Feet and inches

[RiffRaff]

I honestly know a builder who once measured a gable end at 5 metres and 3 inches

 

My father-in-law - a steel mold caster by trade before he retired - invariably measured stuff by fag packet dimensions!

[hobinfoot]

I still work in feet inches and yards , pounds and ounces and stones. Hate all this metric rubbish .

I do the same.

[TimmyR]

There are pros and cons:

 

Metric - incredibly easy to convert from one unit to another. No one can quickly work out how many ounces are in 13.6 ton (435200) but its very easy to say how many grams are in 13.6 tonnes (13600000).

Imperial - the units are more tangible. An inch is the size of your thumb, a foot the size of a foot etc.

 

So for day to day life imperial can be easier to understand particularly if you've used it all your life, but if you want to do any more complex measuring (engineering, science and so on), imperial is just madness.

 

How many foot pounds in a stone ton? Pound force per square inch to Stone force per square yard? I don't even want to go there.

Edited December 11, 2017 by TimmyR

[spilldig]

In this country we measure in miles therefore, unless we change to kilometres we should measure in yards feet and inches.

[dutch]

A mile of farmland produces more potatoes than kilometre farmland.

But a Kilo potatoes is bigger than a pound potatoes so it doesn't matter in the end.

I better run to turn my hourglass or ill miss the horse carriage.

[altus]

In this country we measure in miles therefore, unless we change to kilometres we should measure in yards feet and inches.

Our official mapping agency doesn't.

[Geo-atkinson]

The metric system is just pure commom sense. One litre of water weighs a Kilo. If you can show me on the imperial system how that equates l may accept that the imperial system of weight and measures has some validity. For nostalga reasons a pint of beer and milk is ok but as a serious system of measuring it's ridiculous. Liquid, length or weight none of it fits together....

[Mikes10]

Nasa got the units mixed up on a Mars mission (1999)

 

https://www.wired.com/2010/11/1110mars-climate-observer-report/

 

 

An Air Canada Boeing 767 ran out of fuel because of mistakes in fuel conversion (1983)

 

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/30/us/jet-s-fuel-ran-out-after-metric-conversion-errors.html

[Annie Bynnol]

In this country we measure in miles therefore, unless we change to kilometres we should measure in yards feet and inches.

 

 

In this country we measure in furlongs and chains as well.

 

It common to say "One and a half miles" but never "One and an eighth miles" or "One mile and a furlong" or "nine furlongs"

They might approximate to 6000ft or 2000yds or 1800 metres.

Or 1 mile and 10 chains. Or 90 chains.

Heaven forbid that someone might use 1.125 miles.

 

In the Navy they used fathoms, knots and nautical miles and the battleships had 1 foot 3inch guns which could fire shells 360000 inches or was that 15" guns and 10000 yards- nautical yards?

 

Are inches to be divided into tenths or thousandths or 1/256 etc. An inch is too big for many applications.

 

Our number and measurement system has evolved over thousands of years for the purpose of helping the user in their trade. In a more multiskilled world we need more accuracy and transferrability in a mathematical language which everybody can understand. As in any language we can and will keep oddities with which we are comfortable with.

[ANGELFIRE1]

I still work in feet inches and yards , pounds and ounces and stones. Hate all this metric rubbish .

 

 

Snap, me as well. Never got my head round metric.

 

Angel1.