[HN Gopher] The metre originated in the French Revolution
___________________________________________________________________
The metre originated in the French Revolution
Author : Tomte
Score : 69 points
Date : 2025-05-23 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.abc.net.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.abc.net.au)
| skrebbel wrote:
| > (It was later found the astronomers were a bit off in their
| calculations, and the metre as we know it is 0.2 millimetres
| shorter than it should've been.)
|
| That's actually impressively good accuracy for the time! Hats off
| to the astronomers.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| I was just about to post same quote but you beat me to it.
|
| I'd go further, I think their work was a remarkable feat for
| the late 1790s. That they achieved that accuracy given the
| primitive equipment of the day says much for their abilities
| and understanding.
|
| Also at the time France was in turmoil, numbers of its
| scientists were victims of the French Revolution--Antoine
| Lavoisier, probably the greatest chemist of his time--was
| beheaded by guillotine in 1794, so the political environment
| was anything but stable.
|
| Look back 225+ years ago: there was no electricity, no material
| science to speak of to make precision instrumentation--journal
| bearings on lathes, etc. couldn't be made with the accuracy of
| today, backlash would have been a constant worry. All
| instrumentation would have been crafted by hand.
|
| And the old French pre-metric system of units was an imperial
| system similar to the British (France even had an inch that was
| similar in length to British Imperial unit). All
| instrumentation up to that point would have relied on the less
| precise standards of that old system.
|
| Traveling was by horse and sailing ship, and so on. Surveying
| would have been difficult. There wasn't even the electric
| telegraph, only the crude optical Chappe telegraph, and even
| then it was only invented in the 1790s and wasn't fully
| implemented during the survey.
|
| They did a truly excellent job without any of today's high tech
| infrastructure but they made up for all these limitations by
| being brilliant.
|
| In today's modern world we often underestimate how inventive
| our forefathers were.
| selkin wrote:
| The pre-metric measurements in France weren't imperial, but
| local: units had the same name, but different cities defined
| them differently. A livre[0] in one village was almost, but
| not quite, the livre used by the one only a couple toise[1]
| away.
|
| [0] about a modern pound, depending where you were.
| Toulouse's livre was almost 1.3 modern pounds, for example.
|
| [1] about 13853/27000 meter.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| You're right, I should have put 'imperial' in quotes as
| it's not the same as the British Imperial measurement.
| You'll note however I did distinguish the French system
| from the British one by referring to it in lowercase, that
| was intentional.
|
| The issue came up in a round about way on HN several weeks
| ago and I should have been more careful here because I
| wasn't precise enough in my comment then. As I inferred in
| that post 'imperial' nomenclature is used rather loosely to
| refer to measurement and coinage/currency as they're often
| closely linked (in the sense that the 'Crown' once
| regulated both).
|
| Pre-revolution French coinage used the same 1/12/20 number
| divisions as did the old English LSD and currencies in
| other parts of Europe, and that system is often referred to
| as 'imperial' coinage which likely goes back to _Roman
| Imperial Coinage_ -- but to confuse matters it was decimal.
|
| One can't cover the long historical lineage here except to
| mention the sign for the Roman [decimal] denarius is 'd'
| which is also used for the LSD penny, 12 of which make the
| shilling (PS=240d).
|
| So for various reasons both 'old' physical measurement and
| 'old' coinage are often referred to as (I)imperial. To add
| to the confusion, modern currencies when converting from
| LSD/1/12/20 to metric and '1/12... measurement' are often
| done around the same time. Nomenclature overlaps.
|
| For example, I'm in Australia and the 1966 conversion from
| LSD to metrified coinage occurred shortly before the
| metrication of measurement. It was all lumped together as
| _Imperial (note u /c) to Metric_ (that's how the public
| perceived it). The Government staged both changeovers close
| enough so that the reeducation of the citizenry wasn't
| forgotten by the time the measurement program started.
|
| For the record here's part of _length_ in the old French
| measurement system:
|
| _" Pied du Roi (foot) [?] 32.48 cm (Slightly longer than
| an English foot, which is about 30.48 cm.)
|
| Pouce (inch) = 1/12 of a pied [?] 2.707 cm
|
| Ligne = 1/12 of a pouce [?] 2.256 mm
|
| Toise [?] 1.949 metres (A toise is 6 pieds.) <...>"_
|
| The other units can be found on the same site:
| https://interessia.com/medieval-french-measurements/
| selkin wrote:
| I think I wasn't clear about the point I was trying to
| make, because your comment seems unrelated to it.
|
| Pre-metrification there wasn't a French unit system, like
| we think about those today, where a meter in Paris is the
| same meter used in Limoges. The actual length of a ligne
| changed from one region to the next. There was no country
| wide standard of exactly how much a certain unit is. Such
| standards were regional, at best, sometimes the regions
| being as small as a single village.
|
| This is one of the most important results of the French
| resolution: a consistent system of measurements,
| regardless of the units chosen for it.
