This may be common knowledge on this list but I found the following interesting piece of dialogue:
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/science/hsy73317.000/hsy73317_0.HTM [begin quote] Chairman EHLERS. I would appreciate it. And now a quick question for all of you. I happen to, as a scientist, think the metric system is considerably more convenient than the English system of units. Is there concurrence on that among this group or not? Mr. Ritterbusch, particularly, are all Caterpillar products now made in the metric system? Mr. RITTERBUSCH. That is a little bit difficult-all new designs are in metric. We still have some legacy designs, as you know. We keep some of the products around for a long period of time and there are still some legacy designs that are in U.S. customer units. But as far as all of the new product designs, they are fully metric. Page 37 PREV PAGE TOP OF DOC Chairman EHLERS. Do you find that generally true across American industry? Mr. RITTERBUSCH. No. It is only really those industries that have a real interest in doing export and satisfying a global market that really push that. Some of our suppliers, domestic suppliers, would still like to stay in U.S. customer-- Chairman EHLERS. Do you have any problems with your employees? Do you have to train them to use the metric system and are-is that difficult? Mr. RITTERBUSCH. Well, we have been doing this for so long that I think we are really past the big training effort, but, yes, there was a lot of training when we started. It took time to get people to be able to visualize a millimeter rather than 1/16 of an inch. And after a while they would learn how to do that and they understand the dimensions. [end quote] -- Terry Simpson Human Factors Consultant [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.connected-systems.com Phone: +44 7850 511794
