this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2026
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Sigh, I'm going to get downvoted to hell for this, I'm sure. After a 16 year career as a machinist in the US and having to easily change between both systems daily, one system is dozenal and fractional and one is decimal based. Dozenal and fractional are both easier and faster when you start thinking that way. A mile isn't 1760 yards precisely, it's 5,280 feet. 5,280 / 12 = 440. It's dozenal. All units, and I mean all units are arbitrary. Someone just decided x means y. Whether it's "this amount of silicon atoms is 1kg" or "this specific length of barley corn is 1 inch" - they're both defined by a decision that someone (or a group) just kinda made.
Let me translate: "This system is easier because I am more used to it".
I can assure you there is nothing difficult about decimals if you are used to them.
I agree. I use both and have for decades now. It just seems Europeans can't handle fractions despite their puny efforts to do so.
No, I'm incredibly used to both, and that's my point.
Actually, I'm in the mood to go on a rant here. You're using the metric system incorrectly. The odds are that you will list something as ~900 mm. Be mad, whatever, but I've seen this kind of thing on literally thousands of prints. Sure, for formal precision reasons you'd list it that way. However, in my long career not a single person has used the feature of metric that should make it easy. Not a single person has ever mentioned deca/deci/hexa etc. meters. Ever. Metric is far and away objectively not simpler; most people just refuse to use it to its full potential to make it even easier by only thinking in 4 units (those being mm, cm, m, and 1km). Actually, metric technically has infinite units.
I've had a long professional career of measuring physical things. They're both bad. Dozenal and fractional systems are objectively faster for building/making things. Decimal is better if you want to measure small things/amounts.
Then there's the fact that ISO 9001 tolerances are much higher for metric listings. Yeah, it's incredibly stupid that prints that are transferred from most places to the US and vice versa get converted twice from both systems. However, the 9001 standard for metric tolerances is usually +/- 0.05mm, which is 0.002". In my line of work that is a huge tolerance. Siemens Medical is the worst about this. They allow 0.381mm everywhere, which is 0.015". I'm not trying to say that US manufacturing is better, or vice versa. It's just that both systems have ways of being awful.
So please give me an example of "building things" and why metric would not be better when measuring "small things*. Like I can measure anything in both units just fine, its whats the tool is telling me isn't it? So it's either about up/down scaling, which is just multiply by 10^x for the amount you need (aka slide the decimal point to where you need it)
It's really frustrating how many people don't understand the systems are equally arbitrary. A barleycorn is just as arbitrary as one 10 millionth of the distance between the equator and north pole (or recalculating that based on the speed of light)
As an old toolmaker, I agree. It's like Europeans suck at understanding math(s) just as much as 'Muricans. Fractions are NOT complicated, if a bit crude for precision. Not that either system matters much anymore. It's all just G20/G21 anyway. It's all either just a push of a button or a G-code away.
If the machine doesn't care about the units are being used, why should I?
Yeah. The older machines needed you to manually convert before using that code, but it is a non-issue now as far as making things with cnc. Measuring, though? People get weird.
I know. People are stupid. All of them on both sides of this ridiculous argument.
Anyway, I'mma go to the liquor store and get me 750ml bottle of bourbon and then pop over to the grocery store and buy 5lbs(2.3kg) of flour because I'm a cup of flour short to bake 2 loves of bread. Oh, remind me to get a pound of butter(454g) because I need 1/4 a stick of butter for the butter chicken masala I'm making for supper.
(I hope I added enough sand to everyone's underwear)
Ok, and what's the significance of 440?
440 ÷ 12 = 110 ÷ 3 = 36⅔
Is that really a dozenal (sic. duodecimal) system? Or more like a copecimal system?
The yard is something born of convenience. It isn't really used seriously outside of American football and spirit levels for some reason. And, you are right - there is no real significance to it. The vast majority of Americans ignore the yard outsideof very fast estimates for good reason, it needs 4 to fit the concept of 12.
I was not talking about the yard at all. I was talking about 440. Which is a number not wholly divisible by 12.
Be true. It isn't a duodecimal system. Sometimes it needs 12 to get to the next highest unit, sometimes 3 or 8 or 16 or 14 or 5280.
Being entirely duodecimal would be kinda cool in fact. But it's not applicable and shouldn't be used as an argument pro US customary system.