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| There was a 12:1 ratio between the foot ' inch '' line '''
| and point '''' in pre-decimal engineering. Yes, they used
| triple prime marks. The typographic point was originally
| 1/144th of an inch. Watches are typically measued in french
| _pointes_.
| throwanem wrote:
| Yeah, I know. That's why I make fun of it some times. Not because
| it is French; though an American I hope I am not a damned
| ungracious American, and though I believe we may fairly call the
| original debt squared after Normandy, I recognize and respect the
| generous Gallic heart from which it sprang.
|
| But "the" metric system, so called, functions entirely on the
| happy coincidence of macroscopic distance being divisible at
| human discretion, while the similar and simultaneous effort at
| decimalizing time foundered on the rocks of how long it actually
| takes Earth to revolve upon its axis and to circle the sun. Both
| efforts originate in the same silly hamartiac human desire to
| prescribe a shape to which reality must conform, and thus may
| come in for about equal gentle contumely on that score.
| Especially since, in another example of its designers' foolishly
| misplaced priorities, metric offers no units at the human scale.
| They may have prefigured the brutalists in this way.
| Zanfa wrote:
| You mean like my feet aren't a foot long, my thumb isn't an
| inch? Ironically, my pinky is a centimeter thick and a meter is
| when I take a long step.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| The width of my palm (with my thumb, tightly pressed to it)
| at its widest is 10 centimeters, which is quite handy.
|
| Oh, and my "inch" is almost exactly 3 centimeters.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| There's a couple of convenience approximations I use to
| work with US Imperial..
|
| 30cm is a "metric foot" (it's actually even closer to 1
| light nanosecond which is kinda cool for thinking about
| distances at computer speeds)
|
| 250ml is a "metric cup"
| throwanem wrote:
| And now the famous triviality of order-of-magnitude and
| unit conversion goes entirely out the window...
| lostlogin wrote:
| Speaking of feet - I got irritated when buying shoes and
| trying to convert shoes sizes.
|
| It turns out that UK/US sizes are based on the length of
| a barley corn.
|
| Quite why it isn't just in centimetres is baffling.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe_size
| throwanem wrote:
| I'll give you this one, but only with the qualification
| that inches would be fine too. There's no benefit to the
| manufacturers in more rational standardization, though.
| As with women's clothing sizes, why would Levi's (for
| example) make it _easier_ for me to find something that
| matches my style and budget, from anyone other than them?
| Hell, even men 's sizes which nominally _are_ in inches
| do this! I have to go a size up in Levi 's vs Wranglers
| because Levi's size small, the bastards, while Lee mostly
| run true to size but none of their cuts is really worth
| wearing. And don't even _talk_ to me about boot sizes!
|
| Inches vs. centimeters? Baby stuff. Get on _my_ level. :D
| steamrolled wrote:
| The point of the SI system is not that one meter is "better"
| than one foot. It's that we picked one subjective point of
| reference and then made almost all the other units related to
| that in a straightforward way and scaled with a common set of
| prefixes.
|
| In everyday life, the metric system offers no big benefit,
| except for consistency for international standards and trade.
| But if you're doing anything engineering-related, your life is
| simpler if you don't need conversion factors to move between
| liters, meters, joules, watts, amperes, volts, ohms, and so on.
|
| And FWIW, even to the extent that US engineers sometimes use
| inches and Fahrenheit, almost everything else they do is
| anchored to SI.
| kergonath wrote:
| > And FWIW, even to the extent that US engineers sometimes
| use inches and Fahrenheit, almost everything else they do is
| anchored to SI.
|
| Inches are defined relative to the SI as well.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| As are Fahrenheit degrees.
| throwanem wrote:
| I don't know why people seem to think this is an "own."
| throwanem wrote:
| Even when we use inches, they're frequently themselves
| metricated via division by 1,000 to produce the "thou." This
| is an extremely strong convention; I have one (inexpensive)
| digital caliper that can read in fractional inches, but every
| such tool I own reads in both millimeters and thou.
|
| I do think it's funny all these folks insisting metric is so
| humanist seem never to have noticed which of their finger
| joints is an inch long. For me that's the second of the
| little finger, but I have large squarish peasant hands. As
| for the rest, treating a centimeter as 10/25 of an inch and
| vice versa seems to work well enough for measurements not
| requiring particular precision, or in other words anything
| I'd be comfortable doing without a caliper. Where's the
| trouble, really?
| lostlogin wrote:
| Where does the 'humanist' bit end?
|
| Should we go back to fathoms, furlongs, chains, drams and
| bushels?
|
| This was settled a long time ago for the vast majority of
| the word.
| throwanem wrote:
| If we should find they serve us better, why not?
| nancyminusone wrote:
| >bushels
|
| Someone hasn't been to an apple orchard recently.
| bregma wrote:
| It's far more impressive to express gravity in units of
| stone furlong per fortnight squared. It's 7.14 x 10^10.
| Makes gravity on Jupiter look puny.
| throwanem wrote:
| It's that plus or minus about three orders, sure.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Just for fun, check the yojana and related Indian
| measures:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojana
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_measurement_sy
| ste...
| throwanem wrote:
| Now, ironically given I'm for all serious purposes an
| English monoglot, you're speaking my language. Give me
| lakh and crore! Give me weights and measures where I can
| _feel_ the history. Just like my mad 5,280-foot
| (1,360-yard) mile, which I love.
