For most people making a mistake between horsepower or kilowatt has no dire consequences. Most of those who convert back do not work in such environments you mentioned, but are simply unwilling to accept change. The low speed limits of to-day make the 'horsepower' of a car less important. As for the others, they are usually well trained and numerate enough to avoid errors. They should be able to stop converting from new to old within a short time. In most cases when changing units, it is vastly preferable never to convert from new to old, only from old to new. If one has to convert from new to old, it must be discontinued as soon as possible as it delays the process of growing into the new. Endless back-converting delayed and messed metrication in many nations for decades and it nearly caused its undoing under Napoleon. In France, about 15% of the population continued to convert 'new' francs back to 'old' ones up to Dec. 31 last! Even young people took part in this folly, although they had had no personal experience with the old franc. The old franc was abolished *40 years* ago! It only took multiplying by 100 to make this conversion. Anyway, the coming of the euro makes any conversion back so cumbersome that even the most unwilling should not be able to hold out that long again. I only convert back amounts of money I need for a week and/or a month to set up a new budget, never when buying things at the counter, anyway. I think I will be able to stop converting from new to old within a few days and not 10, 20, 30 or even 40 YEARS!!!!!.
Han ----- Original Message ----- From: "M Jenkins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2002 10:12 PM Subject: [USMA:17137] Re: changeover Han Maenen wrote: It is easier to leave old measuring units behind than old money. It is never necessary, for instance, to convert kilowatts to horsepower and I never did that. Do you work in an area where making a mistake between kilowatts and horsepower could kill someone, or at least cost you or someone else a lot of money? If not, then I think that you are glossing over a very real problem for professionals whose work involves critical decisions based on units and "magic" numbers (for example, material strengths) in those units. Of course, this can be overcome with positive attitude and adequate training. But I think that perhaps your statement should be, "It is easier for *me* to leave old measuring units behind than old money." Mike Jenkins Laurel MD
