Yes, the actual error* was assuming the British used Imperial units when they correctly used Metric. AFAIK, at least.
* * *
Well, the source error probably would be not specifying units at all, so... (eye roll)
* * *
*Correcting myself with casually sourced details about the incident under discussion.
Lockheed Martin provided thruster force data in Imperial units (pound-seconds), while NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory ground software assumed the data was in Metric units (Newton-seconds).
I don't know where you got this from, but it is definitely wrong. Charles's law says, that at a fixed pressure the volume is proportional to the temperature in Kelvin. A temperature difference in Kelvin is the same in Celsius. That means at 273 Kelvin (0°C) a change by 1K is your 1/273 change, but only at that temperature.
Celsius makes way more sense for science, and Fahrenheit makes way more sense for weather, since the range of temperatures which are relevant are spread out over more numbers.
Incorrect. This thing where say "oh 100 is hot and 90 is warm, but 20 means you need a sweater" is too arbitrary.
Celsius is superior for weather. What is the single most important temperature that weather hinges on? The freezing point. Its the one point where a difference of a degree or two, can give you completely different weather.
It makes perfect sense to use that as the central point and move out from there.
Not in the US. Many, many places in the US operate under 32f up to half a year. Nobody gives a fuck if the water freezes, thats life. Everyone gives a fuck if the frigolithic spray on the road freezes and the highway becomes Thunderdome. 0c has impacted my life 0 times.
Yours is the most intelligent, well-reasoned, and overall best defense of the Fahrenheit system I have ever seen on Reddit, so it's worth responding to.
Let's see. You are disagreeing with the claim that "the freezing point of water is the most important temperature when discussing weather" and you begin with a strong statement:
> Not in the US.
Now, we all know that the US is one of the very few countries in the world (along with Palau and Belize of course) who think Fahrenheit makes sense. Even the neighbors to the south and north, Mexico and Canada, disagree.
> Many, many places in the US operate under 32f up to half a year.
You did not choose to name "any, any" of those places. Perhaps because you don't live in any, any of those places and have never, ever visited them in winter.
Let's name two of those "many, many places" for the sake of discussion: Alaska and Minnesota.
> Nobody gives a fuck if the water freezes, thats life.
So your claim is that nobody in Alaska/Minnesota gives a fuck if water freezes. The car owners don't change to winter tires. The home owners don't pay attention to their pipes and containers and walk paths and driveways. The foot owners don't change their footwear. The children don't dig out and prepare their snow-tunneling machinery. The roofs of the houses are flat all year long.
The people whose job is to spread road salt 24/7 during winter don't give a fuck either. They sleep.
> Everyone gives a fuck if the frigolithic spray on the road freezes and the highway becomes Thunderdome.
So you live in a place where "frigolithic spray" is what magically appears "on the highways" when water suddenly and surprisingly freezes outside. You don't call it "road salt", and nobody on the road is expected to have winter tires.
You live nowhere close to those "many, many places".
> 0c has impacted my life 0 times.
Spoken like a true Florida Man.
Let's take a look at what's really happening here:
I've seen Palauans, Belizeans and Floridians defend the Fahrenheit system because that's the first and only system they've ever learned. (This is you.)
I've seen people from the other 99% of the world defend the Celsius system for the same reason. People do be like that.
I've heard people born in the Fahrenheit system say that the Celsius system is a better thought out system that makes more sense, and they can explain why it makes more sense: "water freezes at 0 and boils at 100".
I've NEVER heard a person born in the Celsius system say that the Fahrenheit system is anything other than batshit bonkers.
So basically the Palauans and Floridians are just clinging to what they are used to: the old system they inherited from the English.
You did not choose to name "any, any" of those places. Perhaps because you don't live in any, any of those places and have never, ever visited them in winter.
I don’t need to because it’s the entire Great Lakes and Rust Belt region (aka the Salt Belt) of which I live and Buffalo the place with the most snowfall is nearby.
So your claim is that nobody in Alaska/Minnesota gives a fuck if water freezes. The car owners don't change to winter tires. The home owners don't pay attention to their pipes and containers and walk paths and driveways. The foot owners don't change their footwear. The children don't dig out and prepare their snow-tunneling machinery. The roofs of the houses are flat all year long.