|
| And give me also the precise rational tenths-and-tens
| units, too, of course, for when we need accuracy more
| than soul. I work in thou all the time! All I've really
| been saying is, there's a place in the world for both
| ways of doing things. Why's everyone else so hellbent on
| having exactly one or the other?
| alnwlsn wrote:
| Ah the joys of units! If you work cross-discipline,
| 1/1000th of an inch is called a 'thou' in machining. For
| PCBs (not unheard of to attach the two together), the same
| unit is called a 'mil'. Not to be confused with millimeter,
| even though it often is confused.
| bregma wrote:
| > In everyday life, the metric system offers no big benefit
|
| That's not entirely true. An American driving across the
| Canadian border on an interstate can automatically go from 55
| to 100. That's almost twice as much.
| throwanem wrote:
| No it isn't. Our speedos are denominated both ways, it's
| cheaper, and I drive a Nissan with a V6 and paddle
| shifters. Not that that's much in any real sense! But
| neither is a Piper Archer, and those _also_ have enough
| power to make 100kph feel extremely tame. It 's not a high
| bar, is what I'm saying.
| kergonath wrote:
| > But "the" metric system, so called, functions entirely on the
| happy coincidence of macroscopic distance being divisible at
| human discretion
|
| What do you mean exactly? Any distance is divisible
| arbitrarily, it's a continuous scale regardless of the unit
| system. We could define the metre as a foot (or rather, as the
| distance of some physical phenomenon close enough to a foot)
| and build a decimal system out of it, and it would have the
| same advantages as the metric system.
|
| > while the similar and simultaneous effort at decimalizing
| time foundered on the rocks of how long it actually takes Earth
| to revolve upon its axis and to circle the sun
|
| The fact that there are 60 seconds in an hour and 24 hours per
| day has absolutely nothing to do with how quickly the earth
| revolves. Your argument works (kinda) for the number of days in
| a year, that's all.
|
| > Both efforts originate in the same silly hamartiac human
| desire to prescribe a shape to which reality must conform
|
| No, this is completely backwards. This effort originates from
| the idea that we should observe and understand nature, and
| build a rational society based on this understanding. The
| original metre was a fraction of the length of a meridian for a
| reason. They did not change the size of the Earth to conform to
| an arbitrary unit. Instead they came up with a unit that made
| sense to them, for both philosophical and practical reasons.
| They did the opposite of what you say.
|
| > Especially since, in another example of its designers'
| foolishly misplaced priorities, metric offers no units at the
| human scale
|
| The metre is about 2 thirds of an average human height (give or
| take, the average also changed with time). How is that not a
| human scale? If you want to go lower, to the scale of something
| you can hold, you have centimetres. If you want to go larger,
| to the scale of a distance you can walk, you have kilometres.
| And all conversions and comparisons spanning the 5 orders of
| magnitude relevant to our daily lives are seamless and make
| sense. What is your problem with this system?
|
| > They may have prefigured the brutalists in this way
|
| That is actually hilarious. The enlightenment philosophers and
| humanists who came up with the metric system are polar
| opposites of the brutalists. They rationalised our
| understanding of the world around us. They did not rebuild it
| square.
| throwanem wrote:
| > They rationalised our understanding of the world around us.
| They did not rebuild it square.
|
| This is a distinction without a difference. Read James C.
| Scott, for pity's sake.
| kergonath wrote:
| Well, no. I am not going to go through a collection of
| books by a random guy because someone said so on the
| Internet. If you can articulate the point you want to make,
| maybe. If the point cannot be made, I am not sure why I
| should be interested.
| throwanem wrote:
| The short version is that you have this entirely backward
| and the "rationalizing" you describe not only remakes the
| world but does so by means of gruesome violence, and it
| is no accident the twitchy, haunted neurotics who
| attached their numericalizing madness to the Red Terror,
| had to go to such hideous lengths to get themselves taken
| at all seriously. We are not required to do the same two
| hundred years on, simply because they happen to have been
| on the side that wrote the history.
|
| The long version is _Seeing Like a State._
| olau wrote:
| Seeing like a state does not argue against the meter
| system.
|
| It just explains that many of these things got traction
| despite the resistance against them only because the
| state needed them.
|
| In the case of measurement units, one was that the
| natural units varied in size and could be gamed, which is
| a big problem for fair tax collection.
| throwanem wrote:
| I don't suppose I expected to need to clarify the
| difference between citing a work whose thesis informs my
| own, and quoting from a work where my thesis is actually
| stated. But it now being evident I was optimistic: This
| is the _first_ one.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > metric offers no units at the human scale.
|
| How do you apply this to the imperial system?
|
| I've heard this criticism before, but limited to temperature,
| with people saying they want more increments. I'm not sure why
| half a degree centigrade is so hateful.
| throwanem wrote:
| Fahrenheit has finer divisions at the human scale, yes. A
| scale calibrated to the boiling point of water, at the top
| end, can tell me nothing useful about my environment beyond
| the manner in which it has probably killed me.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| If Fahrenheit is better than Celsius because the units are
| smaller, doesn't that mean that the kilometre is better
| than the mile because it has smaller units?
