US industry, particularly the automotive industry, is exclusively metric
and has been since the 1970s or 1980s. One odd exception is the
mounting diameter of wheels and tires which is still specified in inches
even though other parts of the tire will be in millimeters.
In international companies such as IBM, metric has been used exclusively
for an even longer period of time. Depending on what you do and where
you work you may work exclusively in metric at work and then return to a
(mostly) imperial system at home and on the road.
In the 1970s it was common to see highway signs being replaced with
distances and speeds measured in both miles and kilometers. Somewhere
along the way it just seemed to quietly die out. I can't remember the
last time I saw a highway sign with metric measures... except Canada.
Chuck Norcutt
On 8/31/2014 1:23 PM, John Hudson wrote:
See here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States
and here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre_Convention
It reads as if the US really does have a problem grasping base 10 :-)
jh
On 8/31/2014 1:19 PM, Ken Norton wrote:
Feet and / or meters for land elevations ................. helps to
accommodate those few who have difficulty with a base 10 measuring
system.
Does the US keep exclusively with miles, yards, feet and inches because
too many people have trouble grasping base 10 :-)
No. Blame it on the French. The USA was excluded by the French from
participating in the Metric System.
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