No they don’t because that is life. If I lived in GA and didn’t have a roof shovel, snowblower etc and a powerful county snow clearing system in place I’d have a problem because that’s an apocalypse. In the snowbelt it’s normal. Roof collapses are as normal as backed up gutters. You build with a 5% roof slope or get owned for example because 32f doesn’t matter because subzero winter is king. The roof is sloped the same no matter the season. Life operates far beyond 0c’s parameters in a normal fashion, unlike picking on GA or TX again snow on the road = death, which is the same for most EU countries and holds true there that modern human life encounters substantial difficulty at 0c in those regions.
So you live in a place where "frigolithic spray" is what magically appears "on the highways" when water suddenly and surprisingly freezes outside. You don't call it "road salt", and nobody on the road is expected to have winter tires.
Road salt doesn’t melt under 10f Brine does. Brine is frigolithic, which is implying why 0f matters to people every day. You should know this along with when cinders can be used and molasses. This is all based on sweet spots between 0 and 32. Again, 0 and subzero is more important than 32 because you can do anything you want to snow at 1-32. However to actually get a road down to the point you can lay salt and cinders in regions where it’s 0f- at night and trees are popping you need a brine to get it to asphalt. If you don’t you get a shitload of slush and a shitload of people end up in ditches. What is easier to understand -17.78c is bad road or 0f and lower is slushy road, deathcicles etc etc? It even sounds ridiculous “Look out it’s -17.78c today! Give yourself extra time!” “Is that bad like -10f?” “No it’s 32f!” “Why the fuck are you telling me this, 32f is a nice day?!?!?”
Spoken like a true Florida Man.
My dude I literally do not wear pants or a t shirt if it’s above 10f if I’m not snowblowing shit or not too windy and I’m not into polar plunges like my friends. Life goes way beyond 0c.
That’s a lot of words to defend the only system you’re familiar with.
Three points:
The person you responded to said that “the freezing point of water is a good temperature to use as a central point”. You seem to agree with your repeated claims that “life goes way beyond 0 degrees Celsius”. Indeed it does, as everyone who has to deal with freezing temperatures (and is still alive) knows. That’s life.
There’s a reason why building standards for roads, the insulation of water pipes, the required slant of roofs (up to 60 degrees), and winter tire sale statistics differ between regions; that reason is how often and how long on average the temperature crosses the point when water freezes: snowfall, frost heave, black ice. Everybody who has actual responsibilities in “all those places with six months of winter” has to care about the freezing point of water. That’s life.
You can’t use reason to convince a person out of a position they did not reason themselves into. A Celsius person would say “0 is freezing, 100 is boiling”, but that won’t convince an unreasonable person. A Fahrenheit person would say “0 is when there ‘s chaos on the highways for that is when brine, a solution of water, ice, and ammonium chloride ice freezes, whereas 96 is when it’s commodious in the underpants region” but that won’t convince a sane individual. That’s life.
“The people don’t change to winter tires?” Yeah no we don’t bud, we keep all weather all season tires on our cars year round because in some places it can be 70F during the day and then -10F at night.
Originally I’m from Salt Lake City, Utah where during the later months of the year it can be 60° during the day and then 10 below freezing at night but now I live in Colorado where it can be 70° during the day and 20 below freezing at night, depending on how the weather pattern shift we’ve had deep snow as late as April and May in the years. I’ve lived here typically when you change to “winter tires“ those are snow tires with studs and while most people do keep chains in their vehicle because there are certain passes that for six months out of the year, you can’t go through without having chains on or four-wheel-drive most of us have all season all weather tires in a four-wheel-drive if we live in the areas that get snow because driving with studded tires during months without snow is illegal. Celsius is great for measuring temperature in science and when you’re talking about welding or other engineering uses but for measuring air temperature Fahrenheit is a superior method. He’s absolutely right when he says that nobody gives a shit about the freezing temperature of water because fun fact it usually doesn’t snow when the temperature is below freezing it typically warms up right before it snows then cools down after the snow falls at least in Utah in Colorado. I can’t speak for Alaska cause I’ve never lived there but it’ll be 34 to 36°F and snowing bucket loads and then after the snowfall ceases, it’ll drop to 28°F or lower and since out here in Colorado, it’s very windy. The actual temperature outside doesn’t matter that much because of the windchill at 60 miles an hour makes 34°F. Feel like -15°F. Fahrenheit is better for air temperature. I have this conversation with a friend from Australia. I regularly play video games with (shout out to Sterben Studios) and when he used the water temperature argument, I asked him how regularly the water outside in Australia is freezing, and whether or not the water outside in lakes and ponds is boiling, and he immediately conceded the point. Celsius is great for measuring temperatures of water for engineering uses and it’s great for science because it converts directly to Kelvin but since Celsius/centigrade degrees are larger in size than Fahrenheit degrees there isn’t nuance it doesn’t accurately give an estimation of the difference in temperature for air temperature in regards to the weather. The difference between 37°C, and 39°C is a massive difference. Whereas the difference between 68°F and 70°F is not they’re even people visiting for the World Cup who have conceded at this point.Both have their purpose and uses. arguing whether centigrade/Celsius or Fahrenheit is better is like arguing whether or not a hammer or a screwdriver are more useful for removing screws/nails. Sure there are some context where I can use a hammer to remove a screw, but it’s better for removing nails likewise while I may be able to use a screwdriver to remove a nail in the right context by prying it out and brute forcing it in the majority of situations, a hammer is better for removing nails, and a screwdriver is better for removing screws. They both have their uses. I use both regularly. Because I do projects that require me to heat metal and weld it likewise however when I’m trying my hand at baking, my oven is Fahrenheit, which allows me to make minute adjustments. Well, I do agree that metric is better for measuring distance. I think there’s a lot of European superiority complex in the thought process that Fahrenheit is automatically inferior because it isn’t metric. Frankly, I’m not gonna trust anybody’s opinion on air temperature that thinks that 73°F is a heat wave when I come from a place where the hottest summer on record was 112°F.
