we will see a more significant incentive to switch formally when robotic automation has matured in the small to mid-sized manufacturing market, and the last of the old guard machines has gone past it's useful service life and is phased out.
This may be accelerated by new, small, lean, localized manufacturing coming on line about now. It's growing more practical to setup shop and serve niche ecosystems and still make money. This is a ripe target for new business, new machinery, and that's all very highly likely to at least support metric (SI) units.
All of the useful software is dual unit now. That has been a non issue for well over a decade. Legacy software can take forever to cycle out of manufacturing, and it's finally happening en-masse. Really old stuff, DOS and older, is almost never seen now, meaning the tools from the 90's is in aggressive phase out and with that, the last of the single unit software solutions goes out the door.
Until then, there will be more than enough inertia backing Imperial units.
Maybe 10, 20 years at the earliest? We might be able to take a step, like preferred units, depending on how we want to handle our huge Imperial unit based legacy.
I really think the resistance to switching is political. America does a lot of things differently than the rest of the world, and the people in power want it to stay that way.
They see some advantages to keeping the general populace on the imperial measurement system.
1. They are afraid of problems which might surface during a conversion from imperial to metric due to the large population.
2. They want to make it harder for the populace to compare things in the US to the rest of the world.
3. They are lobbied to keep a non-decimal measurement system in place to make it harder for customers to compare product sizes vs. price.
Part of the problem of mixed system is lack of intuitions.
I grew up in the metric system, so I still struggle with intuitions from imperial systems. (It's very hard for me to "feel" 10 feet, while I have an instant feel what 3 meters is like.)
Most cases, this won't cause issued beyond missed perceptions, but it can hamper the ability to detect anomalies -- perhaps part of the reason what caused some of the incidents described in the article as well.
Long ago, I once overheard someone's conversation, this was an architect in the process of designing a home for foreign market, and he was designing closets in some room too small, again, because he had to work with obscure units (for Japan, they use "Tsubo," about 3.306 square meters / 35.58 square feet -- and yeah, this is one of the few places that Japanese people are still stuck with customary units...)
The US has chosen an AP approach to the metric system rather than CP. As it turns out, because there are AP approaches the rest of the world winds up with AP rather than CP for it's measurement system.
And don't blame the US, the simplest way to lay out a futbol pitch is in yards and feet.
Foreign manufacturers also have to modify products
just for the US market (or decide that maybe it's
not worth the bother)"
How so? I can't think of an industry that does this other than to make a product specifically for measuring, like tape measures.
A bigger trade issue is differing national standards, such as making left-side-driver versions of vehicles for those countries that drive on the right (much of the world that doesn't speak English or Japanese).
BTW, did anybody get that "Boeing 767 ran out of fuel midair" story link to work?
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[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 39.9 ms ] threadPeople don't have incentive to switch, because most people don't have to do math.
- The switch to metric has already taken place in science and engineering (where it's most harmful to have 2 systems), largely because of the horror stories from decades past mentioned in the article.
- Packaging and labeling costs associated with having 2 systems is effectively zero because it's all automated.
- Everyone has a computer in their pocket capable of performing a conversion if they really get in a bind (though this has literally never happened to me)
On the other hand, people are generally content with using the imperial system so a switch would be met with a lot of resistance. This resistance, coupled with increasingly vanishing costs associated with having 2 systems leads me to believe that this switch is not going to happen in my lifetime.
TLDR; The metric crusaders need to find a new cause to pour their energies into.
A nontrivial fraction of science and engineering is still done using an unholy mix of US customary and metric units. For example: laser optics frequently have diameters specified in inches and focal lengths in millimeters. Even for science experiments, things like screws and threads are SAE/UTS and not metric. Parts for machining are often specified in US customary units. Torque requirements are often specified in foot pounds.
Non-metric units aren't dead in science, but I sure wish they were.
Truth is, there is a TON of industrial machinery, tooling, fasteners, and more centered on Imperial units. Increasingly, new projects are happening in SI units too. This may start to snowball in the near future. Some of this is driven by global networking effects. Common units are a must, and global engineering efforts are less efficient with Imperial units.
