Inventors and/or manufacturers I want to Kill

[Jim Rusling]

If they will even sell it to you.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

Possibly. But not everything older is better.

I've never heard it. When I still lived in UK, a pint (of real beer) was about 1 shilling (one-twentieth of a pound) or less. :-)

The following site mentions the rhyme and points out that it is often misunderstood:

The 16oz. vs. 20oz. pint issue explains why you will find maintenance manuals for machines sold on both sides of the Atlantic giving oil or fuel or coolant capacities as, for example, "5 US pints (4 Imperial pints)" or "8 Imperial gallons (10 US gallons)". (And now they probably will have Metric measures as well.)

A fluid ounce is a unit of volume. An ounce is a unit of weight. And just to complicate matters even further, there are Troy ounces and Avoirdupois ounces, the former (used for precious metals and jewellery) being about 10% more than the latter "common" ounce.

Perce

[Mark Lloyd]

Probably. There used to be a lot of that 'conversion' nonsense, and it could explain why some people don't like metric.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Ounces & Pounds are used both for weight and mass, despite the fact that weight and mass are very different things. Weight is actually force.

In the metric system, a gram is really a unit of mass. Weight is measured differently (I think the unit is Pascals).

[snip]

[PaPaPeng]

or steel as

Last year, at Canadian Tire, I saw a real beautiful line of stainless steel shovels, hoes, garden tools. Reasonably priced too. Too bad I didn't need any. I wonder how did they sell and what's the consumer feedback on them.

[Michael Daly]

Centuries? Make that century.

There are more "American" cars made in Ontario, Canada than in Michigan.

Over 6 billion of them vs about 300 million of you. Keep building those walls, eventually you'll be all alone.

You may have opinions; too bad you don't have facts.

Mike

[Percival P. Cassidy]

Yep. We got an old Dodge Mirada from my father-in-law, who insisted that he would never buy a foreign car. When I looked at the plate on the door frame, I discovered that it was made in Canada. Our '02 Chrysler 300M is the same -- although we knew this ahead of time.

Perce

[Goedjn]

My only issue with SAE wrenches is that they insist on labeling them with different denominators, so I have to go and paint them in N/64ths,

[maradcliff]

Why would a car engine need protection of the timing chain? They come with plastic gears from the factory, then the replacement gear is steel. Why not just use steel at the factory?

[RicodJour]

But wait! Aren't smaller numbers easier? ;)

R

[Keith Williams]

Oh, we need 'em. We also need the fractional English nutz-n-boltz. ;-)

I can use either. Metric is a little simpler, but not all that much. Fractional inch is base2, rather than base10. Maybe the rest of the world should give up on base10 and move to base2. After all, computers are base2 everywhere. Everyone knows the computers run the world, ergo...

There are 10 types of people, those who understand binary and those who don't. ;-)

Sure they are; "pint's a pound, world round". ;-)

[Keith Williams]

Can't have that. Gotta have a smaller glass and keep the price the same.

;-)

The track event changed from 440Yds (1/4 mile) to 400M, which is only about 1/2% shorter. No biggie there, though when measuring down to the thousanths of a second...

I'm fairly sure it's still 66'6", so let's call it 20.3M.

[Chris Lewis]

According to Keith Williams :

US == world, right?

[I don't think any country in the world has a 1 pound pint anymore. Except the US. Imperial pints aren't a pound.]

[Keith Williams]

I think you're looking for "Newton". "Pascal" is a measure of pressure (1pa = 1E-5bar).

That said, gram(weight) is a proper SI unit as well.

[mm]

Definitely not, but the OP hypothesized an idiot who decided that America didn't need metric sizes, when in fact metric sizes hadn't been invented when America started using the sizes we still use.

No single person or even a small group decided we didn't need metric. In fact a few people decided that we did, but millions of people didn't want to use it anyhow.

So you got 20 pints for a pound. That's a better deal. Although I don't know if I could drink that much at one time.

Thanks to you and Adrian.

Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let me know if you have posted also.

[Mark Lloyd]

Right. I usually don't remember the wrong thing, but it happened that time.

Looks like some people can't stand having 2 different units for 2 different things :-)

[Mark Lloyd]

Once, I found a book (by a Russian) that claimed everybody 'd be better off with base 3 (closest whole number to e).

I'd actually recommend base 16. It's easy for people to learn, and easily converted to/from base 2.

I have written programs for the 6502 processor, and always liked %10 better than 10b.

Is that the price of beer in London? ;-) Really, that's what I think of when I hear of 20-ounce pints.

[hah]

People can use the word "pounding" to describe headaches, like you get when you've drunk too many pints of beer the night before.

BTW, it's 1 pound for every pint :-)

[George E. Cawthon]

I'm surprised you went to the trouble to answer all of this. I say let them wallow in ignorance. You would think that no one has or uses a dictionary, and encyclopedia, or any other reference books.

Only one quibble. "A pint's a pound the world around" does not refer to a pint or a pound being the same anywhere in the world. It is a ditty for Americans, maybe others that use the same measures, to remember that a pint of aqueous solution (and many other non-aqueous substances and solutions) weighs about a pound (a 4 percent or 25 deviation is of little importance as a generalization).

[Ed Stevens]

DOH! Yes, 440 yards, not 400. I've been away from track and field too long. (Ran the 2-mile on my HS track team, but that was back in the 60's)