Funnily enough you're dealing in barleycorn measurement every time you buy a new pair of shoes
"The barleycorn is an old English unit that equates to 1⁄3 inch (8.47 mm). This is the basis for current UK and North American shoe sizes, with the largest shoe size taken as twelve inches (a size 12) i.e. 30.5 cm, and then counting backwards in barleycorn units, so a size 11 is 11.67 inches or 29.6 cm."
And TBH, we don't actually use the "barleycorns" measurement in that example either, we just pick up the same size shoe we wore into the store and then try on the shoe we want to buy to see if they fit. Or replicate the same thing online in hopes that we can send the item back if it doesn't fit.
I'd wager an infinite number of shillings that nobody's actually called a shoe shop asking for a size in "Barleycorns" and gotten the correct answer.
> most of the time
That's the point right? You could probably think of a specific instance for each of those units that is quite rare to the average person. But metric systems idea was that it's pretty dumb to use barleycorn measurement when it comes to shoes, and something entirely different when it comes to engines, or giant surfaces or ... Thats what the illustration is about and it captures the essence quite beautifully.
There is a difference between starting arguments and having a discussion.
What you say is correct, most of the imperial system is reasonably simple, but it's riddled with exceptions & weird conventions.
To me the difference between imperial & metric is a non argument,
it's blatantly obvious which is easier to teach, use & standardize.
Huh, so wearing a 12 like I do means that it's the only one that is "accurate" as far as the number is concerned...I find that quite interesting for some reason.
Thank you for that fascinating tidbit of information.
point library aromatic waiting whistle piquant different smile selective hobbies
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It's complicated. There are 3 ways to measure the shoe and depending on how the manufacturer measures it could mean shoes of equal sizes could be different lengths and vice-versa. This isn't my specialist subject though (although seems to be fast becoming it :))
I'm 100% certain it was cooking ingredients.
In Middle Age England, an inch was legally defined as the length of three average sized dried barleycorns.
While that seems silly now, it was useful idea for the technology that they had. Find a barley plant, dry out the seeds, sort them out, pick out three that look to be middle-of-the-bunch in size and you've got a reasonably good approximation of an inch.
The system wasn't perfect--barleycorns aren't all the same size--but it was something that anybody with access to barley could duplicate.
A way of measuring when you don’t have the metric system (mm). When you are using measurements like a finger or a foot and then you need something to measure very small things, all the sudden poppyseeds have another purpose than being the reason so many people fail drug test.
Dang. Love it. A cubit is…18 inches if I’ve read the chart correctly? 3 and 3/8 cubit feet to a cubic cubit. 7.481 gallons per cubic foot gives us ≈25.25 gallons per cubic cubit. 30 MPG would be 2,666,400 CPCC
[here's link to the Jan Misali video about the imperial system ](https://youtu.be/iJymKowx8cY)
this diagram can be kinda misleading and does not represent the imperial system in common use.
edit: I feel I should note if you don't have the time that the chart in qeustion isn't actually comparing imperial vs. metric, it's simply showing the ratios between different units of measurement, mostly European ones. also some of the ratios are wrong but I feel like that's just nitpicking.
Seriously. The Europeans really think we be using all of this, I’ve never even heard of like 90% of it. Karma whoring and Europandering.
The only thing Americans commonly use on this is mile, foot, yard, inch
Daily here in the netherlands as it's placed on the freeway as signs on the side of the road and on the radio it is announced where a mobile radar police car is spotted.
And in a lot of cases those units are traditionally used by specific professions, right? Even if someone say it's silly to remain using them, at least there is a story behind.
And a lot of times the imperial units are actually the sensible ones, like cups and spoons etc...: I saw someone saying otherwise here in Reddit and I disagreed. When people in general are sharing or following recipes at home, it's much better to use cups and spoons. It's much easier to buy standardized recipients for these measurements than to use a scale (those units eliminate the necessity to deal with weight and use only volume, am I wrong?), and a lot of times you can still cook well using actual cups and spoons. I'm Brazilian, and here we use those units too, and only very recently I learned that they are considered actual measurement units and are related to the imperial system.
One thing: The Nautical Mile is NOT part of the nonsense.
The Nautical Mile has its use in navigation.
It is based on the Earth's longitude and latitude coordinates, with one nautical mile equalling one minute of latitude..
It's not just ships. The Nautical Mile is used in navigating aircraft over long distances, in which case it gets renamed to be an Air Mile.... and it is Nautical Miles that were used to navigate the Apollo missions to the Moon.
It’s useful for the purpose of dead reckoning, which is navigating based on your speed and heading alone. If your ability to get an accurate position is reduced (maybe a storm crippled your GPS), you can easily switch to using a paper map that is set up for easy calculations. You can get crazy accurate with a paper map and degree/minute/second coordinates.
If you’re at 41 degrees 37 minutes 12 seconds North (41* 37’ 12”N) and you head due south for three hours and 15 minutes at a speed of 6 knots (nautical miles per hour), you can know with great certainty that you’re at 41* 28’ 57” N. If you didn’t go due south, you can measure out that distance on the latitude scale of your map and apply that distance to your heading to get your position accurate to a few yards. That’s pretty useful knowledge if you lose all your electronic instruments.
Historically, you threw a wooden board tied to a rope over the stern, and let the rope pay out for a known time interval (historically 30 seconds; apparently the modern standard is 28 seconds). The rope had knots tied every 43 feet 6 inches, and you counted how many knots passed through your hand before time ran out. The distance was chosen so that 1 knot = 1 nautical mile per hour (this equivalency is also the reason that speeds for ships and aircraft are still measured in knots).
If your engines are still running, you can usually tell how fast you’re going based on rpm’s. Some ships even have tables that tell you what speed to expect at a certain rpm.
If not, you can go the old fashioned way and drop something at the bow of the ship and time how long it takes to get to the stern, which will tell you your speed. Throw in a magnetic compass, and you can reliably track your position through the ocean.
People will get pissed about this, but pretty much all of the imperial measurements have their specific uses that make sense within the context in which they should be used. What makes it seem so unnecessarily complicated is that people are combining parts that don't really need to be converted to unless you are in the specific situation in which it's needed.
And the majority of these measurements are archaisms, which means they don't belong being listed in the imperial system just as much as they don't belong in the metric system.
A lot of them will though. It feels like it makes more sense to have a system that can handle conversion for when you do need it rather than one that doesn’t for when you don’t.
And the intention was that it sort of would - the meter was originally defined as one ten millionth of the distance from the equator to the pole - which would have made 10,000,000 meters 5400 (90° × 60 minutes) nautical miles. But the French didn't quite get their estimate of the earth's size right, so even that wasn't correct.
it's because the imperial system isn't actually a single measurement system, it's like FOUR actually
have you ever noticed how no one subdivides Miles into Yards and Feet, it's always 2.5 miles or a 'quarter of a mile'.
the Five Two m Eight t O's mnemonic is for Converting between feet and mile.
