FlyingShot wrote:Ken
I'll say they're confusing - its a jungle! I had already installed a braided drain hose ready for the machine. When the tech brought the machine he said the 1/4" inside diameter would be risky for clogging. So, off to Home Depot to buy a larger hose and new fittings - big challenge is to find a reducer to connect the end of the drain hose to the smaller hose that wends its way down to the utility room drain in the basement. It must be a metric size, as a 3/4" barbed fitting is tight. I wish we could complete this 40 year transition to metric and be done with it. Anyhow, no panic, as at least the water supply is attached and the drip pan is plenty big.

Ken

I am always amused when discussing the metric system with Canadians. I do spend a week a year in Vancouver, and have done so for a couple of decades, so I have some personal experience with this.

In the US our government said decades ago that we were "going metric." The idea was that they would start slowly, like with those idiotic highway signs stating, "62 miles = 100 km," and that the rest would follow. What really happened was that the signs lasted a few years until they started to fall apart, were then removed, and never replaced. And that is as far as the "metric transition" has made it in the USA.

Canadians were more ambitious. They said they were "going metric," however they decided that what they would do is to pick and choose a few measurable things to use the metric system for, while retaining the old English measures for everything else. So, one buys gasoline in liters in Canada, measures driving distances in km, plus buys a few food items in grams, but one buys pants sized in inches, and describes their living quarters as measuring XXX square feet. Plumbing fittings are exactly the same ones found south of the 49th parallel, e.g. like in the US. The one plus is that Canada has more or less eliminated the old Imperial measures (like "Imperial Gallon") that simply didn't "work" in a country right next to one 10x its size not using any of them.

As a result, Canadians are even more confused with common measures than are Americans. Most Americans simply throw up their hands when exposed to metric measurements, whereas Canadians act like they should know what to do with them but are then not exactly sure what they mean. They are left with trying to figure out how many miles they can go on a liter of gasoline, and similar absurd computations.

Having had a scientific/medical education, and now spending 2 months a year in France, I have become equally comfortable with English and Metric measures. In fact, I prefer metric. But it becomes confusing to use more than one system simultaneously. The beauty of metric measures is that they work as a system, that one can go to measurements of length to volume to weight and back again, with an overall consistency that gives the system sense. When one picks and chooses what one will use for whatever one is measuring, as in Canada, one is actually worse off than if they had just stuck with an illogical but consistent system, such as the old English measures.

My last comment, specifically directed at espresso machines, is that espresso machines are a hodge podge of metric and English plumbing. To my knowledge, all of the commercial espresso machines use both types of fittings, in different places. How the Italians settled on this is anyone's guess. It probably shows the same type of logic as Italian attempts at electrical wiring, which anyone working on the innards of their espresso machines will soon discover.

Good luck.

ken


...split from New La Marzocco GS3 MP in the house by moderator...

Ken and Bob,

This is a big mess unfortunately, as the metric system is really quite elegant in comparison to the British (you will agree with that, Ken F). To have 1 liter of water weigh 1 Kg is a devine construct, yes? And the metric system has many devine contructs. Newton was probably the greatest scientific mind to ever exist, but can you imagine how much more accomplished he could have been in the metric system?

The biggest issues seems to be the building trade, which is firmly anchored in legacy measurement units - it must have been and continues to be, too great a break with that huge installed base. In Canada, US, UK and a few other places historically entrenched in the British system, the structure/infrastructure and all buildings are in british units. So we either have to keep the same structure and just rename things to metric units - a 2X4 would be a 5.08 x 10.16, and that is strictly nominal. In actuality, it would be 1 1/2 x 3 1/2, or 3.81 x 8.89. Rounding off the actual measure and rejigging the material to 4 cm X 8 would ensure that nothing fits legacy structures. Of course the same problems apply to much equipment and technology as well.

The only way we have largely escaped this is in the auto industry - with 2 German and 1 Japanese car in my household we're all metric (except for the tires).

Ken

Believe it or not, Boeing still uses English units in their jet manufacture.

ken

I learned my mechanical skills on an old 1974 Volvo 145. Volvo decided to switch from British units to metric around then.

But not too quickly. As a result, it was anyone's guess as to what wrench, tap, or caliper to use on the thing.

Well, not really. Things for which the factory had to make substantial capital equipment investments in (i.e. tooling) stayed British. Things that weren't made by a big machine bolted to the floor in Gothenburg were metric.

So any fastener that joined two pieces of metal (generally body panels) was probably metric. The bolts that held the head on the engine, British.

I have to disagree about the utility of the metric system. I don't see basing a temperature scale on the freezing and boiling points of pure water at sea level any less arbitrary than basing a temperature scale on the coldest winter in Denmark and the temperature of your wife's armpits.

And the only reason that we think basing anything on ten units is a good idea is because we were accidentally born with ten fingers, vice a much more useful twelve or six. There's a dirty little secret about why the metric system was never fully adopted by the United States: because it sucks and it sucks because it uses a terrible base (10) compounded by the fact that the standards used to define it have no relationship to ordinary human existence.

A hundred degrees on the Fahrenheit scale is a pretty damn hot day. Zero on the same scale means it's pretty freaking cold outside. Zero on the Celsius scale? I dunno, you better bring a coat but you might not need it. A hundred? The planet is on fire and you're dead.

Eight gallons in a bushel, a pint starts the evening at the pub nicely. A liter is far too much to drink, but not enough gasoline to get you very far at all.

Bleh.

I don't know if you're just trolling or not, but here goes..

If it's zero on the Celsius scale, water freezes. That way it's really easy to communicate and calibrate thermometers around the world.
And the metric system isn't base 10 because we've got 10 fingers. It's base ten because that's what we use for math too. And luckily, it stays base ten instead of changing every unit. 12 inches in a foot, but 3 feet in a yard. And 1760 yards in a mile. So while it's easy to convert cubic centimeter to cubic kilometer (15 decimal places), it's a lot more work to convert cubic inches to cubic miles. And that's without the bazillion other stupid units there are in the english system like poppyseeds, fathoms, chains, furlong....

If it's thirty-two on the Fahrenheit scale, pure water at a standard atmosphere (101.325 kilo-Pascals in the United States, 100 kPa elsewhere where metric orthodoxy values round numbers more than accuracy) freezes.

I don't see that as materially affecting the ease with which we can calibrate thermometers globally.

And even though God gave me the wrong number of fingers for really kick-ass math skills, I can still count on zero of them the number of times I've needed to quickly convert from cubic inches to cubic miles.

Just say no to base-10. Fahrenheit forever. Gotta go gallons!

To anyone reading this thread: I did not start a thread with this title. This thread was obviously split off another one, and where it got split resulted in my being the "author" of this useless thread.

Don't blame me, it is not my fault.

ken

We have the same issues in the UK, with a resistance to adopt the metric system wholeheartedly. Obviously these legacy requirements can make it logistically tricky, particularly within the building industry when, as a plasterer I would regularly order plasterboard in 8' x 4' x 15mm or whatever. Two systems within three dimensions on one piece of material.

Ken may have been given the dubious honour of a useless thread split but it made me smile.

Ken Fox wrote:To anyone reading this thread: I did not start a thread with this title. This thread was obviously split off another one, and where it got split resulted in my being the "author" of this useless thread.

Don't blame me, it is not my fault.

ken

Makes sense - I thought you had reached an entirely new level of Ken-ness.