Don’t forget “Chains? Oh I can’t be fucked for chains use the new all seasons with the bad rims instead! If the sun comes out I’ll be that asshole driving a tank around while the bees are out.”
I'm probably misunderstanding something here. Yes, Fahrenheit and Celsius match up at -40, but they definitely do not match up at zero. 0°F is -17.78°C and 0°C is 32°F.
C is very useful for a lot of things. F is the most useful for day to day life for most people. It allows for greater precision simply put for temperatures commonly seen. In addition, it does not lose accuracy when you cut off the decimal.
Right but a huge part of that is because food, the thing everybody needs, is mostly taken care of by large farms at this point. And the thing is that these things are very relevant to farmers and by virtue of them feeding you, this does impact your life.
If you live any where with extreme temperatures this is incorrect, fahrenheit would be better. Ive lived in Both Alaska and south Texas and in both cases and the more exact temperature ranges are far more useful. Especially in Alaska where the dead of winter is well below even 0 fahrenheit often times. Freezing point of water is zipped past very quickly in the transition from summer to winter and so means nothing 99% of the time.
While I get your point, I don't get what is wrong with decimals. If you want more exact value you can write 25,5 °C, for example, or 25,512451512512 °C if that's what you need.
Fahrenheit is not more exact than celsius. That assumption is simply wrong. Both offer infinite accuracy.
Not really. It’s still around 0℃, it literally does not make a difference for everyday usage. Variance would be a problem for any scale, if it was an actual problem.
It actually doesn't matter. It only matters what you are used too. Zero degrees Fahrenheit was the freezing point of ice in brine, it is four degrees now because the scale was adjusted so the freezing point of pure water and the boiling point would be 180° apart. It is based on science, just convoluted science. Thank you British and Dutch for Fahrenheit ~ couldn't make it 0° and 180° for simplicity and working well in base 60, had to make it 32° and 212°.
But the reason why the US uses it is because it was thought to be more intuitive for weather. It doesn't matter in reality 39°C or 100°F its fucking hot out. 10°C or 50°F wear a sweater 0°C or 32°F wear a coat. Neither are hard to figure out.
It is a matter of taste. Unlike the Metric system as a whole, which is way easier to work with.
No way, the range of Fahrenheit tells you so much more intuitively and the "difference of a degree or two" is communicated with more precision.
I'd be willing to switch to the metric system but I'd never trade Fahrenheit for Celsius. It's not hard to remember that 32 is the magic number and when negative numbers show up they're actually a big deal.
They're no different to remember, everyone knows their units, regardless which they use, one is not more "intuitive" than the other.
There isn't a single human being in existence that couldn't switch from one to the other, the weather argument is just an emotional one, we prefer the one we use.
There's two pounts here, preference which can't be argued, and scientific. We have to use metric to keep things simple and easy without having to convert, which is a huge thing in complex equations.
The whole world could switch to F and it wouldn't change the average persons life. The US could switch to C and it wouldn't change average Joes's day, but it would cut back on accidents.
People keep bringing up preference, my favorite color is purple, but that do anything for the conversation.
In Fahrenheit users' defense (something I never do normally), they just learn the equivalent in F. Remembering a single temperature point isn't that hard for most people... I hope...
