At 30 08 03, 01:03 PM, Paul Trusten, R.Ph. wrote:
In his October 2002 New Yorker article on metric, David Owen comments:....
"The units in which American building materials are idiosyncratic in the extreme---they include gauges, penny sizes, nominal dimensions, and a host of other anachronistic absurdities...
this is SOOOOO true!
but the over-all system works well, in part because it arose organically from human activity instead of being imposed from above by theoreticians.
It does work, but the reason is not that it is "organic" or that it was not "imposed."
The reason it works is that humans are very flexible and capable of being productive within constraints they are forced to live with. Any competent contractor knows thousands of tidbits of info (e.g., a 2x4 is really 1-1/2 by 3-1/2) that allows him or her to get their job done in spite of the inefficiencies of the system they work within.
The standard metric measuring tape was clearly not designed by anyone who regularly worked with wood: a millimetre is smaller thant he 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.
Bovine Scat. What he says may be true of a framing contractor (i.e., slap up a bunch of 2x4s or 2x6s that will be covered with sheet rock, but entirely untrue of a finish woodworker, i.e., the guy who does fine cabinetry, wainscotting, etc. They use measurements finer than 1 mm all the time, some coping and flush-cut blades are probably thinner than 1 mm, etc.
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 absolutely agree with this statement.
I want to defer to subscribers to this list who are outside the United States, especially Canada and Australia. What was the reaction of carpenters to metrication? To what extent do they agree or disagree with Mr. Owen?
Paul Trusten, R.Ph.
One other comment: the contractor I use most often for my business is a 60-year-old licensed general contractor who has been doing commercial construction for 40-plus years. He made it a point to send his son, who is 32, to one of my metric classes. As far as this guy is concerned, metric is the wave of the future, even though he hopes it waits until he is retired.
Jim Elwell, CAMS Electrical Engineer Industrial manufacturing manager Salt Lake City, Utah, USA www.qsicorp.com