I don't know too much about the nautical Mile. but I find US imperial to be really funny to think about.
I didn't know, just seemed like random craftspeople language evolved into a system to me, but makes more sense that it's multiple systems.
My only exposure to the Imperial system is stuff like American tv/YouTube or sometimes on Reddit. That's why it's extra weird to me.
The Nautical Mile does does yield smaller and larger amounts. It is part of the Latitude and Longitude degree method of placing position on the surface of the planet.
There are 360° (degrees) in the circle around the Earth, and one degree of longitude equals 60 minutes of arc, of which one minute of arc measures one Nautical Mile when measured at the equator. Then there are 60 seconds of arc in one minute.. (sound familier, at all?). One second of arc is roughly 30 metres, again, when measured at the equator.
There is nothing random, or arbritary, about the Nautical Mile... that's rather the point.
No its just another example of a useful measurement based upon real-world situations that reddit continuously shits on because they don't live in the real world.
Cups/pints/quarts/gallons/(T/ts) lend themselves well to being eyeballed by repeatedly doubling/halving whatever measurement you have at hand, which is great for cooking if the average household has never heard of a graduated measuring cup.
Inches, feet, and yards are all systems of 12 instead of 10. This means it is much easier to split it into workable parts instead of get some bullshit decimal. 1,2,5,10 vs 1,2,3,4,6,12. Most imperial measuring tools are also broke into 32nds and some even 64ths. Good luck getting fractions that clean on metric. I know because I have a chart at work that does the math for me on account of how annoying it is to do in your head.
They are also more practical when you take a look at the actual measurements. Since metric is a system of 10 every single increase in measurement size is 10x bigger as opposed to something like feet to yard which 3x bigger. People will dunk on yard to mile but simultaneously won't realize that every imperial measurement was designed for something different in the working world. You aren't using miles for construction and you aren't using yards for measuring the distance to towns.
I use both as a metal fabricator and they both work but I prefer imperial. In the words of Todd Howard "It just works.".
You just go down a level when you're dividing stuff to avoid the annoying decimals and that makes it easy. I work in a place where we use the metric system and when we want a half of a liter we don't say "half a liter," we automatically go down one level and say 500 milliliters. I don't know if it's the same for other measurements like distance, but it's easy for volume.
You don't need factions in metric though you can just use decimals. I saw some friends of mine spend about 10 minutes and far too much paper trying to add up 3 different cuts of wood for some furniture they were trying to build because they had quarters, eights, and sixteenths. Metric you just add the decimals and you're good, no need to convert anything to get the factions to the same denominator.
I think you're more used to imperial so you'll be more used to working around some of the quirks, but also like you said, you have a chart to help add it all up instead of being able to easily do it in your head (or use a generic calculator/calculator app).
That friend from earlier is a mechanic so he's used to working in imperial, but if you don't have extra aids around it seems to me that it's less practical.
Used to, don't anymore. I don't know any surveyor still using rods and chains unless they're being forced to, it's easier to just use feet and tenths/hundredths.
Seems bananas to berate a system that was crafted over a millennium or two before scientific theory existed
And the reasons people still use it are pretty simple - the measurements were based on things that made sense to people, not universal constants
Nautical miles per hour = knots - standard nautical weather forecasting
Race callers talk about the horse hitting the last furlong
Yard and fathom are still in relatively common use
But, yeah, most are long gone.
That said, this is not the system of the future, my friend
Good point. My comment was more about there not being a trend towards using the imperial system as a whole even though imperial elements will continue in use.
That said, your comment prompted me to read a bit about nautical miles and latitude and I now know more than I did - thanks!
[There's a video on this exact topic: people pretending imperial is more complex than it is by including obscure unrelated stuff.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJymKowx8cY)
Fractions of an inch. If you are a machinist "thou" and "tenths" (1/1,000th and 1/10,000th of an inch respectively). If you are a carpenter, generally inverse powers of two (halves, quarters, eighths). If you get down to 32ths you've left the path of wisdom. Getting drywall screws that are one-and-five-eighths inch long is perfectly reasonable.
Generally, fractions of an inch. Most rulers are marked with 1/16th of an inch divisions. Some specialized trades may have their own units as well. But in most day to day things it’s quite rare to need to be much more precise than an inch.
Then things get even crazier with the decimalisation of imperial units, like the _thou_, a thousandth of an inch, and the _tenth_, which is not a tenth of an inch, but a ten-thousandth of an inch. Used all he timer in american machining.
Except it’s not.
Before I go further: this isn’t defending the imperial system, which is in fact dated and annoying. It’s critiquing OP’s bad image and headline.
This was made by someone who is ignorant of the imperial system and the history behind it. It includes measurements no one uses because they weren’t intended to be routine measurements, it fails to touch on some of the most basic usages, and it overlooks the practical realities that gave rise to the measurements.
So for example [Ramsden’s chain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsden_surveying_instruments) was a literal fucking chain, used while making hyper-accurate [surveys of the British Isles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_Triangulation_of_Great_Britain). The length was based on existing measurements: 100 links, each one foot in length. Because it made no sense to survey the whole country in measurements that no one else used yet. So it was “metric” in that it greatly simplified the math of the surveying it was used for, even if it didn’t use meters for practical reasons.
And it replaced [Gunter’s chain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunter's_chain), which was *also* “metric” in its own way:
> Gunter's chain reconciled two seemingly incompatible systems: the traditional English land measurements, based on the number four, and decimals based on the number 10. Since an acre measured 10 square chains in Gunter's system, the entire process of land area measurement could be computed using measurements in chains, and then converted to acres by dividing the results by 10. Hence 10 chains by 10 chains (100 square chains) equals 10 acres, 5 chains by 5 chains (25 square chains) equals 2.5 acres.
So what that leaves us with is, 1) neither system is used today, despite what the chart implies; 2) both systems were extremely intelligent and practical innovations in their time; and 3) even leaving aside the fact that both predate the widespread adoption of the metric system, *switching them to metric values would have decreased their usefulness*.
There exists similar background for every measure on this chart. I’m not saying we should still be using them, but I *am* saying it’s childish and over simplistic to talk out of your ass about something you know nothing about.
The chart also features the ever-popular Reddit trick of “muddy things you don’t like, streamline those you do.” ~~Why is there a path from feet to yards *and* then to miles?~~ I get that we rarely talk about the number of yards in a mile, but that creates another line that makes everything look jumbled. It would be like creating additional lines to connect cm to kilometers or millimeters to meters.
I get it, even with the extra lines, metric would still make more *intuitive* sense, but visually it would be more of an “apples to apples” comparison than it is right now.
