Friday, July 2, 2021

Non-metric

This country has the most confusing and unique one of a kind measuring sytem in the world. The inches, feet, yards, ounce, pound, Fahrenheit, pint, gallon, etc. are so complicated that people who come to this country have real difficulties to grasp it. 

Years ago the Federal Government decided to go with the flow and introduce the metric system. Well, that did not receive a warm welcome from the populous. This is interesting because this country is filled with immigrants and they are the ones who have to familiarize themselves with these idiotic measuring systems.

One would expect that at least they would have welcomed such change, but no. Everybody's urge is to become as american as apple pie and baseball so even the metric conversion met with cold shoulders.Years ago the federal government requested that contractors use dual measuring systems on plans, on designating material sizes. They also wanted road signs to show distances in kilometers. Automobiles had to have the odometers in miles and kilometers. Weather reports showed temperatures in Celsius instead of. Fahrenheit.

Confusion ruled the day. In my line of work, engineering, we didn't which way to turn. But once they realized that this was not a good idea everything quetly stopped and we all went back to the good, old , confusing american system.

This was not the only stupid idea the government ever had. But at least this was not political, I hope.

 

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