The Romans had very accurate measurement devices. They did not built an empire on feet or whatever.
Metric wins by being consistent. Every metric/imperial boundary is a failure point. NASA lost a $327M Mars orbiter (1999) to a pound/newton mixup. A Boeing 767 ran out of fuel because kg were calculated as lbs. Doctors using teaspoons instead of ml cause pediatric dosing errors. Global manufacturers run metric — imperial just creates conversion overhead, and conversion overhead kills.
@VooDooMedic conversion errors were created by the metric system itself. Absolute skill issue.
@Tfmonkey
Metric is base 10 system. Every conversion is a power of 10 — i.e move a decimal. Imperial asks you to remember 12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, 5,280 feet to a mile, 16 ounces to a pound. More arbitrary rules = more surface area for error. The "skill issue" is harder to have when there's almost nothing to memorize with the metric system human error exists in any system. But the metric argument isn't "people make mistakes," it's why those mistakes are more likely with imperial.
@VooDooMedic @Tfmonkey
IMO The different systems have their own use, appropriate to the time they were used.
Imperial makes a lot more sense when you don't have standard formulas and you need to measure things based on body parts or a standard unit of time every one agrees on (like a day) - easy ways for a man to replicate without instruments.
Metric is base 10 so it's very good for formulas, standards and conversions when you calculate math manually (specially logarithms) - i.e. science.
@Zeb @VooDooMedic We could have simply added a base-10 system to the Imperial system by using the yard instead of the meter (miliyards, kiloyards, etc) but the French wanted an entirely new measurement based on France because their pussies hurt over timezones.
@Tfmonkey @Zeb @VooDooMedic @TheBoatMan
Any good Boatman would know that the clearance board is located on the right-hand side (fender system) of the bridge opening. In the U.S.A the large vertical ruler that shows the actual clearance in feet from the water level to the lowest part of the bridge structure at that exact moment is in imperial scale.Mexico and Canada use the metric system.Mexicans died at the Brooklyn Bridge because the French
@VooDooMedic @Tfmonkey
Computers make both obsolete though, so I would expect everyone to use their own measurements in the future and they will simply maintain the conversion factor.
Many companies already do that.