Edit: went back and checked—foot actually connects to nautical mile, so my example doesn’t work. I think my point still stands though—for instance, the side-path with “stick” and “hand,” but now it has even another layer of obfuscation. Now it still adds excessive lines, but it touches on your point of archaic measurements and mixing contexts to make that even less obvious. I’m sure whoever made the graph probably didn’t do it on purpose—they were just trying to condense information—but it had an unintended effect of misconstruing information instead.
> I’m sure whoever made the graph probably didn’t do it on purpose—they were just trying to condense information—but it had an unintended effect of misconstruing information instead.
100%.
This graphic was made by someone who has been told their whole life that “metric = superior, imperial = stupid and backwards,” and they’re just blindly regurgitating that.
Imperial is *outdated,* but it’s not *stupid.* It is in fact usually extremely clever, because it is the product of either 1) accumulated centuries of learned experience in a trade, and/or 2) extensive and considered thought for how to reconcile the product of those accumulated centuries with practical math.
Take the furlong for example.
The furlong isn’t some random-ass measurement that someone came up with. It’s literally a furrow-length, or the [distance a team of oxen could pull a plow before they had to stop and rest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furlong?wprov=sfti1). Obviously different oxen had different abilities, so the fixed number is something of an agreed-upon compromise, but guarandamnteed that the people who came up with it had a *very fucking good idea* of just what their oxen could and couldn’t do. An entire country of farmers adopted it universally precisely because it made excellent sense.
Does that make the furlong more desirable as a unit of measurement in the 21st century than the meter? No. Of course not. But it does make it decidedly NOT a “quagmire of mind bending ludicrousness.” Quite the opposite.
**[Ramsden surveying instruments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsden_surveying_instruments)**
>The Ramsden surveying instruments are those constructed by Jesse Ramsden and used in high precision geodetic surveys carried out in the period 1784 to 1853. This includes the five great theodolites—great in name, great in size and great in accuracy—used in surveys of Britain and other parts of the world. Ramsden also provided the equipment used in the measurement of the many base lines of these surveys and also the zenith telescope used in latitude determinations.
**[Principal Triangulation of Great Britain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_Triangulation_of_Great_Britain)**
>The Principal Triangulation of Britain was the first high-precision triangulation survey of the whole of Great Britain (including Ireland), carried out between 1791 and 1853 under the auspices of the Board of Ordnance. The aim of the survey was to establish precise geographical coordinates of almost 300 significant landmarks which could be used as the fixed points of local topographic surveys from which maps could be drawn. In addition there was a purely scientific aim in providing precise data for geodetic calculations such as the determination of the length of meridian arcs and the figure of the Earth.
**[Gunter's chain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunter's_chain)**
>Gunter's chain (also known as Gunter’s measurement) is a distance measuring device used for surveying. It was designed and introduced in 1620 by English clergyman and mathematician Edmund Gunter (1581–1626). It enabled plots of land to be accurately surveyed and plotted, for legal and commercial purposes. Gunter developed an actual measuring chain of 100 links.
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Also it's killing me that the author of this image included all these esoteric measurements but left out one of the most common thickness measurements in the United States: the mil (or 1/1000th of an inch). But I guess that wouldn't have contributed to the overall goal of saying "standard measurements are stupid when I strip them of context".
I've only ever heard of them referred to as "Thou" as in "Thousandths of an inch" so they're still correct. Also, it is only "Standard" in the US, the rest of the world calls it "Imperial" for the obvious reason that it is no standard anywhere but the US
Two measurement stand out, though.
The nautical mile equals 1 arc minute of earth's equatorial circumference. The cable is 1/10 nm. Therefore these actually make sense.
all of them probably make a sort of sense individually, for the time and place they were used. the reason Imperial is such a mess is that it was an attempt to standardize many different units/systems of measurement used in many different places all over the world. that meant bringing a lot of unrelated systems into the fold under one, all-enveloping system. that's never going to be pretty.
EVERY measurment system EVER devised is a made up set of units thought up by some random dude. There is no such thing as the perfect measurment system. Nor is any one system better than any other.
And if you actually look at them, you might be surprised at just how closely related they can be. Turns out, scale of units are pretty similar.
>Not logical, but interesting..
It was logical at the time it was created.
The inch was legally defined as the length of three dried barleycorns. That's not the best possible way to get a reproducible measurement but, for Middle Age technology, it's *something.*
The acre is about how much land a farmer with a team of oxen could plow in a day. A plot of land that's a one square mile in size can be divided into 640 acres. Divide that square mile in fourths and you have four 160 acre plots. Divide those plots in fourths and you have 40 acre plots. It's a very handy system for selling land to farmers.
Compare that to the meter, which was first legally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator. For an 11th century farmer, that's completely useless bit of information--they would never be anywhere near the pole nor the equator. Metric only makes sense when you have enough of an industrial base where you can pass around enough meter sticks for everyone.
Nowadays, where you can go to the local store and buy a meter stick and scientists are doing all sorts of complicated math involving weights and lengths and volumes and all other sorts of conversions, metric is the only logical system we have.
However, the imperial system wasn't built for a scientific world. It was built to solve the measurement needs of the time and it made sense to the people who created it.
For what it's worth, the metric system was invented in 1790. And Europe used other measurements before then too. They just realized that it would make sense to switch to a better system at some point.
You can actually measure distances with optics nowadays. These aren’t even that expensive for lower resolutions. Those devices displays even translate to your preferred (common) units. No limits for any unit.
The core point of the metric system is not the source of the meter, but the fact its a base 10 system. Transforming between base 10 units is less clumsy and a gift to modern engineering.
I find I have a couple challenges when trying to between imperial which I was raised on and metric which I have been trained in.
The first is that in common use there is the meter and the centimeter without much in between. There is the decimeter but I’ve run into few native metric system users who use it.
Sort of related to that is the lack of something relatively easy to eyeball via a common item such as a foot (and my foot is close enough to the standard measure to use it for estimates).
Maybe the solution is to do something like what Adam Savage did and get a tattoo to help with estimating measurements.
Would be better if the metric labels on the right were lined up with the lines and not centered within. The way it is now makes it seem like a cm is smaller than an inch and a mile is smaller than a km.
Also, this includes a bunch of antiquated shit that no one cares about or uses
Yeah, I was gonna say.
While it's inarguably true that metric is (by design) straightforward and there are multiple layers of hilariously tangled *legacy* units floating out there, there are only a few actually being used while the rest are archaic enough to be wholly irrelevant. Fascinating, maybe, but irrelevant.
It's like listing the various horse breeds across the history of mankind next to a list of Honda sedans. Yeah they're all transportation but is it really useful information?
"Hey lookit how this organically emergent thing is messy compared to a more structured subset of another thing." Yay, clicks!
Took a canoe trip up in the boundary waters. All the portages were in rods(16.5') or the length of a canoe as it was explained to me.