Most of the new work in the major vertical industries is now Metric (SI). That's been a long, painful transition. They still carry a lot of ongoing, sustaining engineering and a supply chain supporting it and it's Imperial units however. I'm not sure the author really appreciates the weight of this legacy. It grows a little lighter every year, but it's still very significant and very costly.
In the US today, there are ~200 to 250K small to mid sized manufacturers. These remain all over the map, and they typically are the last to adopt new units and technology. It's not that they are lazy, or unable, though unable is a factor. It is all about that investment making sense for them. Often, it just doesn't. If what they have works and they can compete they will do that. Machinery investments are often significant and multi-decade long service life is expected.
Older machinery often doesn't work in dual units, and when it doesn't, conversions are error prone and confusing to everyone in manufacturing, which leads to the problems of dual units, duplicate drawings, etc... It's often easier to either continue with Imperial units, or target some switch over date to minimize the problem, and when older machinery remains capable, incentives to phase it out are low. Incentives to rework / upgrade it can be attractive though, depending.
It's a lot better than it was in the 80's and 90's, when I began to have some direct familiarity with manufacturing. Back then, I was a prototype mechanic for a while, and maybe 1 out of 100 jobs was metric. Back then, the first thing most often done was a conversion and check. It was rare to work in the Metric units directly. Most test and measure equipment in use, as well as the machines, were Imperial units and often didn't even have the capability to switch.
I just toured a nice mid sized shop recently. Almost all the equipment in the building was dual unit capable, with a nice mix of units seen in the drawings and data on the shop floor. Some older machines were running new, reasonably advanced controllers too. (Yes, I looked some of that over out of interest as I will be sending that shop some work in Metric.)
The company I manage has just started it's first couple of Metric projects. Reason: comparability with robotics, where Metric dominates.
If you ask me, my hunch is that we will see a more significant incentive to switch formally when robotic automation has matured in the small to mid-sized manufacturing market, and the last of the old guard machines has gone past it's useful service life and is phased out.
This may be accelerated by new, small, lean, localized manufacturing coming on line about now. It's growing more practical to setup shop and serve niche ecosystems and still make money. This is a ripe target for new business, new machinery, and that's all very highly likely to at least support metric (SI) units.
All of the useful software is dual unit now. That has been a non issue for well over a decade. Legacy software can take forever to cycle out of manufacturing, and it's finally happening en-masse. Really old stuff, DOS and older, is almost never seen now, meaning the tools from the 90's is in aggressive phase out and with that, the last of the single unit software solutions goes out the door.
Until then, there will be more than enough inertia backing Imperial units.
Maybe 10, 20 years at the earliest? We might be able to take a step, like preferred units, depending on how we want to handle our huge Imperial unit based legacy.
...
They see some advantages to keeping the general populace on the imperial measurement system.
1. They are afraid of problems which might surface during a conversion from imperial to metric due to the large population.
2. They want to make it harder for the populace to compare things in the US to the rest of the world.
3. They are lobbied to keep a non-decimal measurement system in place to make it harder for customers to compare product sizes vs. price.
Most cases, this won't cause issued beyond missed perceptions, but it can hamper the ability to detect anomalies -- perhaps part of the reason what caused some of the incidents described in the article as well.
Long ago, I once overheard someone's conversation, this was an architect in the process of designing a home for foreign market, and he was designing closets in some room too small, again, because he had to work with obscure units (for Japan, they use "Tsubo," about 3.306 square meters / 35.58 square feet -- and yeah, this is one of the few places that Japanese people are still stuck with customary units...)
And don't blame the US, the simplest way to lay out a futbol pitch is in yards and feet.
A bigger trade issue is differing national standards, such as making left-side-driver versions of vehicles for those countries that drive on the right (much of the world that doesn't speak English or Japanese).
BTW, did anybody get that "Boeing 767 ran out of fuel midair" story link to work?
Congress could pass a law that government contracts must limit procurement to metric-denominated products, but that's not quite the same thing.