|
| It is _all_ subjective. You like what you grew up with
| because it is _familiar_ , not because it is better. You
| know by rote memorisation how much 100 feet is and what 75F
| feels like, the same way I know by rote memorisation how
| much 50 meters is and what 25C feels like.
| throwanem wrote:
| Show me where I have at any time argued one system is
| _better_ than the other, as opposed to precisely that
| _no_ system is strictly preferable, and I 'll answer this
| point. Until then I can't and thus also won't.
|
| In the meantime your grasp of nuance or lack thereof is
| no pressing concern of mine. And my entire thesis has
| been flagrantly subjective throughout, save where the
| minor matter of relevant history is involved. To attempt
| to answer this with the charge of subjectivity, as though
| to do so accomplished other than to recapitulate what has
| been obvious all day, seems not only pointless but
| risible.
| Mikhail_Edoshin wrote:
| A page of 8.5 x 11 units is more convenient to divide into
| parts than that of 210 x 297 units.
| throwanem wrote:
| Yes, working to US letter size in my book blocks makes for
| fewer headaches over the guillotine cutter, whose scale is
| only graduated in 1/16 inches (0.0625", ~1.5mm) and whole
| millimeters. Oh, the wasted 20 thou would get cleaned up in
| the face finishing cut, but all the same, half an inch is a
| much more convenient quantum here than half a millimeter.
| az09mugen wrote:
| Another fun fact dating from French revolution is the 10 hour-
| day, each hour had 100 minutes and each minutes 100 seconds :
| https://historyfacts.com/world-history/fact/france-had-a-cal...
| paulorlando wrote:
| Fun fact... or not so fun?
|
| For 12 years of the revolutionary era, France did use decimal
| time. And the calendar and clocks were organized around a 10
| day week and a 10 hour day. But those changes, coupled with the
| loss of Sunday worship, had other effects on the population.
|
| Here's an assessment of what was really meant and then lost by
| the elimination of Sunday:
|
| "'The elderly ladies took advantage of the long journey (to
| church) to exchange old stories with other old gossips ... they
| met friends and relatives on the way, or when they reached the
| county town, whom they enjoyed seeing ... there then followed a
| meal or perhaps a reciprocal invitation, which led to one
| relative or another....' But if that was the way it was for the
| old ladies, what did Sunday mean to 'young girls, whose blood
| throbbed with the sweetest desire of nature!' We can well
| understand their impatience, 'they waited for each other at the
| start of the road they shared,' they danced.
|
| "Now, however, when the Tenth Day came around, 'the men were
| left to the devices they always had:' the old men went to the
| tavern, and they bargained. The young men drank and, deprived
| of their 'lovely village girls', they quarrelled. As for the
| women, they had nothing left to do in village. The mothers were
| miserable in their little hamlets, the daughters too, and out
| of this came their need to gather together in crowds. If the
| need for recreation is necessary because of moral forces...
| there is absolutely no doubt that village girls find it very
| hard to bear privations which are likely to prolong their
| unmarried state: 'in all regions the pleasure of love is the
| greatest pleasure.'"
|
| - from The Revolution Against the Church, From Reason to the
| Supreme Being, by Michel Vovelle, pp 158-159.
| thrance wrote:
| I know the real goal of the republican calendar was to
| undermine the Church's power by making it so Sundays would
| fall at random days of the week, and also screw over the
| workers by leaving them with a worse weekend-to-week ratio.
|
| However, all I ever read about this part of the revolution
| seems to indicate that people just didn't comply and went to
| church anyway on Sundays, and also didn't work that day. On
| that account, I feel likr your quote is kind of partisan.
| People wouldn't have been left lost and aimlessly drinking on
| their tenth day because of a lack of God, because they never
| quit going to church!
| paulorlando wrote:
| Not sure I understand what you mean. At least, I thought
| that (most? all?) the churches were closed for the worst
| part of the French Revolution aftermath.
|
| For example, the new state transformed Notre Dame and other
| Catholic churches into Temples of Reason, from which the
| new state religion, the Cult of Reason, would be
| celebrated. It didn't last long. Hard to create a new
| religion quickly. Maybe some echoes of recent history
| there.
| thrance wrote:
| It was much more nuanced than that, and the vast majority
| of the French people stayed Christian during the period.
| Also, keep in mind the revolution was mostly a Paris
| thing, the rest of the country was left relatively
| unaffected at first.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianization_of_Franc
| e_d...
| paulorlando wrote:
| Is the difference "stayed Catholic" vs the churches had
| to close?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Pretty sure it mattered when and where you were. Armies
| and militias were sent to put down defiant regions who
| had set up their own armies and militias in order to keep
| the Revolution out.
| jacquesclouseau wrote:
| inb4 we still have the 8 hour workday
| nancyminusone wrote:
| Sadly, the 100 day year never worked quite right.
| thrance wrote:
| No but they had a clean year of 12 months, 30 days each (3
| ten-day weeks) plus 5/6 holiday days at the end of the
| calendar (around the September equinox).
|
| Also, the months were given names by a Poet, and the days had
| minerals, vertues or plants instead of Saints. The calendar
| itself was pretty cool.