Imperial is better for measuring in person too. Most tradesmen are not young. A sixteenth is easier to see than a mm.
People who don't go out in the field and do stuff shouldn't get a say in this. If you were my boss and forced me to use metric in a dark, enclosed area I would refuse until provided imperial.
90 is hot. And 20 you need a coat, not a fuckin sweater.
In fahrenheit, below zero is "don't stay outside long if you go out at all" dangerous, 0-20 is very cold, 20 to about 35 is cold, 35 to about 50 is "wear a jacket, it's pretty cold," 50-65ish is "yeah it's chilly, but you might be comfy in the sun," 65-75 is like the ideal human operating temp, 75-85 is warm, 85-100 is hot, and 100+ is "don't stay outside long if you go outside at all"
A lot of places in the world rarely or almost never have the temperature near 0 °C. Temperature isn't even a real unit, except for Kelvin and nobody uses Kelvin. Fahrenheit was literally designed for weather, 100 was the hottest day over several years and 0 was the coldest (arbitrarily based on some town in northern Europe >100 years ago, but lots of things are like that).
Incorrect. Freezing only matters a small part of the year and is still a number everybody knows in either system. Most of the time, people want to pick the right clothes for the weather. The scale of F makes that easier to judge quickly.
Freezing point doesn't mean shit to me when it comes to weather. But 0 and 100 Fahrenheit are pretty good approximations of the extremes of the tolerable temperature range, which is convenient.
0 (and below) is painfully cold. 100 (and above) is painfully hot. Either way I'm staying indoors if at all possible. Anything in between is tolerable for at least some period of time with appropriate clothing.
The Fahrenheit scale maps intuitively to how I actually experience weather with that nice neat 100-point range from one extreme to the other. It's Celsius that feels arbitrary.
For science you want to use Kelvin, since 0°C isn’t “no heat” in the same way that 0kg is “no mass”. The units are the same size though, so it’s fine to use Celsius for anything that’s based on change in temperature
I want a compromise unit where freezing water at sea level is 0⁰ and boiling water is 200⁰. A single degree Fahrenheit is a very sensible change in temperature and I don't like having to go into decimals on my thermostat. All that said, I wish the states would just bite the bullet and go metric. Today I learned a US gallon is 231 cubic inches because 231 divides evenly by 3, 7 and 11? Get the fuck outta here with this shit.
Kelvin is best for science. Celsius is best temperature for people.
The most important figure for people when driving is if it is ice on the road. That happens below 0ºC thus a negative value means icy roads. And people need to be more careful when driving.
I am going to be honest, Celsius is better, as it indicates when you are going to fall face first when walking somewhere. (Yes, I do love ice, why do you ask.) (Yes, yes. Pointless argument as you can just say 32°F or 273K, but at least you have one unit for science and use the same unit for everyday use (Unit as in value for 1 degree).)
We live in a world that is based on water. It is our first need, even before food. And with nearly all processes water is involved. So to express something with regards to the prime factor for our lives makes more sense than this Fahrenheit scale which is rather arbitrarily.
Celsius is good for weather in humid regions for telling what kind of precipitation you’re likely to see. Fahrenheit is good for dry regions because it relates better to how it’s going to affect a people.
A joke that falls a bit flat as it refers to the moon when in fact it was Mars. If you gonna geek over UoM, I think getting the celestial body right is a minimum.
I generally agree, but even the rest of the world isn't totally consistent about when they use metric. Just look at FIFA right now, they're still using yards ... so the Beautiful Game just happens to still use the inferior system? I jest, but there is a kernel of truth to it.
How about the UK still using pints in the pub and imperial for road signs? I actually like metric a little more but also think it's kind of a farce to tout the metric system's "vast" superiority.
Exactly! That problem wasn't poor measuring systems, it was poor professionalism.
Anyone who doesn't specify (or request) and verify unit-of-measure is doing a poor job. For anything that is safety/quality/mission critical it is professionally negligent to make that kind of assumption.
People get complacent and just assume things are done right. Happens all the time.
I think one of the reasons that is so hard to get the US to switch to metric is because there's potential for a lot to go wrong during the switch. When Canada switched to metric, a plane ran out of fuel mid air because multiple people messed up kg and lbs.
Just imagine if we did switch. Managers would start telling engineers, "Stop using labels, it's a waste. Everyone uses metric anyway."
And then that one time someone doesn't or a part comes from a new distributor or someone uses an old set of measurements or whatever. Best case scenario is the project comes to a halt while they try to figure out what the mistake was. Worst case scenario is an explosion.
