Interfacing easily with almost all other nations on earth would also bring comfort, no?
feet and inches are often far easier to remember than metric measurements as the numbers get larger , you also have the problem that different trades in different countries use different protocols , some use metres some centimetres others millimetres but they dont always identify which , leads to fun and games sometimes .
The other issue is that in the us as well as the uk most homes were built to imperial standard dimensions so you use 8 by 4 sheets of ply or plasterboard , in europe most plasterboard sheet material is now metric 1200 by 2400 , 1800 by 900 which creates problems in refit works specs etc
6 feet /72 inches is often easier to remember than 1828mm
In the same situation, I believe that all the metric measurements being "53??????meter." could easily be confused with "53?????meters. Basically the units of measure sound too much the same.
Yards, feet, and Inches sound way different than meters, decimeters, centimeters, and millimeters
I wonder if that is a valid assumption. Seldom do you pull out a 4x8 of any thing and replace it as a unit. More often it is patched and cut to fit.
But what makes 6' or 72 inches easier to remember than 1800 mm?
On a personal level, no...
OTOH, enterprises engaged in large-scale and/or routine trade _do_ use mks routinely. I'm guessing you're dealing essentially w/ individuals not sizable corporate engineering groups.
I'm a NE by training and 40+ years experience so know mks for engineering work intimately. Yet, for routine day-to-day living I'm far more comfortable w/ English units simply because they're still what have that innate feeling over.
It's no different than your familiarity w/ daily temp's in C and sheet goods in mm--that was what you grew up with; it's what you unconsciously think in. OTOH, while you "know" what an inch is, it takes actual effort to relate that. We're precisely the other way 'round (and I suspect will continue to be for the foreseeable future as there isn't the mechanism in the States to coerce the changeover).
I think Obama needs to know about this. We need some more "change" we can believe in. We need a Metric Czar.
Been there Done that. Jimmy C tried that and that is why we deal with a mixed up mess today expecially in the auto industry. 30 years later and American cars still have a mix of metric and imperial parts.
But in the writen word there is no confusion and in the spoken "mil" is quite different from "metre".
(Decimetres are never used and centimetres shouldn't be either as they are non SI units)
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