|
| Honestly, if they had 5 weeks of 6 days each instead of the 3
| weeks of 10 days, I'd even call it the perfect calendar.
| Snow_Falls wrote:
| Might I introduce you to visions of what could have been:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_reform
| tempestn wrote:
| Better would be an even more fundamental change: instead of
| trying to standardize everything on base 10, recognize that
| base 8 or 16 is much more convenient in both computing and
| everyday life, and standardize around that.
| linguistbreaker wrote:
| I hadn't heard of this and it's fun to think about.
|
| It's 100,000 s/day as opposed to our current 86,400 s/day which
| is not far off.
|
| Hours, however, were twice as long.
|
| They had time pieces that displayed both together.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Their seconds must have been about 864ms though, otherwise
| they day is more than 3 hours too long which would be very
| annoying for any kind of scheduling I'd imagine.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Yes. Obviously.
|
| Or more to the point: since they had no use for
| milliseconds at that time, their milliseconds would have
| been 86.4% of standard milliseconds.
| bonzini wrote:
| It also messes up the original proposal for defining the
| meter, which predated the revolution and was "the length of
| a pendulum with a period of 2 seconds" (i.e. the pendulum
| would be at its lowest point once per second). Which is
| ironic considering that the meter was also adopted during
| the revolution, though with a definition not based on the
| length of a pendulum).
| hilbert42 wrote:
| What about 90deg per right angle and not 100deg?
|
| It made sense to keep some things like angle measurement and
| time as disruption was too great for very little practical
| benefit.
| az09mugen wrote:
| Still France and French revolution context :
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradian
| IAmBroom wrote:
| It's called a "gradian", and it's 1% of a right angle.
|
| It's still used in some industries, where convenient.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Yeah, sure. The last person I heard discuss it was my
| highschool math teacher and he did so only in passing--
| and that was quite some decades ago.
|
| Anyway, my non-metric preference is the radian unless I'm
| doing something manual like woodworking.
| kitten_mittens_ wrote:
| If you're interested in a what an analog clock in decimal time
| might look like: https://decimal-time.netlify.app/
| az09mugen wrote:
| Ahah nice one, thanks for sharing !
| thrance wrote:
| Slightly unnerving seeing seconds pass by 15.74% faster.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Uncanny valley. Never seen a clock do it before.
| wyett wrote:
| My thoughts too.
| pavlov wrote:
| Feels like living in the future. Progress marches on faster
| than ever.
|
| Honestly a brilliant marketing move by the French
| revolutionaries, just a few hundred years too early.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| If they were truly revolutionary they would have gone for
| base 12 or 60 instead of 10
| ucarion wrote:
| And every other month was named after a coup d'etat!
| cafard wrote:
| As I habitually mention when the revolutionary calendar comes
| up, emacs calendar mode will give you the date with p-f. For
| what it's worth, today is Quartidi 4 Prairial an 233 de la
| Revolution, jour de l'Angelique. (Prairial I had heard of, jour
| de l'Angelique is news to me.)
|
| [edit: corrected spelling of Quartidi]
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Another "fun fact" somewhat more relevant to the article is the
| gradient (aka. grad, or gon), it is a unit of angle equal to
| 1/400 of a turn, slightly smaller than a degree.
|
| It goes well with the metre because 1 km is 1/100 grad of
| latitude on earth. It mirrors the nautical mile in that 1
| nautical mile is 1/60 degree (1 arcminute) of latitude on
| earth.
|
| The grad is almost never used on a day to day basis, even in
| France. It is still used in specialized fields, like surveying.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| Things that annoy me about the metric system: base-10 numbering
| system, a liter is not a cubic meter, and 'kilogram' is the base
| unit, not 'gram'.
|
| That last one is what I have the biggest problem with. When you
| are doing anything with derived units, 'kilo' suddenly
| disappears.
| kergonath wrote:
| > base-10 numbering system
|
| Having decimal numbers, it's the best solution. Otherwise
| you're bound to make mistakes scaling things up or down.
|
| > a liter is not a cubic meter
|
| Well, it's a dm^3, close enough ;) Conversion is trivial, 1 m^3
| is 1000 l. A cubic metre is a bit large for everyday use, but
| it makes sense e.g. when measuring water consumption or larger
| volumes. The litre also had the advantage of being close to 2
| pints, so it already made sense as a unit when it was
| introduced. Contrary to hours with 100s.
|
| > 'kilogram' is the base unit, not 'gram'
|
| Yeah, this one is perplexing. It's an annoying inconsistency on
| an otherwise beautifully regular system.
| GlobalFrog wrote:
| I don't understand your issue between gram and kilo gram:
| gram is the base unit and the prefix kilo, meaning one
| thousand just says that 1 kg = 1000 grams. It is exactly the
| same as meters and kilometers: meters is the base unit and 1
| km = 1000 meters.
| tokai wrote:
| I think they mean that the gram is defined as 1/1000 of a
| kilogram. With a kilogram having a definition based on
| physical constants.
| jabl wrote:
| The kilogram is no longer defined by a physical artifact,
| fwiw.