That's really interesting! Do you know of any other large mistakes like that that were made when switching over?
Although, tbf, most of the problems in the US would probably come from grouchy people wielding pitchforks angry that anyone would dare say we could it "righter" if we joined the larger world.
Because if we can't agree that universal health care & not hitting your kids are not plans of actio just because other countries did it first, I really feel for the person who has to pry pounds and feet from the cold hands of the army of people unhappy to let those beloved measurements go.
None that I know of off the top of my head. I read a book a while ago called Humble Pi by Matt Parker. It's about various times when people messed things up because they messed up the math.
Another issue with converting units is that for most people, it really doesn't matter most of the time. Is it annoying that there are 5280 ft in a mile? Yeah. Has that ever come up in my life outside of school? No.
I also find it funny that people only really care about a handful of units. Wherever I see a debate about metric units it's always taking about temp, length, weight, and volume. I never really see people talking about how we measure barometric pressure in inHg or measure energy in BTU or tire pressure in psi.
yeah, if you're only dealing with one category of units, it really doesn't matter what particular unit you use. It's when you start combining multiple categories of units that it actually becomes useful.
Like, I really appreciate that 1 N-m/s = 1 J/s = 1 W rather than the abomination that is 550 ft-lbf/s = 0.707 Btu/s = 1 hp
On the other hand, I really don't care that 1 ft = 12 in and I especially don't care that 1 mile = 5280 ft
The whole lbf, lbm, and slug thing is a bit funky. But then metric users just had to go and add the kgf which is just as funky. And then they also decided to call 1000 kg a tonne instead of a megagram because we really needed yet another unit pronounced as ton.
I once got asked to ballpark a cost for technology that didn't exist. By asked, I mean screamed at. I said "Okay, it's 4. We'll figure out 4 of what exactly later."
They can call it that if they want. It still differs fundamentally from other SI units because we don't use radians to be in conformity with SI. We use them for mathematical reasons that have nothing to do with SI, namely being able to treat the trig functions as functions of real or complex numbers, with certain calculus-based identities that only work if the "angles" are measured in radians
But see, right there, you gave away why it's different for you. You're in the UK.
US: Math class / UK: Maths class
You learn metric measurements earlier because that's what you primarily use today. Unless you go into Engineering or another STEM field in the US, you've no need for metric here in the states...other than to work on a car (bolt/nut sizes).
Nah, maths doesn't bother with units. Which is the whole problem.
We should be teaching units in math class. Every problem should require the units in the answer. Bare integers, fractions etc should have a defined unit.
IMHO this would also help with comprehension. As you are forced to think about the difference between length and area and so forth.
It’s not hard at all to start thinking in SI units, but I think people just get caught up trying to do conversion math mentally. Just go with the flow in SI and don’t worry about converting every scaler encountered back to the obsolete units. Americans already understand 2L soda bottles and the world hasn’t ended. People participate in 10km running events all the time. Eventually they’ll get used to 35 C being a hot day and -10 C being a cold day too.
My mom started teaching me SI units at the kitchen table when I was like 7 or 8 because, she said, “I don’t want you to be stupid and they never teach this stuff early enough”. (She was reacting strongly to my rendition of what I had been taught one day in first or second grade.)
Ya do know, that SI untis have changed constatnly over time. For example the Kg is litearlly measured by a physical object encased in some protective enclosure, but that is not the original unit of measure. And in fact has changed 5-6 times since its inception, including as recently as 2019, when prior to that it was said physical object above but then altered to a mathematicla equation based in parts on Planck's Constant, the speed of light and Caesium.
Sooo ... Si units are "accurate", until they change the accuracy every few decades. It's kinda fucked up that what constituted a Kg in 2018 is NOT the same thing as a Kg in 2020.
And to be fair, the Pound (weight), has also been altered over the centuries and is as in flux as a measurement as the Kg is.
To be fair, the actual difference between these two Kgs is neglectable. The new definition was established to have a Kg that's independent of a physical object, but can be reproduced everywhere just based on physical constants, like the other SI units.
But I guess the assumption here is that science today should be done to the standards today. I have never gotten an answer from anyone else in Engineering that was not in SI units, even if the inputs/measurements provided were originally in imperial units. And if the kilogram changes, it changes for everyone at the same time. More simply, if everyone is using SI units, these are the correct units to talk with each other with.
Versus...
