America Has Two Feet. It’s About to Lose One of Them 1

[drawoh]

From the New York Times...

America Has Two Feet. It’s About to Lose One of Them

--
JHG

 

[Ron247]

I have a tape measure marked off in washing machines on one side and refrigerators on the other side. It is real handy for laying out kitchens.

 

[MikeHalloran]

I used to work in a shop that made exhaust pipes for yachts.
We shipped all over the world, and worked in metric or US units as necessary.
Then one of our best fabricators got promoted to a designer.
For way too long, he used 25 mm = 1 inch for his conversions.
We discovered it when some beautiful polished pipes we shipped to the other side of the world didn't fit right.
That was a fairly expensive lesson.



Mike Halloran
Corinth, NY, USA

 

[TenPenny]

I have a measuring tape that's marked off in washing machines on one side, and black diamonds on the other.

Best of both worlds.

 

[looslib]

I used to work for a company in Pennsylvania that designed their equipment in metric dimensions. We used metric equivalent dimensions for material thickness of the steel because buying metric plate was about double the cost. All lengths were in metric dimensions.
When I started there, they put trailing zeros on dimensions for tolerance value place holders. I got in some heated discussions, but finally won out, when our CAD system no longer allowed values like 80.00 to be displayed for a length and was now just 80. The engineers said that all of their stackup tolerances had been changed. It lead them to starts tolerancing individual dimensions if they wanted a tighter tolerance than we had for no decimal places in the titleblock.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[gerhardl]

Please let an engineer living in Scandinavia comment.

Timber!! Wood material measurements were the last to be accepted converted here. In practice it is easier to handle and understand the metric system once you are used to it. It will also give a more accurate description of tolerences, often given by (say) +/- 1 mm thickness of a plank from different sawmills.

Valves and piping: Once, at an international exhibition in Germany, I asked a Chinese representative of a Chinese valve company, competing with mine, if his factory could supply ANSI and European flanges. This was some years ago, and Offshore North Sea used (at that time) mostly ANSI. The answer: 'We can supply both, but we wish mainly to supply European. We see the largest potential here as they have a smaller market now, and we want to grow and compete. (No comment!)

It is not seen as a large problem in Europe to connect ANSI and European dimensions by suitable connecting pieces and/or conerting flanges.

On driving: I have been driving on the left (wrong) side in Sweden, UK and Australia. The problem is to use a system where you have learned instinctively to turn to nearest ditch to avoid accidents. If you converse from right to left, or opposite, this will then lead to front collisions. Also driving a car with the wheel 'on the wrong side' is aproblem.

And lastly, on different feet: To me this seems to be a 'microscopic problem' compared to the other topics discussed.

 

[JohnRBaker]

To me this seems to be a 'microscopic problem' compared to the other topics discussed.

Well, since this first became an issue with respect to land surveying, even a 'microscopic problem' could prove a disaster if not properly resolved.

BTW, I thought Sweden moved over from driving on the Left to driving on the Right years ago, like back in the 60's.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[cranky108]

Not english or metric, but years ago I talked to someone from Pueblo, a city in Colorado, who said they were having problems finding water piping with a Pueblo thread.
I thought it odd, why not just use a common thread. After a little looking, I found out that at the time Pueblo was developing there water system, no one had set a common thread. So the city developed their own standard. Now the rest of the world has moved on, but they still have their own standard, and everything is in that standard.

Sort of like the US is invested in the english system, and it is so hard to change.

 

BTW, I thought Sweden moved over from driving on the Left to driving on the Right years ago, like back in the 60's

That's correct, IIRC it was in 1969 or 1970. There could not yet have existed an expressway system with ramps that would probably not be reversible. Apparently it went off without a significant hitch.
(Could you imagine attempting something like that in today's climate of conspiracy theories and fake news?)

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

 

[davidbeach]

I thought it was 1968. Mid-day, on a Sunday, I think. Would have been disruptive, but that eliminated a bunch of other problems. Leave the "wrong" side drivers to a bunch of islands (of wildly varying size) or a sub-continent. Everywhere else they drive on the right side. Sweden, pre-change, just didn't fit the rest of the pattern.

I’ll see your silver lining and raise you two black clouds. - Protection Operations

 

[JohnRBaker]

And I understand that virtually all of the vehicles produced in Sweden up to that time, mostly Volvo's and Saab's, were designed for driving on the right side of the road, like the rest of Europe, sans the UK of course. Primarily because most of their auto and truck production was for export.

Note that the change took place on Sunday, September 3, 1967:

http://realscandinavia.com/this-day-in-history-swedish-traffic-switches-sides-september-3-1967/

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without