[db48x]

It’s not ironic, it’s economic. People had other things to worry about during the Revolutionary War, and then afterwards there was an industrial revolution. (The tax on tea might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, but the protectionist taxes on goods manufactured in the colonies was the real killer.) Once that was in full swing changing the units was impossible.

Every machine in every machine shop was geared towards manufacturing dimensions and tolerances specified in inches, tenths, and hundredths. Changing to metric would have required rebuilding or replacing all of them. England had the same problem. They had the most manufacturing capability in the world, and they weren’t about to spend all that money replacing all of that machinery.

Worse, the SI system isn’t really easier. The SI units were designed to make unit conversions easier, but in practice nobody actually converts units. In the US Customary system (as in the English Imperial system before it), every common activity has it’s own units.

Houses and furniture are measured in feet and inches, and you never ever convert those to miles. Why bother? Miles aren’t useful for measuring cupboards or rocking chairs.

Cooking uses teaspoons, tablespoons and cups, but you never need to convert between spoons and cups let alone cups and gallons or barrels or hogsheads. It is handy to remember that a tablespoon is three teaspoons though, because that can save you some time at the holidays when you have to scale your recipes up to feed all of your relatives.

The SI system is not really any different in practice.

[seszett]

> People had other things to worry about during the Revolutionary War

Well, the metric system was devised in France mostly during the Revolution, with the size of Earth surveyed while at war with most of Europe in order to get a good basis for the length of the meter.

> Cooking uses teaspoons, tablespoons and cups

Or millilitres and grams, which are basically equivalent for liquids, so you only need a kitchen scale to do most cooking as long as it's not an American recipe, and it's extremely easy to scale recipes.

[mr_toad]

> People had other things to worry about during the Revolutionary War

Actually there are plenty of examples of countries adopting metric after a revolution or gaining independence, so perhaps the US didn’t adopt metric in spite of the revolution rather than because of it.

[p_l]

Industrial revolution had nothing to do with it, given that the inch USA uses today is an inch created by a pissed off engineer (gauge block Inventor Carl Johansson) in European company making gauge blocks, who defined an inch to be 25.4 mm @ 20 degrees Celsius in 1912 - created by taking a reasonable metric approximation in between British and American inches.

The popularity of Johansson's blocks is Brits changed their definition of inch in 1930 and USA followed in 1933. Most countries that still used inches started to use "industrial inch" of 25.4mm in 1930s, the rest went metric.

[skissane]

> It’s not ironic, it’s economic.

> and then afterwards there was an industrial revolution.

> Every machine in every machine shop was geared towards manufacturing dimensions and tolerances specified in inches, tenths, and hundredths. Changing to metric would have required rebuilding or replacing all of them.

I don't think this argument makes anywhere near as much sense as you think it does: the part of the US which lags the most in metrication isn't industry, it is in everyday life, K-12 education, and consumer products/services; the US manufacturing industry is significantly ahead of US consumers in the adoption of metric. Entire industries in the US have adopted metric (most notably the US automotive design&manufacturing industry has switched to mostly metric). If the real issue were about industry, you'd expect industry to have the biggest lag, not to be ahead of consumers.

I think the real reason is actually cultural. Almost every country which successfully metricated, did so with some degree of government coercion – "you are going to start using metric now, and we aren't giving you a choice about it". The US cultural emphasis on individual freedom led it to refuse to go down that path, insisting that metrication be voluntary only – which is a large part of why, decades later, so little progress has been made. Similarly, the UK's insistence on retaining miles for road distances is due to cultural and political reasons, not any practical concern – Australia successfully converted all its road distance and speed limit signs to kilometres, despite having much longer roads than the UK does

Also, for all that US insistence on "freedom", it actually engages in anti-metric governmental coercion – consider the Fair Packaging and Labelling Act (FPLA), a federal law which makes metric-only packaging illegal for many categories of consumer goods.

> The SI units were designed to make unit conversions easier, but in practice nobody actually converts units

I can remember doing lots of unit conversions in science and maths classes in high school. If I'd gone on to study physical science or engineering at university, I'm sure I would have done plenty more. From an educational viewpoint, I think it is easier to teach students how to do science with SI units if they have already been taught basic metric units at the primary/elementary level, and are used to using them in everyday life. Whereas, students in the US start out with less familiarity with basic metric units, which makes learning to use SI units in science class more work for them

And every time I visit the US I find myself constantly trying to remember stuff like "what is an ounce, again?" "what's 60 degrees Fahrenheit in Celsius?". If the US finally finished adopting the metric system, it would eliminate the need for many unit conversions which are now required by international visitors, immigrants/emigrants to/from the US, journalists, businesses engaged in product localisation, etc

> Cooking uses teaspoons, tablespoons and cups, but you never need to convert between spoons and cups

Some countries (Australia I know is one, there are probably others) have defined metric cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. So this isn't really the argument against the metric system that you think it is

[pmontra]

I just checked and one of my tablespoons is 4 of my teaspoons, but none of them is imperial :-)

On the other side, 1 liter of water is 1000 grams so if I need 100 cc I can put water in a glass and weight it.