|
| Anyway, the point is the inconsistency in the system due
| to the kilogram being the base unit. So derived units are
| defined in terms of kilogram rather than gram. Say, the
| unit of force, Newton (N), is defined as kgm/s^2 and not
| gm/s^2). Or pressure, Pascal (Pa) which is N/m^2 which
| inherits N being defined in terms of the kilogram). And
| so on. Anyway, an annoying inconsistency maybe but
| doesn't really affect usage of the system once you get
| used to it.
| DavidSJ wrote:
| In SI, kg is the base unit, and g is a derived unit.
| selkin wrote:
| It's an historical artifact, as it was easier to
| manufacture a reference kilogram than a reference gram.
|
| Considering today we set the kilogram by fixing the
| Planck constant and deriving it from there, we can just
| divide each side of the definition by 1000 and use that
| as a base unit. Using kg as the base unit is completely
| arbitrary, as we can derive each unit of weight directly
| from the meter and the second, not from the base unit.
| jl6 wrote:
| Why is base 10 annoying?
| nancyminusone wrote:
| Too few divisors of place values. The idea you would pick
| something that isn't evenly divisible by at least 3 or 4 was
| a mistake.
|
| This one isn't metric's fault to be fair. That's just what
| you get for inventing numbers before inventing math.
|
| Makes me wonder what would have happened if 'French numbers'
| in base 12, 36 or 60 were introduced at the same time.
|
| People got used to working in octal.or hexadecimal in the
| past for computers, doesn't seem like it would have been as
| big of a change as you think.
| tokai wrote:
| >evenly divisible by at least 3 or 4
|
| Irrelevant with a decimal system.
| chungy wrote:
| It's not irrelevant, you can choose something like 12 to
| make all your factors out of. It's a particular strength
| of working in feet and yards.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| Except now you can't divide accurately by 5. Or 10.
|
| You're making an argument from familiarity. Yes, a
| 12-base system using fractions works very neatly in a
| small human-sized domain, but it disintegrates into
| complete uselessness outside that domain. That's why you
| get ridiculousness as things being 13/64th of an inch, or
| that there's 63360 inches in a mile. It's unworkable for
| very large distances and very small distances. With a
| metre and standard prefixes, you don't need any
| conversion factors, and you can represent any distance at
| any scale with a single unit.
|
| Quick, what's 11/64" + 3/8"?
|
| Quick, which weight is bigger: 0.6lbs or 10oz?
| tempestn wrote:
| 5 and 10 are arbitrary numbers though. Halving and
| doubling are really the only special operations, and
| base-8 or base-16 would be superior to 10 or 12 for
| those.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Irrelevant if you are working with computers and digital
| equipment.
|
| Highly relevant if you are using T-squares, compasses,
| and dividing calipers.
| mfost wrote:
| It's just a matter of working with base elements that are
| divisible by 3 and 4 really.
|
| So instead of buying 100cm planks, buy 120cm planks?
| tempestn wrote:
| It's pretty relevant with computers. If we were used to
| working in base-8 or base-16 in everyday life, numerous
| aspects of programming would be simplified.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Base 60 is genuinely the best option.
| layer8 wrote:
| That would have broken ASCII.
| forty wrote:
| Don't you think base 10 was used simply because it
| conveniently matches the number of fingers of Humans?
| nancyminusone wrote:
| Of course... But - look at your open hand right now.
| Count the number of segments on your 4 fingers - it's 12.
| You can even use your thumb as a pointer and count one
| handed.
| tempestn wrote:
| Or forget about the thumbs and just count fingers. 8
| would be a better base than 10 for sure, and arguably
| better than 12. (Easier doubling and halving, easier
| binary conversions, but fewer integer factors and fewer
| digits.)
| empath75 wrote:
| There's two reasons to use a measurement system -- one of
| those is for sort of every day work -- cooking, home
| carpentry and the like, and in that case, having something
| like the imperial system is nice, because you can divide
| things usefully.
|
| The _other_ reason to use a measurement system is for doing
| _science_, and for that, having everything in base ten
| makes things _immensely_ easier, especially if you're
| working the math out by hand
| henrikschroder wrote:
| > because you can divide things usefully.
|
| Again, this is just familiarity. You think it's super
| neat that you can divide a cup of whatever by 2 or 3 or
| 4, but if I tell you to divide it by 5, you're gonna
| deflect and ask me "who does that?!?"
|
| Imperial works neatly for a small domain of problems, and
| is useless outside that domain.
|
| Metric is less neat in that small domain, but works
| equally well everywhere.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Well no...
|
| Firstly, we can divide a cup by 2, 3, and 4 in the
| kitchen because those are common measuring-cup sizes.
| Nobody is prevented from using a fractional size: if I
| divide a cup by 5 then I have 1/5th of a cup, nothing
| more and nothing less.
|
| While 1/4th of a cup is 2 oz, and 1/3rd of a cup is 16
| teaspoons, 1/5th of a cup doesn't divide evenly into a
| smaller unit and that's why "we don't do it", but there
| is nothing to stop the chef from using 9 teaspoons. [Or
| he can instinctively go up to 45mL on his graduated
| measuring cup, which almost always has both systems on
| it!] Teaspoons, tablespoons, ounces, cups, quarts and
| gallons are all inter-related multiples, and once you
| internalize it, you can convert like a boss.
