What does make sense of systems prior to the modern metric system is that they were based on needs and abilities of centuries past, which – surprise! – have changed.
What does NOT make sense is not so much inertia in making change, but people who get all butthurt and complainy when suggested they change practices, like many nitwits in the US. Hell the British did it, we can.
Some of the measures of volume and length make reasonable sense – though the names are funny many are half or double of others, or times 4, or multiples of 2 or 4.
When most people never ventured more than 20 miles from where they were born only traders had to worry about shit like that.
England and the US, prob others I just don’t know, had * local time *, I mean at the town to town level. How would they know they’re different? Few people had portable clocks. That ended with train systems. In the 1840s I think.
I was on a car forum where members complained that the metric system caused the space shuttle explosion, and why can’t we have mercurochrome and hitting children in schools back. Luckily they’re all dying off now.
It’s mostly just people like to attack conversions no one really does. Even with it’s nice easy conversions, the average person isn’t going to tell you how many nanometers are in a megameter, which isn’t qualitatively different than barleycorns in a league.
Science also just invents new units of measure when it’s convenient, light years, parsecs, astronomical units, moles, etc.
What does make sense of systems prior to the modern metric system is that they were based on needs and abilities of centuries past, which – surprise! – have changed.
What does NOT make sense is not so much inertia in making change, but people who get all butthurt and complainy when suggested they change practices, like many nitwits in the US. Hell the British did it, we can.
Some of the measures of volume and length make reasonable sense – though the names are funny many are half or double of others, or times 4, or multiples of 2 or 4.
When most people never ventured more than 20 miles from where they were born only traders had to worry about shit like that.
England and the US, prob others I just don’t know, had * local time *, I mean at the town to town level. How would they know they’re different? Few people had portable clocks. That ended with train systems. In the 1840s I think.
I was on a car forum where members complained that the metric system caused the space shuttle explosion, and why can’t we have mercurochrome and hitting children in schools back. Luckily they’re all dying off now.
It’s mostly just people like to attack conversions no one really does. Even with it’s nice easy conversions, the average person isn’t going to tell you how many nanometers are in a megameter, which isn’t qualitatively different than barleycorns in a league.
Science also just invents new units of measure when it’s convenient, light years, parsecs, astronomical units, moles, etc.
Moles are real, not invented by science!