Here’s an interesting post about the imperial system. Not bashing metric or imperial! Just showing some context and history for anyone who is interested:
(via: Imgur)
The Imperial System
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This is incredibly helpful and rings true all the way down. Thank you!
While this post does have a handy point about fractions, it completely misunderstands the history of weights and measures, and also misses the main point about why the Metric System is the superior technology. Weights and measures in early days weren’t standardised at all – everyone had different cups and lengths and weight measures. Stone blocks, bricks and wooden beams were cut or made to custom sizes, or cut to a particular size on a single job. There weren’t any recipes so nobody needed to compare values – trade secrets were just that – secret – shared within a Guild or family but no further. Common measurements became things like “the size of a barrel made by this company”, or “what this glass maker makes”, “a string as long as my forearm”. They did start to become vaguely standardised as society opened up more, but the reason those measures were standardised is for consumer protection – it is impossible to compare the value of a glass of beer is everyone’s glasses are different sizes. If one inn charges 2p for a mug of beer, and another charges 2p for a slightly smaller mug, the people buying at the second inn are getting screwed. So at some point various government or county authorities started saying “this is what a Pint is, and this is what an inch means” – but even then they weren’t related. A foot didn’t correspond to 12 inches, a dram didn’t convert directly to gallons, etc. The Imperial System that exists now is just a legacy of various kludges where successive governments tried to make it a bit less ridiculous by fudging some of the measures so they did evenly divide into each other by whole numbers – thats how we got the various conversion factors today – changing the original arbitrary units so they vaguely related.
In a museum I used to work at we had a ton of standard Weights & Measures – big metal jugs, metal rulers, brass weights, etc. There was loads of them, and officials had to go around and check people’s measurements against these “standard” ones to make sure they weren’t screwing customers. It was a big job, and you had to keep a copy of the “original Cup/pint/whatever” to compare all the other standard measures to.
The metric system does away with a bunch of that, not because its precise, but because the different weights are interoperable, and can be measured against constant, near-universal factors (theoretical at the time the system was designed, but has been formalised since). 1g = 1ml of pure water. The metre is a specific fraction of the speed of light, etc. Everything in the metric system relates to the others directly – more complex units can be derived from simpler ones, without needing complex conversion factors at all. This is super useful for maths, science, engineering and a ton of other fields – even baking. The base 10 thing and the prefix system is there because the whole system was designed from the ground up to be a useful system of measurement, rather than a smashed-together mix of whatever people were using at the time.
The fractions thing is also a misunderstanding – the measurements came first, and breaking them into fractions came later, to make the measurements somewhat useable outside of their original area. You can break anything into fractions – 100ml cup can be split into halves, quarters, eights just as easily as a US Cup measure. Any size cup can – the advantage of the Metric System is that you can make a specific cup the same every time without referencing it to some “standard cup” somewhere. The metric system is by far the more superior technology – stop apologising for the Imperial system just because its what youre used to.
measurements in metric are very inaccurate, too hard to count all those little lines that are all the same length, basically its junk.
Good points, but also misses key historical points.
Large buildings (churches, pyramids, henges, temples) were not one-offs, but recurring tasks in different places. They required a lot of communication and the very height of contemporary math & technology. Builders and workers were on site for years or decades.
Subsequently, the builders — and often some of the workers– would wind up at another site, making a similar (not the same) great building, incorporating lessons learned, and continuing to depend on competent communication.
While chandlers could afford to use different sized yardsticks, builders had to be very careful about making sure things fitted properly. The cost of inconsistencies is much higher and far more public in a large building than in, say, a pair of trousers.
The scope, scale, and precision of these huge buildings, long before metrics but long after people started counting and doing fractions in their heads and writing the results on clay, papyrus, and stone is one set of arguments that there are other good systems of counting and arithmetic.
I’m personally biased by having grown up in base 10, but after working so much h with computers (base 2 and base 16, and multiples thereof) and having grown up in the Middle East (with ancient Ur, Nineveh, the Valleys of VIPs, and the Pyramids literally in reach), and having learned since about Teotihuacàn and Macchu Picchu and so on…
The idea that we’ve now got the best answers ever, when we can’t even do the math to keep our roads and bridges safe, is a bit if a stretch.
Tools vary. People differ. What you use to measure with, probably isn’t nearly as important as how well you use that system for whatever it is you’re measuring. The results will speak for themselves long after that system is obsolete.
You know, you really don’t need this level of precision, sure. Then why you are requesting it from metrics? I mean… No one says 68,333333333 grams they will say 68 grams or even 70 grams.
You have your instruments, so let’s say you use a common cup (your cup, because cups vary on size) you know your cup have around 68,33333333 (let’s suppose) because you measured it one time (and you just need to do it one time). Then you can think: Well, my cup have around 70 grams (precision is not important, like you said) if the recipe says that you need 150 grams, well, this is around two cups. If you want to take account the other 10 grams, well, you maybe know something near it, maybe a spoon?
Now, if my cup have 100 grams, if I add two cups I will end up with 200 grams, this makes a lot of difference. Since I know my cup have around 100 grams (let’s says it was 97,456) I know I have to add one and a half cup, maybe a little less and that’s it.
You can round up things in any measurement system.