America Has Two Feet. It’s About to Lose One of Them(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
America Has Two Feet. It’s About to Lose One of Them
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/science/foot-surveying-metrology-dennis.html
21 comments
I'm mostly surprised that the standardization of the American measurements and the development of the metric system happened nearly at the same time. A few years could have meant a huge difference regarding the American adoption of the metric system.
It should lose both, saves them from stupid conversion mistakes...
And also using a rational date format (yyyy/MM/dd or dd/MM/yyyy) would be nice.
We do mm/dd/yyyy because that's how we say it. In Europe if you ask someone the date do they say 2020, August, 18th? or 18th, August, 2020?
Stuff like this really isn't a big deal. I don't get why people get so hung up on it.
Stuff like this really isn't a big deal. I don't get why people get so hung up on it.
In many (most?) European languages the day is spoken before the month.
e.g. le dix-huit août, deux mille vingt
e.g. le dix-huit août, deux mille vingt
Except for cases like the 4th of July, in which case it's suddenly DD/MM again. Much like the UK's relationship with metric/imperial, the problem with US dating is that it's not consistent.
In the UK we'd say "18th [of] August, 2020"
In the UK we'd say "18th [of] August, 2020"
Because when we say "4th of July" it's not being said in the context of a date, it's an event. It's used in the same context that Christmas or Thanksgiving would be used. You don't say that we're inconsistent because we call Christmas "Christmas" instead of December 25th. We also call the 4th of July Independence Day. It's just colloquial usage.
If you ask someone what date Independence Day is they'll say July 4th, 1776. Not 4th of July, 1776. Test it.
> In the UK we'd say "18th [of] August, 2020"
Cool. In the US we say August 18th, 2020. So that's why we do MM/DD/YYYY. If you have any American colleagues or friends you can text this by asking them what the date is. They'll say August 18th (maybe with the 2020 part depending on how specific they want to be).
I really don't understand why people are so hell bent on changing our culture. We do it this way and like it. It's not a big deal.
If you ask someone what date Independence Day is they'll say July 4th, 1776. Not 4th of July, 1776. Test it.
> In the UK we'd say "18th [of] August, 2020"
Cool. In the US we say August 18th, 2020. So that's why we do MM/DD/YYYY. If you have any American colleagues or friends you can text this by asking them what the date is. They'll say August 18th (maybe with the 2020 part depending on how specific they want to be).
I really don't understand why people are so hell bent on changing our culture. We do it this way and like it. It's not a big deal.
> Because when we say "4th of July" it's not being said in the context of a date, it's an event.
Eh, that's not very compelling. You have a specific event for which you break your date ordering just because? "It's an event" doesn't explain why the ordering is suddenly not the standard.
It looks like a holdover from a prior point in history before there was the current trend of spoken date endianness. Look at "Seventh of March speech" as another example.
> Cool. In the US we say August 18th, 2020. So that's why we do MM/DD/YYYY.
This isn't actually the case from what I can tell by looking online, both England and the english speaking north Americans used a mixture of MM/DD/YYYY (but only with written out months) and DD/MM/YYYY. Once there was a move toward number-only dates around 1900 England disposed of middle endian dates and the US preserved them.
> I really don't understand why people are so hell bent on changing our culture. We do it this way and like it. It's not a big deal.
Global communication, US is the only place using this date format, can be mis-parsed for the first 12 days of every month, not even consistent within itself etc.
You're defending it with as much gusto as people in other places care. It's a minor annoyance to convert ambiguous dates, that's pretty much it.
Eh, that's not very compelling. You have a specific event for which you break your date ordering just because? "It's an event" doesn't explain why the ordering is suddenly not the standard.
It looks like a holdover from a prior point in history before there was the current trend of spoken date endianness. Look at "Seventh of March speech" as another example.
> Cool. In the US we say August 18th, 2020. So that's why we do MM/DD/YYYY.
This isn't actually the case from what I can tell by looking online, both England and the english speaking north Americans used a mixture of MM/DD/YYYY (but only with written out months) and DD/MM/YYYY. Once there was a move toward number-only dates around 1900 England disposed of middle endian dates and the US preserved them.
