Yeh, I remember the whole country was going to be metric, the construction industry was all set..same 4' x 8' sheet of plywood just would have metric dimensions. The ones that really made out was the liquor industry they went to .75 litres (smaller than a quart) and raised the price to make up for it.

 

well, to assist on reading comprehension skills, you will see that i was talking about tradition in response to another post.

my first post stated tradition, which meant that people use it because its what they always did.

so, to clarify to you more, it is of my opinion that we use the imperial system because the xenophobes here are afraid of anything outside the borders and the traditionlist like doing things the same way no matter what.

this relates that as in my example at my small company, we have 2 sets of everything just because all the equipment has a mixed match of stuff. that means that the company has to pay out more money for double sets of things then just have one set of stuff. of course the cost is the same when maintaining the inventory, using a metric or imperial makes no difference, but the start up of the inventory is expensive.

plus things require different measurments, so sometimes there may be a miscommunication because someone is talking imperial and someone is talking metric. may mean small stuff to us, but to a company that can potentially cause lots of money in delays, repair costs, etc. an example of that as i think i said was the recent NASA mars mission in which the probe slammed into the ground because one contractor was using metric, NASA was using imperial.

plus metric as a whole makes more sense. it is a very standard and easy 10 based decimal system, science all but uses it (at least thats the only measurements they talk in college) and conversion is an easy process.

to add, with more and more things being intregated in the world, it would make even more sense if everyone would be on the same measurement standard. don't even get me started on electricity, at least that is easily solved by converters.

but there will be those who will never let it up because they feel the metric system is some sort of attack on the america way of life.

 

I remember that incident.

On the metric issue, my '81 F150 uses both standard and metric fasteners.

No biggie for me.

 

Tried to limit this to fasteners just because I know how much heat the rest of the metric stuff generates.

My only point is that after many years we still get new vehicles and other stuff that use a mix of SAE and metric fasteners. The only people making any money here are tool manufacturers ( and there are damn few of them left in the US). You and I have to have 2 sets of tools, and we get to guess wrong more often.

Also, even though metric fasteners are common on engines and in other places, they're harder to find -- and spendy at a lot of places.

It's not a foreign invasion. Most large countries have switched to metric, so now we have a standard (SAE) that virtually no one else uses. Even the British saw it coming and dropped Whitworth -- although they probably still maintain that it's actually the best system

Yes, there would be some cost to conversion. but maybe not all that much for just fasteners. It would just be a matter of using only metric in new products. There would still be a large market for SAE for years to come due to the large number of existing products.

Just ranting,


ford2go

 

OT;
This was the rocket geek forum thread I was involved in.
Actually 2 incidents.... in 1999.
On the Mars Climate Orbiter, NASA was using Ns. The contractor, Lockheed, used Lb. Seconds in the guidance software. The spacecraft entered too low an orbit and was destroyed in the atmosphere.
Then, on Dec 3rd 1999, the Mars Polar Lander (also a Lockheed craft) crashed when it's retro rockets shut off 40 meters above the martian surface due to a sensor that signaled it was already on the ground.


And now back to our regularly schedueled thread. (on threads and fasteners)
Agreed!


Carroll Smith wrote an interesting treatise on the adoption of the Imperial (allied) Standard from the perspective of a globetrotting racecar team manager in his 'Nuts, Bolts, Fasteners & Plumbing Handbook'
Lots of information on thread forms, classes of fit, and various grades of fasteners.

Still no insight into why our sparkplugs have metric threads and 13/16" (or 5/8") hexes?
I missed the boat on editing my above post. Re: retapping... 5/16" to 8mm, and 3/8" to 10mm. Duh!