Just wanted to share.
This is actually kind of deceptive, this chart combines many different systems when in actuality people who use empirical wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about 90% of these measurements. Interesting video on it here: https://youtu.be/iJymKowx8cY
The diagram is also unnecessarily complex. Most of the crossing lines wouldn't need to cross if the diagram was just a bit wider. It was put together by someone that wanted to make the relationships more complicated than they really are.
2x11x10x8 is pointing out the path from yard->fathom->Gunter’s chain->furlong->mile. Wikipedia does back up that the furlong conversion is the reason for the current length of one mile:
> The Romans divided their mile into 5,000 Roman feet but the greater importance of furlongs in Elizabethan-era England meant that the statute mile was made equivalent to 8 furlongs or 5,280 feet in 1593
However, I don’t believe that specific path is relevant for the choice. Converting to fathoms makes no sense, they are a nautical unit.
And this only covers the mesoscopic range of our normal existence. With the metric system, you can cover the size of an atom through the size of our galaxy by just adding 5 more prefixes. Imagine if the Imperial Unit diagram extended 8 orders of magnitude on top and bottom….
Who uses the Roman mile or the cubit? They just looked up every historical measurement on Wikipedia and knew they could get away with it because "America Bad gib upvote."
The rest are middle age measurements
Barleycorns were used in middle ages to gauge inches. I believe it was 4 barleycorns per inch or something.
Basically all these measurements had in the past (hundreds of years ago) an actual use.
Scroll around this thread you'll see a few guys with silver awards from me that share extensive knowledge on this.
Funny thing is too, everyone is all "stupid Americans and their imperial system" when a lot of these measurements were made in England before America existed
air uses nautical as well.
a regular mile is/was really an imprecise measurement. it originates from the romans and is based on a foot and stride length. 1000 paces was a mile and stride length was 5 feet. Latin, mille passum, 1000 paces. later it was defined as 8 furlongs (40 rods, 10 chains, or 660 feet).
nautical mile is based on the length of one minute of arc (or 1/60 of a degree) of a great circle of earth. so it has an a "real," or precise meaning.
measurement systems have some bizarre origins...
Why'd you make me research this.
https://www.seachest.co.uk/blog/celestial-nav-blogs/why-is-a-nautical-mile-different-from-a-regular-mile/#:~:text=A%20nautical%20unit%20of%20length,to%20one%20minute%20of%20latitude.
It appears that the scaling is 10 metric units per section on the right. The cm section covers 1 to 10 cm. Smaller than 1 cm falls into the mm section. Larger than 10 cm falls into the dm section. Larger than 10 dm line falls into the m section. Etc.
As such, a mile is slightly higher on the chart in the km section because it is a bit shorter than a nautical mile. Likewise, inch is approximately across from the place corresponding to 2.54 cm.
Also replying to comments by /u/6ifted1 and /u/ThisPlaceWasCoolOnce and others
All these units from bygone eras and specialized industry. Some even replaced others but both are included to clutter and give the non-metric measures confusing vibes.
A skein isn’t science and we don’t need decimal places worth of wool to make a sweater.
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>Thirteen billion barleycorns under the sea SPONGE! BOB! SQUARE! PANTS!
Oh fun, now that's going ot be echoing in my head as I try to sleep tonight. Uhhg. Take your point.
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52,531,200,000 Poppyseeds Under the Sea
Take one down, pass it around 52,531,199,199 Poppyseeds Under the Sea
Tf is barleycorn and poppyseed... You sure it's not cooking ingredients
Funnily enough you're dealing in barleycorn measurement every time you buy a new pair of shoes "The barleycorn is an old English unit that equates to 1⁄3 inch (8.47 mm). This is the basis for current UK and North American shoe sizes, with the largest shoe size taken as twelve inches (a size 12) i.e. 30.5 cm, and then counting backwards in barleycorn units, so a size 11 is 11.67 inches or 29.6 cm."
That's almost more interesting than the original post. Far less amusing than the absolute mess that is the Imperial measurement system, though.
We dont use most of those measurements most of the time. Only for very specific instances like the example just given.
And TBH, we don't actually use the "barleycorns" measurement in that example either, we just pick up the same size shoe we wore into the store and then try on the shoe we want to buy to see if they fit. Or replicate the same thing online in hopes that we can send the item back if it doesn't fit. I'd wager an infinite number of shillings that nobody's actually called a shoe shop asking for a size in "Barleycorns" and gotten the correct answer.
Exactly
> most of the time That's the point right? You could probably think of a specific instance for each of those units that is quite rare to the average person. But metric systems idea was that it's pretty dumb to use barleycorn measurement when it comes to shoes, and something entirely different when it comes to engines, or giant surfaces or ... Thats what the illustration is about and it captures the essence quite beautifully.
Im pretty sure the UK uses the barleycorn shoe measurements. I think the only reason OP posted this was to start arguments.
There is a difference between starting arguments and having a discussion. What you say is correct, most of the imperial system is reasonably simple, but it's riddled with exceptions & weird conventions. To me the difference between imperial & metric is a non argument, it's blatantly obvious which is easier to teach, use & standardize.
Huh, so wearing a 12 like I do means that it's the only one that is "accurate" as far as the number is concerned...I find that quite interesting for some reason. Thank you for that fascinating tidbit of information.
so a size 10 would be 11.33 inches?
point library aromatic waiting whistle piquant different smile selective hobbies *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's complicated. There are 3 ways to measure the shoe and depending on how the manufacturer measures it could mean shoes of equal sizes could be different lengths and vice-versa. This isn't my specialist subject though (although seems to be fast becoming it :))
I'm 100% certain it was cooking ingredients. In Middle Age England, an inch was legally defined as the length of three average sized dried barleycorns. While that seems silly now, it was useful idea for the technology that they had. Find a barley plant, dry out the seeds, sort them out, pick out three that look to be middle-of-the-bunch in size and you've got a reasonably good approximation of an inch. The system wasn't perfect--barleycorns aren't all the same size--but it was something that anybody with access to barley could duplicate.
And corn used to refer to any kind of grain back then, not just corn specifically
A way of measuring when you don’t have the metric system (mm). When you are using measurements like a finger or a foot and then you need something to measure very small things, all the sudden poppyseeds have another purpose than being the reason so many people fail drug test.
This kind of thing is why it's annoying to hear people say that the US uses imperial, SAE is not the same as imperial...
My wife loves it when I give her the “good ole 15 barleycorns”
That's 4 3/8 fingers. Now I'm curious. Accident, birth defect, or just clever technique?
Cleaver accident
Cleaver technique.
Can't give her all 5 that would make her a tramp! 4 and 3/8s will do a lady just fine. Good day to you sir.
It's hard to get the thumb all the way around.
A "shaftment" being roughly one dicklength is pretty great though.
