Kilogram conflict resolved at last

In the 1970s, we actually were converting. I even remember metric highway signs starting to go up.

Then Ronald Reagan was elected.

The OP is a French / International thing, not a U.S.-specific thing.

 

In Canada all the lumber is still 4'x8' and 2x4, the advertised meat and produce signs have large pound and tiny kilo notation, containers of food are a mix, some hard converted to round metric, some nutty soft conversions.

 

The other side effect of going metric is some sayings will become mysterious to a new generation.

What is the metric slang for "A pound of flesh"?

Any others come to mind.

 

A 2x4 really isn't 2in by 4in. It was when it was milled, but what you get in at the lumber yard has been dried and shrunken.

Now I'm wondering what size the drywall and plywood is in France. Do they still use plaster? Is it 1mx2m? That would explain why they don't need big pick up trucks.

 

Bolts are similar. Anytime you buy (for example) a 2" long bolt, it's likely to be close to 1 3/4", measured from underside of head. That's because manufacturers are allowed a certain tolerance on length, say +- 1/4". And guess which way they go?

Detailers working out bolt length usually allow for 3 thread projection of the bolt beyond the nut, using the nominal length. As-built it'll end up being close to flush, due to the manufacturers staying at the short end of the tolerance. Which is ok.

 

Metric System was not good for this pilot.

Well, thank great piloting skills of an Air Canada pilot that was also a glider pilot. He was very proficient with dead stick landings. So, one day his jet ran out of gas at 41,000 feet and he glided it to a closed runway and saved the day. Their fuel gauges were deferred (broken). The gauges and fuel planning are in pounds of fuel, but they had to order it in metric, but used to order it in gallons. The fuel pump guy was pumping in gallons probably (that's what we use in the USA). The aircraft was way under-fueled.

Here is the story:

The Gimli Glider is the nickname of an Air Canada aircraft that was involved in an unusual aviation incident. On July 23, 1983, Air Canada Flight 143, a Boeing 767–233 jet, ran out of fuel at an altitude of 12,500 metres (41,000 ft) MSL, about halfway through its flight originating in Montreal to Edmonton. The crew were able to glide the aircraft safely to an emergency landing at Gimli Industrial Park Airport, a former Royal Canadian Air Force base in Gimli, Manitoba.[1]

The subsequent investigation revealed a combination of company failures and a chain of human errors that defeated built-in safeguards. Fuel loading was miscalculated because of a misunderstanding of the recently adopted metric system which replaced the imperial system.

If you want to read the whole story (it's a long one) here is the link:

Gimli Glider - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Metric usage has kinda softened in the last decade, in Canada. The imperial units persist in common usage, conversation. Especially in the older set.

I recall hearing missing person reports on the news, where descriptions were height in centimetres, weight in kilos, and thinking idly: that person's never going to be found.

I read a news report once, really should have clipped it out, just paraphrasing:

Someone driving had plunged into a water filled sink hole 945 cm diameter by 530 cm deep. When they were finally pulled out their temperature had dropped to 31C.

I had no clue.

 

While the use of differing measurement standards was the root cause of the orbiter's failure, the immediate cause was lack of communication between the design teams. One team removed the standard conversion subroutines from the template control software without telling the guy working on the navigation portion.

What's not to know. The water was over 16ft(US) deep, and the guy's body temp had dropped from the norm of around 34C. Sorry, a rough conversion to Farenheight is beyond my brain in the morning. Perhaps i have unfair advantage having worked in microbiology research labs.

 

Sadly, the metric system came might close to getting the speed of light at a useful value of 3 x 10e8 meters per second...but noooooo. We get 299792458. Rats.

 

No, it didn't shrink significantly, it was never cut to 2x4. Back in the 19th Cenury, saw blades were about 0.5" thick, but the lumber carriage was indexed just 2" or 4" per cut. No adjustment was made for the portion being turned into sawdust. Later, saws were trimmed to about 0.25" thick (replacement teeth on dad's small mill were 17/64" wide), then some more was lost to the planing planer. Now, band saw blades are thinner still, but the saved wood thickness never went into thicker product.

Output dimensions didn't change, instead the sawyers learned how to get more board feet of product output than the input logs actually contained. Customers who wanted to get REAL roughcut 2x4s had to go to small mills, such as grandad's, who would index each slice to compensate for the blade thickness (0.25" increments only, so that last 1/64" was sill lost if the teeth were new, but might return after the teeth filed/sharpened a few times).

 

well, at least when they fixed its value, they rounded it to the nearest whole meter. I remember back to when the best measured value of 'c' had a couple more significant digits.

 

I've got one, buried on my desk here somewhere. The spring on the slide is shot tho.

 

Eons ago, I was being taught Imperial in school when the country made one of its public attempts to switch to Metric. It seemed so much simpler and more logical that I tried to forget everything I knew about bushels and pecks, and wholly embraced the 'new' system. Water freezes at zero and boils at 100 - the innate logic was strongly appealing. Now, I understand there are only two countries in the world that still use the Imperial system: Liberia and the....oh. Now I see the problem.

 

hyo, Liberia USA and Myanmar.

fuzzy1, I think you don't remember when the speed of light was known only to within a part per thousand. If you are >200 years old, keep it to yourself. PriusChat would only misuse such knowledge.

 

Shut your mouth! We don't use Imperial down here.

 

Myanmar too? The list is up to 3! Thanks for the correction.

And no, I am neither that old, nor that wise. Getting there slowly.

 

I remember it being measured and represented as 11 significant digits, back when the meter was still a metal bar in Paris. When they dropped that bar from being the standard, the last two digits were also dropped, leaving a 9 digit exact definition.