2002-10-13 An excerpt from the review of a MEASURE FOR MEASURE by DAVID OWEN
In fairness, throwing out the clock is a priority for just a lunatic few. But the same urge for consistency at any cost is often evident among wholly rational metric advocates, who seldom acknowledge that there could be situations in which coldly logical metric units work less well than quirkier alternatives. An example is carpentry. The units in which American building materials are measured are idiosyncratic in the extreme-they include gauges, penny sizes, nominal dimensions, and a host of other anachronistic absurdities-but the over-all system works well, in part because it arose organically from human activity instead of being imposed from above by theoreticians. The standard metric measuring tape was clearly not designed by anyone who regularly worked with wood: a millimetre is smaller than the tip of a builder's pencil and narrower than the blade of a saw, and the closely packed, uniform gradations on the tape are hard to make out at a glance except in bundles of five. In contrast, a customary American tape-with its easily distinguishable divisions of sixteenths, eighths, quarters, halves, inches, feet, and sixteen-inch framing intervals-is harmoniously suited to the way in which it is used. The American building industry will probably adopt the metric system someday, but American carpenters are not idiots or Luddites for continuing to use a system that works. I think the Australian/New Zealand example would be perfect in refuting the claims of the author that FFU is more suited for construction. It has nothing to do with the origins and evolution, and everything to do with adapting to whatever is set before you. It would be extremely intersting how the Australians and New Zealanders who were comfortable with the imperial measuring tape were able to eventually adjust to the metric one. Would a carpenter in Australia and New Zealand today agree with the above paragraph? Do any of you Aussies here know anyone old enough to remember once working inches? Could you get talk with that person(s) and see what it was like to work in inches, what it was like to go through the change, and what it is like now? People who actually used both systems are the only real judges as to which system is better. And yes, American carpenters are idiots and luddites if they turn their nose at metric without even giving it a chance. John