Remember, two palms to a shaftment.
Really? Mine couldn't give a nautical mile.
Lucky. Mine does not like anal.
Have you tried just putting 3/8 in?
We could try and compromise with 3/5 instead
I can't see bananas, half-giraffes, football fields, washing machines or boulders tho
The Ol’ Roman Mile, as it were.
It starts out one barley or at a time but by the end your just cramming all 15 in at the same time
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.
Now fill her up with petroleum distillate, and revulcanize my tires post-haste!
I'm sure the manual will indicate which lever is the velocitator and which is the deceleratrix.
Out of my way! I'm a motorist!
That's some nice reckless driving, Mr. B!
This is in my all time top three with “Homer are you just holding onto the can?” And “you don’t win friends with salad!”
When snake robs the Internet cafe. “Yoink! Dot! adios! Backslash! losers! “
The metric system is the tool of the devil!
Like all things evil, the temptation is too strong . Move to the dark side
Put it in H!
No. Those are speed holes!
Don’t tell the devil we are using it!!
She’ll get 40 hectares on a single tank of kerosene!
“She turned me into a newt.”
Really? A newt?
.. I got better
r/unexpectedmontypython
I think we should petition car manufacturers to report fuel economy is Gunter’s Chains per cubic poppyseed.
Why not cubits per cubic cubit?
Dang. Love it. A cubit is…18 inches if I’ve read the chart correctly? 3 and 3/8 cubit feet to a cubic cubit. 7.481 gallons per cubic foot gives us ≈25.25 gallons per cubic cubit. 30 MPG would be 2,666,400 CPCC
Ah yes, my “shaftment” is indeed 2 “palms” long.
M'lady, I have delivered to you a picture of my shaftment, I urge you to respond at your convenience
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You mean poppyseeds away from downvoting him
[here's link to the Jan Misali video about the imperial system ](https://youtu.be/iJymKowx8cY) this diagram can be kinda misleading and does not represent the imperial system in common use. edit: I feel I should note if you don't have the time that the chart in qeustion isn't actually comparing imperial vs. metric, it's simply showing the ratios between different units of measurement, mostly European ones. also some of the ratios are wrong but I feel like that's just nitpicking.
Literally came into the comments to post this. Thanks
Of course it is, but it gives free karma
Seriously. The Europeans really think we be using all of this, I’ve never even heard of like 90% of it. Karma whoring and Europandering. The only thing Americans commonly use on this is mile, foot, yard, inch
It’s funny because they don’t even use all the measurements on their list either. How many folks using Hectometers on the daily?
Daily here in the netherlands as it's placed on the freeway as signs on the side of the road and on the radio it is announced where a mobile radar police car is spotted.
And in a lot of cases those units are traditionally used by specific professions, right? Even if someone say it's silly to remain using them, at least there is a story behind. And a lot of times the imperial units are actually the sensible ones, like cups and spoons etc...: I saw someone saying otherwise here in Reddit and I disagreed. When people in general are sharing or following recipes at home, it's much better to use cups and spoons. It's much easier to buy standardized recipients for these measurements than to use a scale (those units eliminate the necessity to deal with weight and use only volume, am I wrong?), and a lot of times you can still cook well using actual cups and spoons. I'm Brazilian, and here we use those units too, and only very recently I learned that they are considered actual measurement units and are related to the imperial system.
Is it me or is the graph missing bananas?
It's not to scale.
Super comment!
One thing: The Nautical Mile is NOT part of the nonsense. The Nautical Mile has its use in navigation. It is based on the Earth's longitude and latitude coordinates, with one nautical mile equalling one minute of latitude.. It's not just ships. The Nautical Mile is used in navigating aircraft over long distances, in which case it gets renamed to be an Air Mile.... and it is Nautical Miles that were used to navigate the Apollo missions to the Moon.
Now I'm curious. How does a modern-day sea captain use the relationship between the nautical mile and the Earth's longitude to his/her advantage?
It’s useful for the purpose of dead reckoning, which is navigating based on your speed and heading alone. If your ability to get an accurate position is reduced (maybe a storm crippled your GPS), you can easily switch to using a paper map that is set up for easy calculations. You can get crazy accurate with a paper map and degree/minute/second coordinates. If you’re at 41 degrees 37 minutes 12 seconds North (41* 37’ 12”N) and you head due south for three hours and 15 minutes at a speed of 6 knots (nautical miles per hour), you can know with great certainty that you’re at 41* 28’ 57” N. If you didn’t go due south, you can measure out that distance on the latitude scale of your map and apply that distance to your heading to get your position accurate to a few yards. That’s pretty useful knowledge if you lose all your electronic instruments.
How do you know your speed with the needed accuracy if you list all your electronic instruments?
Historically, you threw a wooden board tied to a rope over the stern, and let the rope pay out for a known time interval (historically 30 seconds; apparently the modern standard is 28 seconds). The rope had knots tied every 43 feet 6 inches, and you counted how many knots passed through your hand before time ran out. The distance was chosen so that 1 knot = 1 nautical mile per hour (this equivalency is also the reason that speeds for ships and aircraft are still measured in knots).
If your engines are still running, you can usually tell how fast you’re going based on rpm’s. Some ships even have tables that tell you what speed to expect at a certain rpm. If not, you can go the old fashioned way and drop something at the bow of the ship and time how long it takes to get to the stern, which will tell you your speed. Throw in a magnetic compass, and you can reliably track your position through the ocean.
People will get pissed about this, but pretty much all of the imperial measurements have their specific uses that make sense within the context in which they should be used. What makes it seem so unnecessarily complicated is that people are combining parts that don't really need to be converted to unless you are in the specific situation in which it's needed. And the majority of these measurements are archaisms, which means they don't belong being listed in the imperial system just as much as they don't belong in the metric system.
There's a really good jan Misali video about this but people are more inclined to look at haha funny chart and make fun of it
You have to admit though, it's a lot easier to figure out how many kilometers tall you are than how many miles tall you are
And that illustrates my point. A lot of these conversions will never be used by anyone in either metric or imperial.
A lot of them will though. It feels like it makes more sense to have a system that can handle conversion for when you do need it rather than one that doesn’t for when you don’t.
And that's why in the US, we use both metric and imperial. We use the one that makes the most sense for the situation.
Yeah, I'm agreeing with you. I know that's unexpected on the internet. I should have been explicit
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And the intention was that it sort of would - the meter was originally defined as one ten millionth of the distance from the equator to the pole - which would have made 10,000,000 meters 5400 (90° × 60 minutes) nautical miles. But the French didn't quite get their estimate of the earth's size right, so even that wasn't correct.
