Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
As a Brit I have been used all my life to buying rulers and measures that have inches and cm on them. I suffered culture shock when living in Japan I went to buy a tape measure and found it had cm and cm. Not an inch to be found!

I've been told they even use the temperature scale from that scandinavian Celsius guy !

Y'a know, that weird scale where 0°C = water freezes, 100°C = water boils, instead of the much more convenient 100°F = anal blood temperature of a horse and 0°F = lowest temperature ever recorded in Herr Fahrenheit's hometown (because negative numbers were evil).

British people have been quite resistant to adopting the metric system. They keep trying to force it on us though. There was even legislation a few years ago mandating that all food must have the weights and measures printed in metric. But it didn't change much. Now instead of buying 4 pints of milk, we buy 2.27L ?!

I personally don't like the metric system. Its simplicity is just an illusion because it is rooted in base ten counting, but 10 was never a good demarcator for counting sets in the first place, and still doesn't mesh properly with hours and minutes. Changing the standard number base back to 12 would have been a smarter (though perhaps more painful for people to adjust to).

Here in Australia we're basically metric for most things, though some people still use Feet and Inches, particularly for height. The only time I got any backlash was this time I was about to play a game with a girl. You see, I was using centimetres for measuring, and...

 Smacks wrote:
I personally don't like the metric system. Its simplicity is just an illusion because it is rooted in base ten counting, but 10 was never a good demarcator for counting sets in the first place, and still doesn't mesh properly with hours and minutes. Changing the standard number base back to 12 would have been a smarter (though perhaps more painful for people to adjust to).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7x-RGfd0Yk

 Swan-of-War wrote:
I've killed a man for using centimeters.

Actually, its no problem save for finding measuring tapes that have metric on them here in the US.

With the abundance of internet retailers, that is not a problem.

Litcheur wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
I personally don't like the metric system. Its simplicity is just an illusion because it is rooted in base ten counting, but 10 was never a good demarcator for counting sets in the first place, and still doesn't mesh properly with hours and minutes. Changing the standard number base back to 12 would have been a smarter (though perhaps more painful for people to adjust to).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7x-RGfd0Yk

(Any metric unit) / 3 = fail

Surely it's easier to think of the movement or range of a unit as being a single number (3") than have to convert it mentally or physically (about 76mm) ...

Besides, an inch is a reasonable sort of distance. Twenty millimetres feels too small, thirty too big.

 Smacks wrote:
(Any metric unit) / 3 = fail

£1/3 = fail too.

That doesn't come from the metric system, but from the base 10 system. That's just a convention, but we've got ten numbers, not twelve.

Actually, having twelve numbers and everything in base 12 may have made much more sense. Some civilizations used a base 12 or base 60 system : hey, 60 can be easily divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10...

But at some point in the history, people found it was more convenient to count in base 10. Probably because we have ten fingers, hence the name digit. Once you have a given numeral system, the most sensible move is to stick to that convention and use the same base everywhere.
Again, 12 would have been a fine choice too, but we're stuck with 10.

I liked the comment on it in the TV show Archer.

ARCHER: Psh, the metric system. Who even uses that?

LANA: Every country in the world except the US, Liberia, and Myanmar.

ARCHER: Huh, that's weird, because normally you don't think of those other two as having their gak together.

 Chrissy_J wrote:
Besides, an inch is a reasonable sort of distance. Twenty millimetres feels too small, thirty too big.

Then use 25mm. Or 23mm. Or whatever arbitrary distance you want. You're still using the same physical objects and distances on the table, what unit you use to refer to them is irrelevant.