[time-nuts] gravity controlled pendulumn clock?

[Hal Murray]

cfharris at erols.com said:
> Standardization is fine.  Attempting to force the world's largest economy to
> bend to the wishes of Europe isn't fine.  The US system has been
> standardized for more than a century, and works very nicely.  Decimal
> inches, decimal pounds, and seconds is every bit as valid a measurement
> system as the equally arbitrary meter, kilogram and second.  Decimal inches,
> decimal pounds, and seconds flies most of the airframes in the world, won
> WWII, and took mankind to the moon and beyond.

I don't think "force" is the right word.  Rather, it's a simple mater of 
voting with their pocketbook.

The US may be the world's largest economy if you sort by country, but the 
total GDP of the countries using metric far outweighs all the others.

The economy has shifted from local to global.  If we want to sell our stuff 
to the rest of the world it will be easier/cheaper/better if the stuff we are 
trying to sell fits their measurement system.

A friend used to tell the story of Sri Lanka being the number 2 or 3 country 
using non-metric.  What does Britain use to measure bolts? (rather than beer) 
 If anybody has recent info, please update me/us.  (My memory could well be 
wrong, but it was something close to that.)

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Years ago (20-30?) a friend who worked for Ford reported that all new design 
work was using metric.  They weren't dumping the old stuff, just not doing 
any new designs.

(Most of?) The silicon industry shifted to metric for packages many years 
ago.  Yes, drawings are often dual dimensioned.

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If you were an alien landing on Earth for the first time, which system would 
make more sense to you?

I have a set of metric wrenches from Sears that are at least 30 years old.

My local hardware stores stock metric screws.  Their collection probably 
isn't as good as their non-metric stuff, but it's a good start.

I'm in Silicon Valley.  Many years ago (20-30?), a friend told me about a 
store named Mr Metric.  They sold metric screws/bolts/nuts.  That was back 
before ordering over the net was even on the radar.  The point was that they 
could get anything and stocked most stuff you were likely to need.  If you 
needed a metric bolt for your car, they had it in stock.
  http://www.mrmetric.com/



-- 
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's.  I hate spam.