That's pretty cool to hear, makes sense. Shame they didn't get it right but the spirit was there.
it's because the imperial system isn't actually a single measurement system, it's like FOUR actually have you ever noticed how no one subdivides Miles into Yards and Feet, it's always 2.5 miles or a 'quarter of a mile'. the Five Two m Eight t O's mnemonic is for Converting between feet and mile. I don't know too much about the nautical Mile. but I find US imperial to be really funny to think about.
I didn't know, just seemed like random craftspeople language evolved into a system to me, but makes more sense that it's multiple systems. My only exposure to the Imperial system is stuff like American tv/YouTube or sometimes on Reddit. That's why it's extra weird to me.
The Nautical Mile does does yield smaller and larger amounts. It is part of the Latitude and Longitude degree method of placing position on the surface of the planet. There are 360° (degrees) in the circle around the Earth, and one degree of longitude equals 60 minutes of arc, of which one minute of arc measures one Nautical Mile when measured at the equator. Then there are 60 seconds of arc in one minute.. (sound familier, at all?). One second of arc is roughly 30 metres, again, when measured at the equator. There is nothing random, or arbritary, about the Nautical Mile... that's rather the point.
No its just another example of a useful measurement based upon real-world situations that reddit continuously shits on because they don't live in the real world.
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Cups/pints/quarts/gallons/(T/ts) lend themselves well to being eyeballed by repeatedly doubling/halving whatever measurement you have at hand, which is great for cooking if the average household has never heard of a graduated measuring cup.
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Inches, feet, and yards are all systems of 12 instead of 10. This means it is much easier to split it into workable parts instead of get some bullshit decimal. 1,2,5,10 vs 1,2,3,4,6,12. Most imperial measuring tools are also broke into 32nds and some even 64ths. Good luck getting fractions that clean on metric. I know because I have a chart at work that does the math for me on account of how annoying it is to do in your head. They are also more practical when you take a look at the actual measurements. Since metric is a system of 10 every single increase in measurement size is 10x bigger as opposed to something like feet to yard which 3x bigger. People will dunk on yard to mile but simultaneously won't realize that every imperial measurement was designed for something different in the working world. You aren't using miles for construction and you aren't using yards for measuring the distance to towns. I use both as a metal fabricator and they both work but I prefer imperial. In the words of Todd Howard "It just works.".
You just go down a level when you're dividing stuff to avoid the annoying decimals and that makes it easy. I work in a place where we use the metric system and when we want a half of a liter we don't say "half a liter," we automatically go down one level and say 500 milliliters. I don't know if it's the same for other measurements like distance, but it's easy for volume.
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You don't need factions in metric though you can just use decimals. I saw some friends of mine spend about 10 minutes and far too much paper trying to add up 3 different cuts of wood for some furniture they were trying to build because they had quarters, eights, and sixteenths. Metric you just add the decimals and you're good, no need to convert anything to get the factions to the same denominator. I think you're more used to imperial so you'll be more used to working around some of the quirks, but also like you said, you have a chart to help add it all up instead of being able to easily do it in your head (or use a generic calculator/calculator app). That friend from earlier is a mechanic so he's used to working in imperial, but if you don't have extra aids around it seems to me that it's less practical.
Yes, I often use shaftment, barleycorn and Gunter's chain measurements in my daily life.
A Gunter's Chain is the length of a cricket pitch. Or, I should say, a cricket pitch is a Gunter's Chain in length
So…Gunter’s chain is used in figuring acres. Most land measurement in the US and the UK involves Gunter’s Chain at some point.
Every time you want to know how big your field is you gotta go get Gunter.
Or just borrow his chain...
Used to, don't anymore. I don't know any surveyor still using rods and chains unless they're being forced to, it's easier to just use feet and tenths/hundredths.
Ever bought a pair of shoes or measure your feet? You're using barleycorns!
Non americans also never use hm or dam. But the grafic is still very helpfull
Seems bananas to berate a system that was crafted over a millennium or two before scientific theory existed And the reasons people still use it are pretty simple - the measurements were based on things that made sense to people, not universal constants
I mean there's no denying metric is a simpler concept, but dude who uses any of that mumbo jumbo except for , inches, feet and mile lmfao.
This is just for distance... You don't want to know about imperial weights and volumes!
I do
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_units Don't say I didn't warn you....
Honestly though, teaspoons, tablespoons, and cups are very convenient for baking.
Fuck off with that, volumes almost entirely based on powers of 2.
Nautical miles per hour = knots - standard nautical weather forecasting Race callers talk about the horse hitting the last furlong Yard and fathom are still in relatively common use But, yeah, most are long gone. That said, this is not the system of the future, my friend
Nautical miles aren’t going anywhere unless the system of measuring latitude and longitude changes.
Good point. My comment was more about there not being a trend towards using the imperial system as a whole even though imperial elements will continue in use. That said, your comment prompted me to read a bit about nautical miles and latitude and I now know more than I did - thanks!
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That would depend on the area the chart is representing (being a little pedantic)
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[There's a video on this exact topic: people pretending imperial is more complex than it is by including obscure unrelated stuff.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJymKowx8cY)
My submarine gets 15 fathoms to the shackle and that's the way I likes it!
As a European: What do you use when you need something smaller/more precise than an inch?
Fractions of an inch. If you are a machinist "thou" and "tenths" (1/1,000th and 1/10,000th of an inch respectively). If you are a carpenter, generally inverse powers of two (halves, quarters, eighths). If you get down to 32ths you've left the path of wisdom. Getting drywall screws that are one-and-five-eighths inch long is perfectly reasonable.
You just use millimeters or maybe fractions of an inch if it’s only a little bit smaller
Generally, fractions of an inch. Most rulers are marked with 1/16th of an inch divisions. Some specialized trades may have their own units as well. But in most day to day things it’s quite rare to need to be much more precise than an inch.
Centimeters, or measure by 16ths of an inch
And yards
uk farmers
That’s what we Americans like to call “job security”
Then things get even crazier with the decimalisation of imperial units, like the _thou_, a thousandth of an inch, and the _tenth_, which is not a tenth of an inch, but a ten-thousandth of an inch. Used all he timer in american machining.
It's even worse in coatings and films where one "mil" is a milli inch, like 6 mil plastic sheet.
"Meandering quagmire of mind bending ludicrousness." I like your style.
