Re: [RC] Other nations and endurance - Sisu West Ranch
The problem is that some one thought that you could
use a gradualism approach. That does not work. If you are going to
change you do it bright and early one January first. In 6 months everyone
has adjusted.
Example: Special cross country ski trails (at least
in the Midwest) were started by people who admired cross country skiing in
Europe. From the start they were marked in Kilometers. I know people
who are completely at ease with this, but think they could never change their
cars or other things to Metric.
Example: I had a number of products in
factories where, because of the origin and age of the equipment, some was
calibrated in Degrees F, and some in Celsius. Both the engineers and the
hourly workers were completely at ease with both systems in use at the same
time.
There are a couple of things that would be very
hard to change in the USA. From Pennsylvania west, most of the
country has been surveyed in miles, and rods. This makes land descriptions
very easy if you use rods, and acres. The second area is home
construction. 16 inch and 24 and 48 inch spacings are used to build
things. It would be a real pain to change. Even more of a pain than
I have in my present house where some of the lumber is rough (2" by 4"), some is
old (1 5/8" by 3 5/8"), and the new stuff is 1 1/2" by 3 1/2".
Please: I am not advocating a campaign to change
from our customary units to metric, just explaining that the problem is not
change, just the will to change.
One of the interesting things about the mess we
have allowed our measurements to get into is our definition of length. The
British yard is or was not exactly the same as the American yard. The
American yard is defined in relation to the Meter, the British yard is a bar
kept in England. Most of the time it doesn't matter, but if you are going
to build a very precise piece of machinery, you better be careful.
It is interesting that in the UK they are probably
in more of a mess than we are. On their highways, distances to towns are
marked in miles (abreviated m on the signs) but the distance to an exit is in
Meters (apreviated m on the signs). That took a bit of getting used
to!
Ed
PS: Our engineers handle this unit comfusion well,
except when customary and Metric unit confusion causes a Mars lander to
crash.
Ed & Wendy Hauser 2994 Mittower
Road Victor, MT 59875
