Moe Zhoost

Both - depends on the circumstance. Also, Whitworth and Nähnorm 100

Leinster

If by "more puny, less generously designed" you mean "the streets in this 300 year old market village are too narrow to drive a 5.0l king cab pickup truck," then maybe. I was more talking about the aesthetics of modern architecture and design there.

jdfilms

I use both all the time. Taking machining classes in junior college probably helped with that.

My uncle was convinced that the United States was going to switch to metric in the late 80's or 90's and he wrote a book about the metric system that was published at the time. I wish I could find a copy. I remember him coming to our house and teaching me, my mom and dad all about it.

buegelfrei

I ticked the “Imperial” option since I use gear-inches, MPH, miles ridden, feet (or parking spaces) wheelied, and I weigh complete bikes in pounds. However, I use grams for individual parts (though I may convert to ounces in my head) and I measure most bike parts in mm (Q-factor, crank length, fork axle-to-crown and rake). BMX frame and handlebar geometry in inches, road bike frames and bars in cm. Strictly Nm for torque. Weather in Fahrenheit.

dsbrantjr

Being in the engineering world, I use decimal Imperial measurements, 1.234" etc. Fractional Imperial measurements suck. Example; quick, what is the next-larger size wrench from 13/64"?

Leinster

Grams or mm are a lot better for bike-part level precision than 1/32" or 1/4oz. Although I do look out for 23" size frames.

Most units I can interchange pretty comfortably between metric and imperial (1" = 25mm, 25 miles = 40km, 1kg =2.2lbs, and a pint is a little less (US) or more (UK/Ireland) than a half litre), but with fahrenheit and celsius both starting at completely different points I've never been able to accurately translate that for friends unfamiliar with the other (I'll tell my parents it's 70 degrees here today, and have to google it to tell them that means 21C). It also doesn't help that both places have a very different concept of what constitutes "a warm sunny day" (Ireland - anything in the teens C with white clouds; CA - nothing under 70F with blue skies)

Flip Flop Rider

miles

edmguirk

I don't use imperial, I use american. 1 US gallon = 1.2 Imperial gallons.

I buy a lot of stuff on ebay and I recently learned there is a measurement called a chinese inch. It's related to tailoring and the original "Cun" thumb width. 1 chinese inch does not equal 2.54 cm, it equals 3 cm.

I now own an ebay tape measure that makes me think I lost a lot of weight when I measure my waist.

When I am buying cheap stuff on ebay, I've got to look twice at all the measurements because they don't always say which inch they use and I do not have an innate feel for the size of things in metric. I much prefer metric when I am calculating in physics or engineering but I don't have a mental image of it.

countyrider

We tried in the 1970s and it was a flop. There were even some highway signs in km, at least in California. In any case, who wants to order a half a liter of beer rather than a pint?

spelger

you are supposed to order in whole units. order a liter, not a half a liter.

Leinster

I would like the extra 25.82ml of beer in the half liter.

On the other hand, I would prefer the extra 68.26ml on top of that in the British pint.

Steeler_fanatic

I prefer metric for anything exercise related.

Joe Bikerider

my dad would have answered that immediately. He lived through the whole mess. So consider this story. When I was a Peace Corp math teacher in Ghana (1976) the head sent the office assistant over to find out how many meters was so many yards. I could do the conversion, so many meters.something. They were under orders to buy the new fence material in meters. I can picture the rest: something dot something? What’s that? I’m sure the Bursar got involved. He probably said something like so many meters and my cousin will split the rest. Done!

in my view units are best if they are useful. Like miles are useful because that’s an amount that feels right. Like a foot if you are doing house construction or an inch for finish carpenters. Early into the metric conversion the roads signs would say like 29.387 km. Nonsense!

OLDYELLR

I voted imperial, but "both" should have been a choice. I hope this poll wasn't meant just for U.S. Americans. As a Canadian, I can attest to using both systems, but generally we use a bit more metric than Americans. like for temperature, speed and weight and volume of groceries. But for body weight and height and building materials we're with the Americans, using imperial. Well mostly; we use 2x4's, 4x8 sheets, space studs at 16", but have metre wide shingles. One could write a book on the mixture of metric and imperial used in North America.