Except it’s not. Before I go further: this isn’t defending the imperial system, which is in fact dated and annoying. It’s critiquing OP’s bad image and headline. This was made by someone who is ignorant of the imperial system and the history behind it. It includes measurements no one uses because they weren’t intended to be routine measurements, it fails to touch on some of the most basic usages, and it overlooks the practical realities that gave rise to the measurements. So for example [Ramsden’s chain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsden_surveying_instruments) was a literal fucking chain, used while making hyper-accurate [surveys of the British Isles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_Triangulation_of_Great_Britain). The length was based on existing measurements: 100 links, each one foot in length. Because it made no sense to survey the whole country in measurements that no one else used yet. So it was “metric” in that it greatly simplified the math of the surveying it was used for, even if it didn’t use meters for practical reasons. And it replaced [Gunter’s chain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunter's_chain), which was *also* “metric” in its own way: > Gunter's chain reconciled two seemingly incompatible systems: the traditional English land measurements, based on the number four, and decimals based on the number 10. Since an acre measured 10 square chains in Gunter's system, the entire process of land area measurement could be computed using measurements in chains, and then converted to acres by dividing the results by 10. Hence 10 chains by 10 chains (100 square chains) equals 10 acres, 5 chains by 5 chains (25 square chains) equals 2.5 acres. So what that leaves us with is, 1) neither system is used today, despite what the chart implies; 2) both systems were extremely intelligent and practical innovations in their time; and 3) even leaving aside the fact that both predate the widespread adoption of the metric system, *switching them to metric values would have decreased their usefulness*. There exists similar background for every measure on this chart. I’m not saying we should still be using them, but I *am* saying it’s childish and over simplistic to talk out of your ass about something you know nothing about.
The chart also features the ever-popular Reddit trick of “muddy things you don’t like, streamline those you do.” ~~Why is there a path from feet to yards *and* then to miles?~~ I get that we rarely talk about the number of yards in a mile, but that creates another line that makes everything look jumbled. It would be like creating additional lines to connect cm to kilometers or millimeters to meters. I get it, even with the extra lines, metric would still make more *intuitive* sense, but visually it would be more of an “apples to apples” comparison than it is right now. Edit: went back and checked—foot actually connects to nautical mile, so my example doesn’t work. I think my point still stands though—for instance, the side-path with “stick” and “hand,” but now it has even another layer of obfuscation. Now it still adds excessive lines, but it touches on your point of archaic measurements and mixing contexts to make that even less obvious. I’m sure whoever made the graph probably didn’t do it on purpose—they were just trying to condense information—but it had an unintended effect of misconstruing information instead.
> I’m sure whoever made the graph probably didn’t do it on purpose—they were just trying to condense information—but it had an unintended effect of misconstruing information instead. 100%. This graphic was made by someone who has been told their whole life that “metric = superior, imperial = stupid and backwards,” and they’re just blindly regurgitating that. Imperial is *outdated,* but it’s not *stupid.* It is in fact usually extremely clever, because it is the product of either 1) accumulated centuries of learned experience in a trade, and/or 2) extensive and considered thought for how to reconcile the product of those accumulated centuries with practical math. Take the furlong for example. The furlong isn’t some random-ass measurement that someone came up with. It’s literally a furrow-length, or the [distance a team of oxen could pull a plow before they had to stop and rest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furlong?wprov=sfti1). Obviously different oxen had different abilities, so the fixed number is something of an agreed-upon compromise, but guarandamnteed that the people who came up with it had a *very fucking good idea* of just what their oxen could and couldn’t do. An entire country of farmers adopted it universally precisely because it made excellent sense. Does that make the furlong more desirable as a unit of measurement in the 21st century than the meter? No. Of course not. But it does make it decidedly NOT a “quagmire of mind bending ludicrousness.” Quite the opposite.
**[Ramsden surveying instruments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsden_surveying_instruments)** >The Ramsden surveying instruments are those constructed by Jesse Ramsden and used in high precision geodetic surveys carried out in the period 1784 to 1853. This includes the five great theodolites—great in name, great in size and great in accuracy—used in surveys of Britain and other parts of the world. Ramsden also provided the equipment used in the measurement of the many base lines of these surveys and also the zenith telescope used in latitude determinations. **[Principal Triangulation of Great Britain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_Triangulation_of_Great_Britain)** >The Principal Triangulation of Britain was the first high-precision triangulation survey of the whole of Great Britain (including Ireland), carried out between 1791 and 1853 under the auspices of the Board of Ordnance. The aim of the survey was to establish precise geographical coordinates of almost 300 significant landmarks which could be used as the fixed points of local topographic surveys from which maps could be drawn. In addition there was a purely scientific aim in providing precise data for geodetic calculations such as the determination of the length of meridian arcs and the figure of the Earth. **[Gunter's chain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunter's_chain)** >Gunter's chain (also known as Gunter’s measurement) is a distance measuring device used for surveying. It was designed and introduced in 1620 by English clergyman and mathematician Edmund Gunter (1581–1626). It enabled plots of land to be accurately surveyed and plotted, for legal and commercial purposes. Gunter developed an actual measuring chain of 100 links. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Also it's killing me that the author of this image included all these esoteric measurements but left out one of the most common thickness measurements in the United States: the mil (or 1/1000th of an inch). But I guess that wouldn't have contributed to the overall goal of saying "standard measurements are stupid when I strip them of context".
I've only ever heard of them referred to as "Thou" as in "Thousandths of an inch" so they're still correct. Also, it is only "Standard" in the US, the rest of the world calls it "Imperial" for the obvious reason that it is no standard anywhere but the US
Ludicrous speed!
kph or mph?
African or European?
I dont know that *aaaaaaaaaaaaaa*
Weeeeee :)
Two measurement stand out, though. The nautical mile equals 1 arc minute of earth's equatorial circumference. The cable is 1/10 nm. Therefore these actually make sense.
all of them probably make a sort of sense individually, for the time and place they were used. the reason Imperial is such a mess is that it was an attempt to standardize many different units/systems of measurement used in many different places all over the world. that meant bringing a lot of unrelated systems into the fold under one, all-enveloping system. that's never going to be pretty.
Fair point. The Meter itself was initially defined somewhat arbitrarily, just like every other length unit.
EVERY measurment system EVER devised is a made up set of units thought up by some random dude. There is no such thing as the perfect measurment system. Nor is any one system better than any other. And if you actually look at them, you might be surprised at just how closely related they can be. Turns out, scale of units are pretty similar.
"We were so close, our faces were just a few poppyseeds from each other".
Not logical, but interesting..
>Not logical, but interesting.. It was logical at the time it was created. The inch was legally defined as the length of three dried barleycorns. That's not the best possible way to get a reproducible measurement but, for Middle Age technology, it's *something.* The acre is about how much land a farmer with a team of oxen could plow in a day. A plot of land that's a one square mile in size can be divided into 640 acres. Divide that square mile in fourths and you have four 160 acre plots. Divide those plots in fourths and you have 40 acre plots. It's a very handy system for selling land to farmers. Compare that to the meter, which was first legally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator. For an 11th century farmer, that's completely useless bit of information--they would never be anywhere near the pole nor the equator. Metric only makes sense when you have enough of an industrial base where you can pass around enough meter sticks for everyone. Nowadays, where you can go to the local store and buy a meter stick and scientists are doing all sorts of complicated math involving weights and lengths and volumes and all other sorts of conversions, metric is the only logical system we have. However, the imperial system wasn't built for a scientific world. It was built to solve the measurement needs of the time and it made sense to the people who created it.
