- Joined
- Feb 1, 2015
- Messages
- 9,596
IMO, we don't go metric for the same reason that we clung to an antiquated television technology; legacy products. It took an act of congress to change to digital television, along with a government givaway of two converters to any household that requested them. We invented cell phone technology, along with CMDA protocols while the rest of the world has GSM protocols which make our CMDA phones useless when we travel abroad.
We developed an entire infrastructure over the period of 200 years base on Imperial measurement. While this isn't as important for consumables and short lifespan products, when it comes to long lifespan products like housing, Making repairs to or remodeling a 40 year old house would be a nightmare if the building supplies were all metric.. Probably the biggest legacy issue is the citizenry itself. We could very easily convert to Celsius for temperature. Most of the modern thermostats are already selectable. for C or F. If the TY stations and Weather Channel made the switch, it would relatively easy to train the populace to accept Celsius. And 110ºF does sound better as 43ºC
Most, if not all, of our durable goods manufacturing has gone metric already. The medical industry and the scientific community have been metric for as long as I can remember. I had been introduced to metric measurement over fifty years ago and have used both on a regular basis ever since. So what's left? For the most part, popular acceptance.
With learning a foreign language, it takes a fair amount of time to think in the language rather than translating from our native tongue. The same is true for Americans dealing with the metric system. When we look at 4", we don't see 10 cm; we have to mentally do the conversion. When we get to the point of thinking in mm, kg, and liters, we will have converted.
We developed an entire infrastructure over the period of 200 years base on Imperial measurement. While this isn't as important for consumables and short lifespan products, when it comes to long lifespan products like housing, Making repairs to or remodeling a 40 year old house would be a nightmare if the building supplies were all metric.. Probably the biggest legacy issue is the citizenry itself. We could very easily convert to Celsius for temperature. Most of the modern thermostats are already selectable. for C or F. If the TY stations and Weather Channel made the switch, it would relatively easy to train the populace to accept Celsius. And 110ºF does sound better as 43ºC
Most, if not all, of our durable goods manufacturing has gone metric already. The medical industry and the scientific community have been metric for as long as I can remember. I had been introduced to metric measurement over fifty years ago and have used both on a regular basis ever since. So what's left? For the most part, popular acceptance.
With learning a foreign language, it takes a fair amount of time to think in the language rather than translating from our native tongue. The same is true for Americans dealing with the metric system. When we look at 4", we don't see 10 cm; we have to mentally do the conversion. When we get to the point of thinking in mm, kg, and liters, we will have converted.