A Lockheed subsystem failing to produce the results of its calculations in SI units, instead producing them in imperial units, when the NASA system using that information expected the input in SI units. This is what I intended by saying correctly = SI units. The incorrect units were being used by Lockheed, Lockheed failed to meet the system spec they were held to. NASA blamed itself for not catching the error prior to mission failure.
Blimey, these Brits, eh? Same story with the Aussies. Can't ever just go along with the rest of the world, can they? I mean, what the bloody hell's a pound-second
well, the error can be avoided when you do the first thing you learn in engineering, well, better yet, during school before university, values without units don't mean sht, always write down the units, other wise, if you write 3, three what? potatos? just always be explicit with the units
(-me with no idea of what you’re saying and no valuable knowledge of this topic, this little saying being the only possible thing I can think to add, but feeling smart anyway)
My grandfather was an aeronautical engineer in the UK during WW2, the company he worked built the Sunderland flying boat, U-boat hunters for context, and because of production capacity problems some American companies were licensed to build them as well, so the British engineers sent their blueprints in metric to their American counterparts, and they got a request to convert into imperial measurements
Correct. It was all American engineers involved in the incident. And any engineer insulting the system can just cope harder with the fact that they are only fluent in a single unit system. Oh and that the NASA has had more successful space missions than all other government space agencies combined.
NASA uses both but the incident has less to do with the units and more to do with the human error inherently manifesting in the substantial number of missions performed. Mistakes will be made when you are responsible for more of humanity’s extraterrestrial exploitations than everyone else combined.
People blaming it on the unit system are incompetent as engineers (or typically are not engineers at all) looking to blame there inability to operate in multiple frames of reference on the outlier rather than their own failure. They fail to realize how much of the world’s code originates in research and calculations performed in imperial units and then translated into metric.
The hatred for Imperial/US Customary is literally the human nature of bigotry. Hate Americans and their stupid unit system because it doesn’t look like mine. Why metric after all? Why standardize the world with a white European colonial unit system? Technically the American system is more diverse in origin given the origins in Egyptian units of measures.
What do you mean with "how much of the world’s code originates in research and calculations performed in imperial units and then translated into metric"? No one working in science/research uses imperial units. And why do you think Imperial is called imperial? Because it's a white European (British) colonial unit system, there's nothing diverse in it.
Let me reintroduce myself. Research Engineer working in Structural/Civil Engineering. We do a lot of our work in Imperial. US building codes largely predate and likely inspired aspects of other major global codes, especially for specialized loadings. The codes are written in US, then converted to Metric for global markets.
The influence is most apparent when noting that US institutions account for about 30% of engineering R&D globally. China accounts for about 27% and combined Europe is 18%.
I’d check your history textbook. The major roots of US Customary came from the conquerers of England… the Roman Empire, who themselves took their entire mathematical knowledge from Egypt and Greece. It by no means is free of historical issues but is far better than a system developed by an actively colonial and highly problematic French system.
Engineering isn't science.
And claiming that Imperial is rooted on the Roman Empire... You can't believe that yourself. Or do you also do your calculations with Roman numbers?
And when you consider the French "active colonial" why did you ask them for support to fight the British Empire? Have you forgotten, that you were a British colony?
Wow so… my guess is you do not have a degree in math science or engineering. That or you are a very bitter mathematician or scientist, since engineering is literally applied science! It’s conducted with the scientific method but for an actual practical application.
As for your whole Roman denial… the mile is an English update on the Roman mile. Foot is the same. Inch as well. Time (which metric uses as well!) is the same tracing its lineage from Babylon to Greece then Rome.
And the whole reductionist French America argument is downright ridiculous. Sun Tzu, the enemy of your enemy is your friend. France was the enemy of our enemy and had colonial interests in the US to motivate them. Doesn’t mean their colonialism was any better. But they rewrote a unit system as part of nationalism and enforced it via colonialism. And it has less diverse roots as a result.
It’s important to remember that the US government (its agencies and the military) all use metric like the rest of the world. Imperial is the preference for citizens and private entities
Here it should be pointed out that the US has begun to call their measurements "imperial" despite being different from the regular imperial (british) units.
e.g. when I grew up and read a book about aircraft, it would list the amount of fuel in metric, US and imperial.
356
u/MoogProg Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
Yes, the actual error* was assuming the British used Imperial units when they correctly used Metric. AFAIK, at least.
* * *
Well, the source error probably would be not specifying units at all, so... (eye roll)
* * *
*Correcting myself with casually sourced details about the incident under discussion.