[Mountain_Skies]

Base ten is an unfortunate numeric choice and responsible for much of the hesitation to switch to metric. Maybe someday when we have millions of O'Neill Cylinder colonies, one of them will adopt base twelve instead, at which point the main reason against metric would go away.

[skissane]

> Base ten is an unfortunate numeric choice and responsible for much of the hesitation to switch to metric. Maybe someday when we have millions of O'Neill Cylinder colonies, one of them will adopt base twelve instead, at which point the main reason against metric would go away.

I've heard this argument many times before, but I don't think it makes much sense. The US customary / British imperial measurements are not consistently based on base 12. Yes, there are 12 inches to a foot; but there are 16 (not 12) ounces in a pound, and 128 (not 12 or 144) US fluid ounces in a US gallon (versus 160 UK fluid ounces in a UK gallon). Fahrenheit has 180 degrees between the freezing and boiling points of water, with water freezing at 32 degrees – none of which has much to do with base 12 either. There is no widely used unit corresponding to 12 feet or a twelfth of a mile. If you really want a system of units based on base 12, the US customary / British imperial system ain't what you are looking for.

Also, it ignores the fact that you can metricate while keeping a foot of 12 inches, if you define a new "metric foot" composed of 12 "metric inches". This has been done before – as I mentioned in an earlier comment, many European countries kept the pound when metricating, by defining a new "metric pound" of 500 g. Given the current standard US-UK inch is exactly 25.4 mm, one option would be to have a metric inch of 25 mm (= 2.5 cm), twelve of which would give a metric foot of 300 mm (= 30 cm, versus 30.48 cm exactly for the standard US-UK foot). Sure, having two different foots and inches (old and new) coexisting for a while might cause some confusion; but if the confusion isn't worth it, maybe base 12 isn't really worth it either. And to avoid the confusion, you could always give the new metric units different names ("moots and minches", maybe?)

[p_l]

A lot of traditional units are based on random reference points that were an issue from antiquity - consider how pretty much every market town kept their own measure references even if they used same terminology.

That said, Fahrenheit use of brine solution for 0 and his wife's armpit for 100 remains among most WTF for me.

[skissane]

> A lot of traditional units are based on random reference points that were an issue from antiquity - consider how pretty much every market town kept their own measure references even if they used same terminology.

A lot of that was because keeping the definition of units consistent across time and space was very hard in ancient and mediaeval times, even the first few centuries of the modern period. Units were defined in terms of physical artefacts (as long as this metal rod, as heavy as this particular stone), which tended over the centuries to be lost or stolen, or slowly decay. Issues such as expansion and contraction of metals at different temperatures were also not widely understood, and accurate/reproducible thermometers didn't exist until the 18th century. As we improved our knowledge of natural science, we became more and more aware of these issues – but the initial solution was often just to make the whole country adopt the standard of the national capital, and empires were made to adopt the standard of the imperial capital (the British don't call their traditional units "Imperial" for nothing)

[mitthrowaway2]

When it comes to precision machining, even Americans seem to prefer to use "thous" (1/1,000") and "tenths" (1/10,000"). Isn't it strange that the preferred measurements aren't fractional: 1/1,728" and 1/20,736"? Why do you think that is?

What would a machine shop say if you called out a dimension as (5,081/20,736")?

I think they'd stare at it for a while, chuckle at your sense of humor, and then punch it into a calculator to work it out in decimals.

[mr_toad]

Or base 16 if the machine overlords have their way.

[saalweachter]

The biggest argument against base 10 is that one day our descendants will have to explain to aliens, "because the monkeys that built us had ten fingers".

Positively mortifying.

[pmontra]

And those aliens would shrug "the slugs that built us had no fingers at all, that's why we're using binary, not because of electronics."