But since we're cyclists we have a unique set of standards based on how long we've been riding. I began cycling in the UK and everything was in inches except imported bikes from Europe. Coming to Canada and later resuming cycling in the 1970s, I saw Italian frames specified in centimetres measured from centre to centre instead of inches centre to top, cranks 165mm and 170mm instead of 6-1/2" and 6-3/4", which is close. And then metric size wheels and tires took over.Also when I went to buy better cycling shoes, they were some weird metric size instead of standard shoe size.

79pmooney

I like tons. More choices. 2240 lbs. 2207 lbs. 2000 lbs. (Almost as good, miles, land and sea.)

Really, I wish we'd sated on the track Carter started us on. If we had, it would have been solid metric the past 30 years. How simple!

Bamicus

All metric for the bike

OLDYELLR

@79pmooney Glad you brought up tons. I grew up with a ton being 2240 pounds, also known as the long ton or imperial ton. It derives from the British 14 pounds being 1 stone, 8 stones being 1 hundredweight (how is 112 pounds a "hundred" weight?) and 20 hundredweight being 1 ton (2240 pounds). That was too much memorizing for Americans, therefore the short ton (2000 pounds) which makes more sense. America was on its way to something like the metric system, but didn't make it. However, when Canada adopted the metric system we also adopted the metric ton, pronounced "ton", but spelled "tonne", which is 1000 kilograms or 2204.62 pounds, almost a stone's throw from a long ton, if you'll pardon the pun. I hate the Canadian "tonne" and pronounce it "tony" .

caribou22

A northern perspective

leadholder

Both. I’m a architectural drafter by trade so imperial. Metric for my cycling hobby unless I’m monkeying wit an old schwinn then it’s imperial. Work on the car: metric and imperial. Home repairs: imperial. Most tool boxes in America have both imperial and metric tools combined but separated.

vane171

Quote:
Originally Posted by countyrider View Post
We tried in the 1970s and it was a flop. There were even some highway signs in km, at least in California. In any case, who wants to order a half a liter of beer rather than a pint?

I come from the country that is world famous for beer drinking and has the highest beer consumption per capita and the standard beer jug is called 'half-liter' and if you ask for beer in a pub, you don't need to specify the size. The smaller size, 0.375 liter size is called small beer and is normally beer size for women or kids for lemonade.
Liter sized beer would go stale on most folks and would be too heavy to lift as a glass mug. Optimal size for beer to keep its quality once tapped is half a liter, that is if you know how to drink beer.

unterhausen

Welcome to the forum. It was done wrong back then, should have been forced on us and discarded the old. The funny thing about that time was that the soda industry introduced half gallon bottles of soda. Relatively quickly they went to 2 liter bottles. That must have been a pretty big screwup.

rsbob 

Just like running a metric marathon. But people do run 5 and 10Ks. Go figure.

countyrider

Interesting because 1/2 gallon is only 1.69 liters so they would have lost money or would have to have raised the price. The funny thing is the only reason I remember all this is because I was a grad student in Economics at the time and a friend's mother said "You are studying economics....you must know a lot about the metric system".

cyccommute 

We have one metric highway in the US. The 102 km from Tucson, AZ to Nogales, AZ on I-19 is metric. It was supposed to be a part of a signage test for converting to metric. It’s still there.

SpeedyBlueBiker

I always use imperial units in the US as that is the standard. However, I am fully metric literate after having lived many years overseas. I can pretty much go back and forth in each without any problem. In the US I ride in the imperial system but when I ride overseas then I ride in the metric system.

Someone mentioned earlier about carry large amounts (numerically) in the local currency. I often go from my home in Bangkok to Laos (great mtn biking) and 10 USD is roughly 93,000 Kip! Of course the paper bills are larger and come in denominations of 500, 1000, 2000, 5000, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, 100,000 kip with the larger denomination bills only coming into existence in 2010.