Why are doctors offices going to metric system in the USA?

WTF I never even heard of metric time

@HumanEarth
But you've never heard of tape measures that only measure in centimeters either!

I only seen pictures of one looking for one this morning. I never seen a metric tape measure in the store

@HumanEarth She's teasing you about the time!

(Though metric tape-measures are divided into more than just cms., and many are dual metric and imperial.)

@HumanEarth
Please take ArishMell's self-perceived knowledge of 'all things' in the universe, including 'all things' that he thinks other people are teasing you about, with a grain of salt. It is particularly important that you totally ignore him when it comes to issues like 'metric time' which of course he's never actually heard of before, unlike myself who actually owns a functioning 'metric clock' that my grandfather gave me which still keeps perfect time and serves as a conversation piece on my living room coffee table.

Just for the record HumanEarth and just for your knowledge as well ArishMell, it was the Late Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau of Canada who was the first to introduce the concept of 'metric time' to Canada's Parliament back in the early 1980's.

Metric time was introduced by Trudeau immediately after Canada went 'full' metric in all forms of measure including temperature conversion, distances, weights and volumes in Canada's Trade and Commerce, plus metric speed on ALL of Canada's roadway systems.

100 kilometers per hour in Canada = 62 mph in the USA.
50 k/hr in Canada = 31 mph in the USA

Trudeau's correct rationale for going with 'metric time' was one of establishing consistency right across the entire spectrum of 'measure', regardless of what was being measured, be it time, distance, speed, weight or volume.

In the case of 'time' that was being measured, time of itself is not measured in terms of Imperial measure nor is time a US measure. This is because 'time' itself is a man-made concept, which means 'time' does not actually exist in reality.

Eternity exists but Eternity cannot be measured. Time therefore, became a man-made, measurable concept within the infinite basis of Eternity.

Where 'time' first became a concept of measurement, lies as far back as the days of the caveman and before the birth of ArishMell, which means no country like Great Britain or the USA for example, can take credit for inventing the concept of 'time measurement' as we know 'time' to exist today as being 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours.

Back in the 1980's, a series of prototype metric clocks were developed by the Canadian government and were tested within the Canadian Parliament buildings in Ottawa Canada for one year. During that test period, standard clocks were temporarily removed from the building and replaced with the equivalent sized 'metric clocks'.

Metric clocks were based on one minute having 100 seconds and one hour having 100 minutes.

After one year had passed, those government employees in continuous proximity to those metric clocks during Parliamentary business hours, actually found the metric time system to be easier to read, easier to understand and easier to use as a measurement of 'time', than the old 'standard' time clocks we are still using today.

The concept of transitioning Canada to metric time was voted down in Canadian Parliament however, as being too advanced at that point in Canada's overall metric conversion from Imperial to metric. It was not too advanced for Canadians who were already onside with metric-measure though still very new to it. Metric time was considered way too advanced for Canada's neighbors to the south, the USA, who at the time was Canada's largest global trading partner.

The Canadian Parliament concluded that because the US government felt strongly that their fellow Americans as a whole, would never be able to transition from US standard measure to International metric measure as easily as Canada did, that the USA would remain on standard measure indefinitely, regardless of the rest of the world moving away from standard measure in favor of the metric system.

In that regard, the USA has trailed behind the rest of the world for the last 40 years when it comes to the use of the metric system in America, compared to other more socially developed Nations around the world.

Of particular interest you may find, is that there are actually some very advanced countries out there who haven't actually gone 'full metric' like Canada has otherwise done.

Those other countries use 'partial metric' in some forms of commerce, but mix the old standard measure for other forms of measure within their culture. This is because of old ways and old cultural habits that many people refuse to change from. This was the same concern the US government had for it's own people, which then led the USA to do absolutely nothing for 40 years except to stay with the old American way.

@swirlie Sneering at people won't help. I never pretended to know everything... but I do know and use both Imperial and Metric measures!

As it happens I am well aware there have been attempts to create decimally-based time and date systems; but none have caught on.

I am also aware of past proposals to redefine the circle from 360 to 400 angular degrees, so 100º in a right-angle - but producing all sorts of geometrical irregularities so not adopted.

Anyway the ISO's officially-"Preferred" unit of angle is the Radian - greatly simplifying many scientific and engineering calculations, but not practical for dividing anything circular into regular parts, measuring angles in real objects, describing polygons and using basic trigonometry! (Computers do use radians for trig., I guess to simplify their internal calculating routines, but sometimes necessitating adding a converter to, e.g., spreadsheets.)

.

Other countries?

The UK for one, retains the Statute Mile and the Pint for certain applications. Many building and engineering materials here are still made in feet and inch sizes; if only because it would be costly to convert the production machinery for no real advantage. Road fuel is sold by the litre but consumption still stated in miles-per-gallon; as the speedometers and their odometers are primarily miles-based, as are all sign-posts, distances, speed-limits etc. I think the Republic of Ireland uses kilometres, but I am not sure.

I must admit I was surprised when in a recent radio music programme, a Dutch organist describing the German-made instrument in a church in his country, quoted stop lengths in feet! I have also seen a programme, in Norwegian, from an Oslo Cathedral organ recital, use fus ("feet") for the same purpose. Yet these three countries went all-metric a very long time ago.

.......

