[mynegation]

Disclaimer: I am European living in Canada and I wish metric system to be the only system everywhere and hate to use imperial system.

Having said that I have to recognize that it is a matter of habit. I am pretty sure there are people for whom metric system looks stupid.

There is a logic behind imperial system. In it, units are duodecimal (base-12) as opposed to decimal units of metric system. The rationale for that is that 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6, whereas 10 is divisible only by 2 and 5. Apparently dividing things into 3 and 4 parts was very important when people were not educated enough to understand the concept of fractional numbers. Babylonian numerals were base-60, there are still special names for numbers 11 and 12 in many languages, and day is split into 24 (12*2) hours and hour is 60 minutes and minute is 60 seconds.

[jack-r-abbit]

But 12 only shows up with "inches in a foot".

3 ft in a yard. 5280 ft in a mile. 16 oz in a pound/pint. 8 oz in a cup. 2 cups in a pint. 2 pints in a quart. 4 quarts in a gallon... and so on. The imperial system is very inconsistent in what can be divided by what. So if that was important... they failed.

It is also kind of strange that we don't really have a unit of measure between "yard" and "mile", do we? Something between 3 ft and 5280 ft would be nice. :)

[mmastrac]

Small correction:

2 pints in a quart, 2 quarts in a pottle, 2 pottles in a gallon.

[jack-r-abbit]

heh... never heard of a pottle. Good to know... I guess. :)

[dragonwriter]

> But 12 only shows up with "inches in a foot".

Wrong.

> 5280 ft in a mile.

5280 is 12 * 440.

> 16 oz in a pound/pint.

12 troy oz. in a troy pound is also part of the system

> The imperial system is very inconsistent in what can be divided by what.

Inconsistent, yes, "12 only appears in inches in a foot", no.

[jack-r-abbit]

>> 5280 ft in a mile. >5280 is 12 * 440.

But what the heck is 440? 440/12 is 36.666666666666667

8292 is 12 * 691 but those numbers are just as meaningless.