|
| While I'm sure it's lovely that metric measures divide by
| 2 and 5, that's all they divide by, so in terms of
| divisors, you've lost 3, 4, 6, 8...
|
| So if it really is about dividing things _usefully_
| without resorting to _fractions_ , then using a system
| that is nothing but multiples of 10 is a handicap, when
| we've had systems with lovely 12s and 16s with many
| different options for dividing them up.
|
| But the metric people can simply chop up the measures
| even more finely and claim victory. For example,
| currency: it was in multiples of 16 or 8 which allowed
| for limited permutations. Decimalization chopped it into
| pennies, and we find 100 gradations in every pound
| sterling. All that did is make base-10 math easier for
| bean counters, and confuse people on the streets with a
| mystifying array of coinage. [Mental math indicates that
| it must increase the volume of coins per average
| transaction, as well.]
|
| If a basic customary unit of length is an inch, many
| people can put two fingers together and estimate that on
| the human scale. But who can estimate or eyeball a
| millimeter?
|
| Oh, and, have you ever found a nice British recipe in
| metric, shopped at your American grocery store, and
| prepared that in your American kitchen with your
| Fahrenheit range? You will eventually want to tip it all
| in the rubbish bin. Adam Ragusea suggests as much:
| https://youtu.be/TE8xg3d8dBg?si=SD8wLxD6ib6InLX4
| henrikschroder wrote:
| > Teaspoons, tablespoons, ounces, cups, quarts and
| gallons are all inter-related multiples, and once you
| internalize it, you can convert like a boss.
|
| "It's super easy if you're familiar with it!"
|
| Yes, that is exactly the problem that you are unable to
| see.
| chupasaurus wrote:
| > If a basic customary unit of length is an inch, many
| people can put two fingers together and estimate that on
| the human scale. But who can estimate or eyeball a
| millimeter?
|
| If you'd grown with a metric system you could eyeball a
| centimeter with ease. Also comparing orders of magnitude
| different measures for estimation isn't fair, how precise
| would be your guess of a barleycorn?
| cryptonector wrote:
| Er, `gram` most definitely is the base unit. Kilogram is what's
| handy for humans given how light a gram is.
|
| EDIT: Yes, yes, SI defines the kg and then the g by reference
| to kg, but so what, notionally it's still the gram that's the
| base unit.
| nartho wrote:
| I always think about what a cool adventure it must have been, for
| Pierre Mechain and Jean-Baptiste Delambre to roam for 7 years, go
| wherever they need thanks to an official letter, make
| calculations and come back successful to Paris. To think that
| they were only off by .2mm !
| selkin wrote:
| "The Measure of All Things" by Ken Adler[0] is a good,
| extremely readable book about their adventure, which was indeed
| wild.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-349-...
| frasermarlow wrote:
| Yes, this is a brilliant book, and well worth reading.
| Another other one in the same vein is "Longitude" by Dava
| Sobel: https://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-
| Scientific-...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| As an American, I finally relented and purchased a Metric
| measuring tape after the ordeal of trying to measure the
| dimensions of the rooms in my house. When it comes to interior
| decorating, trying to figure out how to evenly space items that
| are sized in feet, inches, and fractional inches is a nightmare.
| Imagine trying to space objects 2 feet 71/2 inches long against a
| wall that is 13 feet 2 inches long. Now imagine this task with 80
| centimeter long objects and a ~400 centimeter wall.
|
| I am angry that IKEA's localization does not allow Americans to
| view dimensions in metric site-wide. You can still see dimensions
| in metric but those only appear on the pictures of some items.
| The webpage still converts all textual measurements to Imperial.
| You can't sort and search using metric values. IKEA designs
| everything in metric, using nice, even, whole numbers. Please let
| me see those. Seeing them converted to the nearest 32nd of an
| inch feels like vandalism.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > I am angry that IKEA's localization does not allow Americans
| to view dimensions in metric
|
| I'm not American and laughed at this.
|
| Welcome to the other side. Also, here in New Zealand people
| seem to do everything in metric, except their height and the
| weight of their baby. Why?
| remram wrote:
| As a Frenchman living in the US, my favorite Imperial units
| are the hand (3 hands to a foot) and the poppyseed (4
| poppyseeds to a barleycorn, the shoe-size unit; 3 barleycorns
| to an inch). 10cm and 2mm.
|
| People stop asking me to convert to Imperial pretty quick.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Save your sanity, don't bother learning the conversion
| factors. Did you know that most of us don't even know how
| to convert between our own units? I invite you to go around
| and ask 'how many pints are in a gallon?'.
|
| It took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize
| that there are four quarts in a gallon...
|
| I have no such trouble with _any_ SI unit. So with that, I
| will leave you with this!
|
| "For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are
| these: 'The French were right again!'"
| toolslive wrote:
| > Save your sanity, don't bother learning the conversion
| factors.
|
| They were drilled into my brain when I was in primary
| school: 10, 100 and 1000.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| The US doesn't and never has used the imperial system, as
| it did not participate in the unit reforms of 1824.
|
| 5 us gallons is about 4 imperial gallons.
| remram wrote:
| I know that, but Americans don't and ask for "Imperial".
| No one has ever asked me for "US customary". Either way,
| I am using those units to be facetious more than
| compliant ;-)
|
| In practice the volume units are a much bigger problem. I
| have not hit anyone with the "cubic hand" yet...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The US uses the US customary system, not Imperial. [0] US
| customary and Imperial share some units, and, confusingly,
| share even more unit _names_ , but they are different
| systems.
|
| [0] well, really, it uses metric with a redefined version
| of the old US customary system layered over it to prevent
| people from noticing, but...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| We've made an inconsistent and confusing system even more
| inconsistent and confusing. How apropos!
