BuzZz wrote:Oh, Hud....
Imagination, romance or organics have nothing to do with measurement systems, other than to create confusion and decrease accuracy.
You don't want the guy who designed your engine to have 0.000043 cubits ring gap, or rod bolts torqued to 16 hogsheads.... and you
really don't want the guy at the shop to have to work on your engine with specs like that to decipher.
Why not? I can still calculate just as fast and efficiently in the system I was brought up in than I can metric.
Standardized measurement is critical to keeping our machines, buildings cities.... hell everything... running correctly and safely.
If you want to play fast and loose with standardization, look at what texting and punks on the net have done to language. U srsly think this iz ane wai 2 get a complex idea across? Mabee if U want 2 tell 10 000 of ur friends wat U had 4 lunch, or wen U take a craap, but no gud if U need 2 explain specs or procedures.
(/rant)
LOL. OK Buzz, you are not the only one that can rant around here.
Deep breath, and...
Nah it's a myth.
Listen, as I was growing up enginering weight was measured in poundals. In a world where the acceleration due to gravity was 32 feet/second/second , there were 32 poundals to one pound mass. There was horsepower (and still is) Wuh'hey! There were 1760 yards or 8 furlongs to the mile and 10 chains to the furlong (then there were 22 yards to the chain). There were 16 ounces to the pound, 14 pounds to the stone, 112 pounds to the hundredweight and 20 hundredweights to the ton. And then there were things called rods, poles or perches.
Despite all this, engineers only started making mistakes when we went metric and they had to start converting between the two systems. Nowadays we have 'puters and calculators. What's the big deal? I can still calculate just as effectively in the old system as I can in metric.
Do you really want to measure the power of a bike in Watts?
Do you really?
Bah!
A lot of the old number system was built on divisions of 12 (12 inches to the foot, 12 pence to the shilling) and not 10. That is
so much more sensible (12 has so many more factors than 10). What went wrong was not that our measurement systems had divisions of 12, but that we had a base-10 number system to express it in. What we should have done was covert to a base-12 number system. Now that would have been super-slick. Ten is an extremely boring and inconvenient number to base a number system on from all points of view apart from the fact that we have ten fingers to count on. But how useful is that when measuring engineering tolerances?
Let's sing the praises of the eccentric and unreasonable. I'm all for it.
BTW, I thought that is exactly what metrication did - play fast and loose with a perfectly good and perfectly standardised system. Since metrication we have had several whole generations of confused shoppers and motorists.
Rant over
BTW I defy you to take any of this seriously!
So I had to borrow my moms connection to fill out an online form for service. I'll be contacted by phone or email in 48 hours. 
They'll have to fix it before they can do that. 