When will the USA convert to Metric? Eventually, perhaps only within the next few decades. It will have to even though many Americans dislike the idea, although apparently unable to give a convincing reason for their view beyond personal custom.

When and how though, only the Americans themselves can decide, of course.

A US-resident PM correspondent on here once reckoned the metric system is "unpatriotic", but could not explain why. I took his view as simple dislike of something he did not understand and use personally, but perhaps even if he was taught it, he has not so far needed use it. He conceded his Japanese-built family car is all-metric though, needing metric spanners for servicing it.

@ArishMell
See! I told you so! I was right when I said, you are one who knows everything about everything!


Actually, you're quite wrong about that one. Decimally-based time is already in place in Canada and maybe the USA as well, where it's application is used primarily in the aviation sector for the recording of engine hours onto a Hobbs Meter. Farm tractor tachometers also record engine time as decimally-based total hours on the engine, which is referenced to 1600 RPM for true engine time, varying + - either side of that.

I should also point out that decimally-based time is not 'metric time', nor resembles any aspect of 'metric time' that I was referring to in my last letter. Decimally-based time is based on standard time comprised of 60 minutes. An hour is then divided by 10, creating 6 minute segments within each hour and represented as a decimal segment of each hour.

.1 hours is 6 minutes
.5 hours is 30 minutes
.9 hours is 54 minutes
1.0 hours is 60 minutes


Metric time on the other hand, is based on 100 minutes in an hour which has nothing to do with decimally-based standard time.

You are correct in how you describe the partial implementation of metric measure in UK, which has always surprised me considering how that far away British Colony that some still refer to as Canada, went full-in, 100% metric, over 40 years ago with no exceptions to any form of measure.

People in the grocery store still ask the butcher for a pound of meat though... but the electronic weigh scale only reads-out in kilograms!

Other people will ask for 500 grams of meat and the butcher will keep cutting until the scale says 500 grams, because not many people have a visual understanding of what 500 grams looks like in their hand compared to a pound of meat, even after all these years of metric.

As far as fuel consumption is concerned, cars destined to the Canadian market show fuel consumption estimates as liters consumed per 100 kilometers, rather than miles per gallon.

That metric presentation would be something like 10.0 liters/100km which equates to about 25 miles per gallon.

You are very sneer-worthy, by the way.
Has anyone ever told you that before? 🤭

@swirlie When I accused you of teasing, it simply and only on your telling your national neighbour with a mistaken view of the metric system, that Canada is switching to "metric time". AND I was being light-hearted.

I understand European countries use km/100 litres, or something that way round, rather than litres/distance. I don't know for sure... but I am puzzled by car advertising waffling about load capacity in litres (do they think we will use the thing as a aquarium?) and sometimes, engine power in units called "PS" instead of kW - or for British buyers, still HP.


That resistance to going metric in Britain was broadly similar: unfamiliarity.

Most people at the time could not visualise what 500 grammes of meat, or 5 metres of wood, or 2 litres of fluid. Since then the almost universal use of the SI units, and by now at least two generations of schoolchildren taught only in them, mean in time hardly anyone would recognise 4lbs 6oz, 16 feet 4 inches or one-and-three-quarter UK pints. As those above measures come to, closely.


I think there was another reason for the resistance here: a fear of being short-changed.

Britain converted to decimal currency on 1971, keeping the £ by referendum result. Many manufacturers and sellers of low-price goods like confectionery exploited this by converting the unit but not number in their prices, more than doubling the prices overnight!

It was not surprising then, when shops were ordered to sell everything by kilogrammes, metres or litres (and multiples / divisions thereof) that people unused to these units were also very wary of being duped a second time around. There were unverified anecdotes of timber-merchants inventing the "metric foot" of 300mm, but since 1ft is 303mm anyway it is hard to see how they could have profited from it, and the Trading Standards people would soon have stopped such tricks.

A group of shopkeepers banded together to maintain displaying and selling goods, mainly food, in Imperial measures to suit their many customers confused by these French units; but the protest did not last long because they were breaking to law by doing so.


There seemed also a romantic rather than academic feeling over both the currency and the measures: that of losing something quintessially British and that had worked for hundreds of years, merely for drab, bureaucratic, rule-by-tens uniformity. I must admit I felt the same! At least we kept the Pound Sterling... of which you now need over four to buy a Pint of dispensed beer in the pub!

.......
I have NEVER claimed to know everything. No-one can know everything, can they?

You two still 👀

@HumanEarth Actually you made a point that reminded me of something a PM correspondent said to me quite a while ago, and which I put down to him being rather naive about world affairs (shown by other discussions and by his peculiar lack of historical time perspective).

I didn't question him on why he thought that; though I did ask if he'd ever been taught much modern history at school: not much, it seems.

Then the other day you said you were taught Cold War political reasons for refusing to use metric dimensions.

He had described it as "unpatriotic". Wrong, yes, bizarre, yes; but perhaps he'd been subjected to the much the same propaganda as you said you had.

@ArishMell

Yes true, but your abounding knowledge of everything seems so real to me!

I guess I lost my head, probably overwhelmed from just interacting with you.

I'll let you off the hook for knowing everything and hereby restore your credibility to those of us who consistently maintain the SW standard of critical thinking.

I'm a Know It All. Every meet this guy at Cheers. The bar know it all. Thats me.