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| In 1776 everyone was still using the Winchester System.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_measure The UK
| didn't adopt the _Imperial_ system until 1824-1826. Us
| Yanks have to suffer the indignity of our meager 473
| mililitre pints.
| geoffmunn wrote:
| I am 100% convinced that the baby weight thing is because
| grandparents love to compare newborns with their own
| experiences, and they were on the cusp of the metric
| conversion in the 60s. In a decade or two, this will
| vanish.
|
| Imperial height is because 6 feet is the generic height of
| a "tall person" - we get so much of our sporting news from
| overseas and no one bothers to convert it.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| >I am angry that IKEA's localization does not allow Americans
| to view dimensions in metric site-wide.
|
| Change to the IKEA site of a different country (via what comes
| immediately after `ikea.com/`).
| Snild wrote:
| It seems the Canadian site gives both sets of units:
| https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/brimnes-cabinet-with-doors-whit...
|
| I guess they thought the mere sight of metric would offend the
| Americans. :)
|
| Maybe the product ranges between the countries is close enough
| that the Canadian site is an alternative?
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _Imagine trying to space objects 2 feet 71/2 inches long
| against a wall that is 13 feet 2 inches long. Now imagine this
| task with 80 centimeter long objects and a ~400 centimeter
| wall._
|
| You've made an artificially hard example (Ikea doesn't separate
| units, it is just inches).
|
| What's harder, a 24" object on a 160" wall, or a 59cm object on
| a 4m 3cm wall?
|
| Or to compare like for like (rounding & unified units), a 24"
| object on a 160" wall vs a 60cm object on a 400cm wall? Seems
| the same.
| justinrubek wrote:
| That's part of the point, though. Ikea might not do separate
| units, but this is not an uncommon practice elsewhere. In the
| metric example I don't need rounding because I can trivially
| see 4m 3cm and know it's 403cm. With inches I'd have to do
| multiplication to handle mixed units.
| hungryhobo wrote:
| but you have to do math to convert 13 foot 4 inches to 160
| inches vs just moving decimals
| lysace wrote:
| > Seeing them converted to the nearest 32nd of an inch feels
| like vandalism.
|
| Malicious compliance.
|
| As a non-American: I love it. ;)
| bambax wrote:
| Here's a completely random anecdote: my mother often told me that
| her father, my grandfather, born in France in 1899, sculptor,
| draftsman and general maker of things, had a strong dislike of
| the metric system. He complained continuously that anything with
| round metric ratios was "ugly" and that beauty could only be
| found in more ancient measuring systems.
|
| He died when I was 4 so it's not a first hand account, I'm not
| sure how much of it is true or what he really thought, but
| somehow it feels right.
|
| The metric system is incredibly useful and practical (of course)
| but there's something rigid and unpleasant about it.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I know modern craftsmen* who lament the same. Being able to
| divide things in 2, 3, 4, 6, or 12 is mechanically more useful
| than 2/5/10 (the former being achievable by drafting tools more
| easily).
|
| *Yes, it should be craftspeople, but that doesn't exactly sound
| like the same thing, and anyway all of them happen to be men.
| Svip wrote:
| Nothing's stopping you from defining beautiful ratios and
| express the result in metric units, like ISO 216.[0] It feels
| like an odd complaint about the utility of the metric system,
| as if it is the _only_ system; ratios aren 't even units
| themselves!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_216
| toolslive wrote:
| Still, wouldn't base 12 be better than base 10 ?
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Pretty much everyone born from -2,500 BCE to ~1800 CE would
| agree, and a significant of those born since.
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| https://dozenal.org/ The Dozenal Society of America would agree
| with you.
| sham1 wrote:
| Number bases are arbitrary. Like, base 12 certainly has
| interesting properties since it is a highly composite number,
| but a lot of the convenient representations can be achieved by
| using actual fractions instead of insisting on radix
| points/commas.
|
| For example, 1/4 being 0.3 in base 12 can make certain
| computations easier (just as a 1/3 being 0.4_12 would), but
| again, what's wrong with 1/4 and 1/3 respectively.
|
| Of course, things like duodecimal and base-6 are interesting to
| use, but at this point the convention is base-10 and it
| probably won't change for a while. It's kinda like the \pi Vs
| \tau debate, where even with all the elegance and easier
| pedagogy brought by the use of \tau as the fundamental circle
| constant, the existing convention does matter, and probably
| matters a lot more in general than the better alternative.
|
| Of course, this also applied to the SI units. It literally took
| a major historical revolution for these units to be a) defined
| and b) getting used over the old units.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-23 23:00 UTC)