> I really don't understand why people are so hell bent on changing our culture. We do it this way and like it. It's not a big deal.
Global communication, US is the only place using this date format, can be mis-parsed for the first 12 days of every month, not even consistent within itself etc.
You're defending it with as much gusto as people in other places care. It's a minor annoyance to convert ambiguous dates, that's pretty much it.
I just asked 4 people “what date Independence day is”, got 3 weird looks and 4 answers of “4th July”, no year specified.
Non-US people don’t like it because it’s (a) different, and (b) illogical. If it were different and logical (ie: the numbers were in some hierarchical sequence), there’d be a lot less criticism of it, IMHO.
Non-US people don’t like it because it’s (a) different, and (b) illogical. If it were different and logical (ie: the numbers were in some hierarchical sequence), there’d be a lot less criticism of it, IMHO.
Well, I don't really know what to tell you. People are probably just thinking of it in the holiday context. If they aren't specifying the year, then that's probably why. Maybe try "what's the exact date including year of US independence". They'll most likely say "July 4th, 1776'.
> Non-US people don’t like it because it’s (a) different
K. Well, respect different cultures. In the US we like to do it this way because that's how we say it.
> and (b) illogical
Who cares besides Europeans with nothing better to do with their vacation time? Humans aren't computers.
> Non-US people don’t like it because it’s (a) different
K. Well, respect different cultures. In the US we like to do it this way because that's how we say it.
> and (b) illogical
Who cares besides Europeans with nothing better to do with their vacation time? Humans aren't computers.
If you asked US people, it makes sense that you'd get weird looks -- they think that you're asking because you don't know the date (and they expect that you would), whereas you're actually asking just to see how they say it. Also, as other's have pointed out, Independence day is an anomoly in how the US says dates -- we actually call this one "The 4th of July"
A less conspicuous date might work better. "When's Valentine's Day?" or "When's St. Patrick's Day?" (Feb 14th and Mar 17th, respectively).
A less conspicuous date might work better. "When's Valentine's Day?" or "When's St. Patrick's Day?" (Feb 14th and Mar 17th, respectively).
Which is why UK does not have the Star Wars holiday of May the Fource
In the UK we say 18th of August, 2020
yyyy/MM/dd or dd/MM/yyyy are not more rational, they are just a different convention. There is nothing inherent to those structures that convey the order of month and day.
Beaten me to it. But I guess conversions to millimetres will now at least be straightforward. 304.8mm per foot.
Better one inch is 2.54 cm.
This article was way more interesting than the headline makes it seem. It's about the 1893 vs 1959 definitions of a unit of distance.
Pretty interesting article. What stood out for me was why the US didn't standardize to metric:
They standardized the whole country on something because they had to - too much people from different places came together, each with their own measurement system.
The rest of the world standardized later. I assume the overhead from conversion only became unbearable when some level of commerce between different nations was reached. When they standardized, they had better science available.
So now there are 2 landmasses, each big and integrated enough to have internal units, not feel too much pain from using a different kind of units. Everything goes reasonably well, unless they meet.
They standardized the whole country on something because they had to - too much people from different places came together, each with their own measurement system.
The rest of the world standardized later. I assume the overhead from conversion only became unbearable when some level of commerce between different nations was reached. When they standardized, they had better science available.
So now there are 2 landmasses, each big and integrated enough to have internal units, not feel too much pain from using a different kind of units. Everything goes reasonably well, unless they meet.
I do feel pain anytime a NASA spacecraft explodes or I need to find and need to replace a screw and wonder which unit it is in.
Opportunity to switch to metric lost? While I think it’s a bit dumb to not standardize, I grew up in the UK with gallons of petrol, quarters of sweets, weighed myself in stones and drank pints of beer. And none of those things are relative to each other in my head and don’t need to be standardized. They’re units of communication that work for us because we all have a common language and a context, so it’s fine. When they’re units of measurement, everything goes sideways.
I’ve just about gotten to grips with fuel expressed in litres. I suspect it was only changed to make the unit price look cheaper from a distance.
I’ve just about gotten to grips with fuel expressed in litres. I suspect it was only changed to make the unit price look cheaper from a distance.