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also use metric


Le lun. 31 oct. 2022 à 00:41, Michael Payne 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> a écrit :
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Please add other examples of who uses metric in their work in the USA to add to 
my list which I’ll send to various news organizations like PBS.


Do Americans "largely use units like inches, yards, pounds and gallons?”. 
Certainly, but it’s the media that demotes or removes metric units in their 
publications. So who does use metric?

If you work on cars yourself you use millimeters, all nuts and bolts are 
metric. All vehicle manuals have the torque in Newton meters. Which leads to 
the question, why do mechanics have to purchase inch and metric wrenches and 
sockets? They must not realize all nuts and bolts are metric! US vehicles prior 
to 1975 are not metric, but that’s almost 50 years ago, how many people work on 
US made vehicles over 50 years old?

If you take your car to a garage they use millimeter wrenches and sockets.

All cars built in the USA and overseas are designed and built to millimeter 
specifications with metric nuts and bolts. This includes GM, Ford, Chrysler 
(Stellanis), Tesla, etc.

If you are a farmer, or work on construction equipment and own a John Deere or 
Caterpillar you use millimetres, all nuts and bolts on John Deere and 
Caterpillar are metric. Even the steel in Caterpillar equipment is purchased in 
hard millimeter dimensions. They have to sell these products worldwide so 
metric is standard.

If you’re a doctor or work in hospital you use Celsius, kilograms, grams, 
milligrams etc. It’s necessary to know your mass in kilograms to calculate the 
drug dose, converting errors would double or halve the required dose. All 
newborn babies in the USA are weighed in grams which is converted to pounds and 
ounces for the parents.

If you are an Air traffic controller you use Celsius even in the USA because 
all airports give the air temperature in Celsius (listen +1 703 661 2990). All 
upper air temperature and pressure is in Celsius and kilopascals.

If you are a Pilot in the USA all airport temperature and dew point temperature 
are in Celsius, all aircraft performance data is in Celsius. If you fly outside 
the USA you will then have to deal with visibility in metres and pressure in 
hectopascals.

If you work for the National Weather Service you are exposed to metric units 
all day every day. The pressure inside hurricanes is measured in mb by the NWS 
which is millibars, a deprecated unit known worldwide as a hectopascal.

If you are a scientist you only use metric. The news media will change it to 
what they think the public wants.

People who work at JPL and NASA use metric which are changed to US customary 
for public consumption.

If you work at Space X all units used even for launch data, are all metric.

If you are an architect or civil engineer you will need to know metric if you 
want to work outside the USA.

I could go on but it’s a sizable percentage of the US population. So it appears 
the only people in the USA not using metric is the US news media. One reason I 
subscribe to Deutsche Welle News in English instead of the NY Times or 
Washington Post. I cancelled my National Geographic subscription in 1990 
because they cancelled their policy of including metric units.

Mike Payne

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