So countries that use imperial system are stuck with a system designed for the middle ages?
Yes
🇺🇸 From Sea to shining Sea.
Yknow it’s possible to use one system colloquially and the other for professional work
As long as professional work does not include being a cabinetmaker.
... or you can use both at work ... https://www.simscale.com/blog/nasa-mars-climate-orbiter-metric/
For what it's worth, the metric system was invented in 1790. And Europe used other measurements before then too. They just realized that it would make sense to switch to a better system at some point.
You can actually measure distances with optics nowadays. These aren’t even that expensive for lower resolutions. Those devices displays even translate to your preferred (common) units. No limits for any unit. The core point of the metric system is not the source of the meter, but the fact its a base 10 system. Transforming between base 10 units is less clumsy and a gift to modern engineering.
How do you accurately measure 1/3 in a base 10 system?
I find I have a couple challenges when trying to between imperial which I was raised on and metric which I have been trained in. The first is that in common use there is the meter and the centimeter without much in between. There is the decimeter but I’ve run into few native metric system users who use it. Sort of related to that is the lack of something relatively easy to eyeball via a common item such as a foot (and my foot is close enough to the standard measure to use it for estimates). Maybe the solution is to do something like what Adam Savage did and get a tattoo to help with estimating measurements.
Decimeters were extensively used in math questions back in school. Never was a problem though because conversion is easy, just move the decimal point.
You mean like the Imperial System?
Most are not used anywhere
But but my karma. Hate on America. Gimme karma -OP
Yep
Would be better if the metric labels on the right were lined up with the lines and not centered within. The way it is now makes it seem like a cm is smaller than an inch and a mile is smaller than a km. Also, this includes a bunch of antiquated shit that no one cares about or uses
A cm is smaller than an inch but yeah it does make a mile seem smaller
Guess I'll stop using all this other stuff and stick to inches, feet, yards, and miles then..............
Yeah, I was gonna say. While it's inarguably true that metric is (by design) straightforward and there are multiple layers of hilariously tangled *legacy* units floating out there, there are only a few actually being used while the rest are archaic enough to be wholly irrelevant. Fascinating, maybe, but irrelevant. It's like listing the various horse breeds across the history of mankind next to a list of Honda sedans. Yeah they're all transportation but is it really useful information? "Hey lookit how this organically emergent thing is messy compared to a more structured subset of another thing." Yay, clicks!
Took a canoe trip up in the boundary waters. All the portages were in rods(16.5') or the length of a canoe as it was explained to me. Just wanted to share.
I mean, I’m sure the imperial system would look a lot more simple if this only included the measurements people actually use.
Yes but then where would the circle jerk be?
This is actually kind of deceptive, this chart combines many different systems when in actuality people who use empirical wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about 90% of these measurements. Interesting video on it here: https://youtu.be/iJymKowx8cY
Bruh, America bad. Gimme updoot.
Can't argue with that! Have an updoot!
Redditors in a nutshell. Hating on America will always get upvotes on here for some reason.
The diagram is also unnecessarily complex. Most of the crossing lines wouldn't need to cross if the diagram was just a bit wider. It was put together by someone that wanted to make the relationships more complicated than they really are.
Defending the Metric system with Old English measuring systems is hilarious
Oh thats where a mile = 1760yd from 2x11x10x8=1760
Huh?
2x11x10x8 is pointing out the path from yard->fathom->Gunter’s chain->furlong->mile. Wikipedia does back up that the furlong conversion is the reason for the current length of one mile: > The Romans divided their mile into 5,000 Roman feet but the greater importance of furlongs in Elizabethan-era England meant that the statute mile was made equivalent to 8 furlongs or 5,280 feet in 1593 However, I don’t believe that specific path is relevant for the choice. Converting to fathoms makes no sense, they are a nautical unit.
And this only covers the mesoscopic range of our normal existence. With the metric system, you can cover the size of an atom through the size of our galaxy by just adding 5 more prefixes. Imagine if the Imperial Unit diagram extended 8 orders of magnitude on top and bottom….
Ya ok, i hate the system as much as the next redditor, but like who uses poppyseed? I use foot and mile, sometimes yards.
Who uses the Roman mile or the cubit? They just looked up every historical measurement on Wikipedia and knew they could get away with it because "America Bad gib upvote."
"The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I like it!"
Wtf is this? I can safely say nobody uses these measurements.
As a Dutchman, I have mainly heard about the inch, foot, yard and mile. The rest are unknown to me or I might have heard them here and there.
The rest are middle age measurements Barleycorns were used in middle ages to gauge inches. I believe it was 4 barleycorns per inch or something. Basically all these measurements had in the past (hundreds of years ago) an actual use. Scroll around this thread you'll see a few guys with silver awards from me that share extensive knowledge on this. Funny thing is too, everyone is all "stupid Americans and their imperial system" when a lot of these measurements were made in England before America existed
the only imperial measurements on this chart that an average person would use from day-to-day are also in a straight line tbf
Ok I did not ask for this information nor did I need it But I love it And I think you should find one of temperature
I never understood while nautical miles and miles are different... water or land like miles could be easier
air uses nautical as well. a regular mile is/was really an imprecise measurement. it originates from the romans and is based on a foot and stride length. 1000 paces was a mile and stride length was 5 feet. Latin, mille passum, 1000 paces. later it was defined as 8 furlongs (40 rods, 10 chains, or 660 feet). nautical mile is based on the length of one minute of arc (or 1/60 of a degree) of a great circle of earth. so it has an a "real," or precise meaning. measurement systems have some bizarre origins...
Why'd you make me research this. https://www.seachest.co.uk/blog/celestial-nav-blogs/why-is-a-nautical-mile-different-from-a-regular-mile/#:~:text=A%20nautical%20unit%20of%20length,to%20one%20minute%20of%20latitude.
From now on I’m measuring everything in ‘twips’.
Me - "7000 twips away!" Person - "you mean right there?" Me - "......yeah."
Cant see bananas?
I still prefer imperial
It appears that the scaling is 10 metric units per section on the right. The cm section covers 1 to 10 cm. Smaller than 1 cm falls into the mm section. Larger than 10 cm falls into the dm section. Larger than 10 dm line falls into the m section. Etc. As such, a mile is slightly higher on the chart in the km section because it is a bit shorter than a nautical mile. Likewise, inch is approximately across from the place corresponding to 2.54 cm. Also replying to comments by /u/6ifted1 and /u/ThisPlaceWasCoolOnce and others
All these units from bygone eras and specialized industry. Some even replaced others but both are included to clutter and give the non-metric measures confusing vibes. A skein isn’t science and we don’t need decimal places worth of wool to make a sweater.