Metric vs Inferial

[Allen Smithee]

I happened across this quote which cost me a screen and keyboard, so I thought I'd share it:



AS

[paul gough]

Allen, agree entirely with the facts of conversion, but there is a sort of attraction to the British Imperial system if you were trained in it. Feet, furlongs, & rods and roods, thous. and gnats eyebrows, what a lovely bunch of coconuts. For the artisan and machinist not a great deal of 'conversion' of the sort quoted went on. For the scientist and engineer, yes, metric is indispensable and a stroke of French, (I think), genius. Sometimes though, old dogs don't particularly like learning new tricks, even if they have to. Regards, Paul Gough. 

[Jo]

For the scientist and engineer, yes, metric is indispensable and a stroke of French, (I think), genius.

The French may have come up with the idea but they had to come to England (Napier and Sons) to have the machining of their platinum standard done 

Jo

[paul gough]

Jo, thanks for this little titbit of info, but alas the lump of platinum is junk now, it's all done with lasers and mirrors or counting atoms vibrations, or some such, all smoke and mirrors to me though. regards Paul Gough.

[Jo]

Jo, thanks for this little titbit of info, but alas the lump of platinum is junk now, it's all done with lasers and mirrors or counting atoms vibrations, or some such,

It was actually David Napier's son James who planned down and finished the three 'H' section bars made of 90% Platinum and 10% Iridium for the standard(s). James and one of the charge hands did this over night to avoid drafts in the works blowing the swarf around that the charge hand was busy recovering 

Of course James was working in imperial measurements when he made these 

Jo

[paul gough]

Jo, wonderful stuff. It never fails to amaze me the depth of knowledge served up on the electronic platter of M.E.M. for us by very generous and knowledgeable souls. Regards, Paul Gough.

[steam guy willy]

The imperial system is all about division as in dividing up the worlds continents into protectorates !! you can divide 36 inches bu 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,9, etc etc and get small decimal places. with Metric it is all about multiplying as division gives you lots of decimal places.ie 1/3rd of 10 meters,millimetres, centimetres etc is 3.333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333 decimetres etc that don't exist in industryAlso i tend to make mistakes with funny meters. So that is my Euro'sworth.!!

[AOG]

I have always thought it was funny how the UK tossed away a perfectly usable measuring system for a tarted up French system. Napoleon finally won. It just took him a lot longer than he expected.   

In all seriousness I can work with both but I prefer working in decimal inches for model enginering work. I find one inch a convenient reference size for what we do. A meter is to big and a centimeter is to small. Of course it doesn't hurt that tooling and metal in imperial sizes are readily available and usually cheaper than their metric counterparts on this side of the pond. On the other hand, fractional inches are a real pain and just need to go away. I would rather work in metric than fractional.

Tony

[Vixen]

Steam guy willie, I like that idea.
The Imperial system was all about dividing the world into governable sized protectorates, while the Metric system is all about multiplying, thus making the EU bigger and bigger until it eventually becomes ungovernable. (If it has not already achieved that objective)
Mike

[gbritnell]

Boy oh Boy!
This subject has been beaten to death on almost every forum I have ever participated in. Other than the humorous last paragraph, in today's digital world what difference does it make.
In the carpentry world we used inches and fractions of inches. It works just fine, thank you. In the machining world we use decimal inches. What difference does it make to use a decimal fraction of an inch or a meter. Saying that one can be multiplied or divided by 10 doesn't prove anything. There are still fractional parts of a meter or millimeter used.
I was brought up in the inch world and have no problem using the calculator to convert one way or the other.
Should the world be standardized? Who cares? It doesn't affect me as a modeler one iota.
I realize the original posting was for it's humor but as I have seen in the past let's not get into a pi$$ing contest about which system is better.
gbritnell
 

[Admiral_dk]

I happened across this quote which cost me a screen and keyboard, so I thought I'd share it:

Allan I hope this was not the case literarily - but only a figure of speech 

I've seen the first part about the Metric system many times - but not this version of the Infernal system 

About the division of the Old system - Yes there is certainly a god amount of numbers that divide easily into 36 or 360, but there's also the problematic (not necessarily better in Metric) like a 7 cylinder rotary. Fractions are a BIG drag when it comes to Infernal drill bits, nuts and bolts etc - figuring what drill size to use with Metric threads are a breeze and Infernals are almost impossible without a chart (and still does not make sense).

Vixen - Though politics shouldn't be a part of this site - the EU is meant to prevent war in Europe and has been very successful so far. Unfortunately we see strong national forces in all member states now trying to force us in the direction of WW3. Lets stop this part of the discussion here - this belongs elsewhere.

Amen to Georges comment.

[Vixen]

Admiral_dk

Had not intended to be political or to give offence.

[Lew Hartswick]

IF and I really man IF the SI had not screwed up the entire threads for the "metric" system it would have probably caught on in Imperial Land at lot
easier. The whole system (if you can call it that ) of threads is so screwed up it's just impossible. :-(
   ...lew...

[zeeprogrammer]

It doesn't really matter much to me. If I had a leaning, it would be towards metric.

It's interesting to me that I have no problem visualizing the size of something given in fractions or decimal of inches.
But when something is specified that is less than 3mm...I have to see it.

I do like kilometers over miles. On a long trip it feels faster to see the kilometers roll by. It takes forever to go a mile.

[Allen Smithee]

I happened across this quote which cost me a screen and keyboard, so I thought I'd share it:

Allan I hope this was not the case literarily - but only a figure of speech 

Of course it's not literally true - it did not cost me a screen and a keyboard. That would be ridiculous It cost my employer a screen and a keyboard...

AS