>>By the way, how come that in this mailing list everybody speaks in inches - you were writing about the metric revolution?<<
That is the really goofy thing.. the end result was that we are now about half and half, english and metric. After the big metric push back in the late 70's, the car companies went fully metric by about the mid to late 80's, but many US made goods are still english. In my tool chest I have a full set of english and metric sockets which gets quite bulky. The said, if I want to buy english nuts and bolts, I can buy them by them in bulk pound (weight measure) in grades 2-8 at a local tractor/farm equipment supply store. If I want to buy metric bolts and nuts locally I have to either buy them from an industrial supply store (limited hours) or buy them one at a time at a price which can be 3-4 times the bulk price of similar english fasteners. So the use of english fasteners in the US is reinforced by the availability of cheap and available english fasteners. Ironically most of those fasteners are made in Asia or China. The metric system has some issues.. Buying a 2x4 which is 10 feet long and specifying that in millimeters seems crazy. Pipe fittings would be ok for diameter but if I want to but a piece of 2" pipe which is 21 feet long, specifying 51 mm in diameter and 6.x meters long seems totally counter intuitive. I guess the advantage is that fractions become non-existent which would be a big improvement. Dave On 6/16/2012 12:13 PM, Peter Blodow wrote: > Dave, > funny thing is that European lathes in those days you were describing, > many still working today, were equipped with inch lead screws, so that > in order to cut mm threads they have to use a 127 teeth gear in the gear > case to drive the lead screw. This way, our industry wanted to become > compatible with the British and American manufacturers for export.... > And although we are using metric units here in Germany since the late > 1880ies, we still buy heating and water pipes, fittings etc. in inch > measures..... When I sometimes bring my timber to be cut to our local > sawmill, I specify 3/4 inch or one inch boards to be made out of it, > although they will be measured as 20 or 25 mm boards. > By the way, how come that in this mailing list everybody speaks in > inches - you were writing about the metric revolution? > > Peter > > > Dave schrieb: > >> I was in engineering college from 76 to 81 and remember some discussion >> about this. Fortunately there was not too much to discuss >> as they had already decided that SI was the way to go and we had >> recently selected "new" books. At the same time the "metric" >> revolution was in full swing and they were changing out all of their >> machine tools in the school shop so they >> would all be metric. They were removing manual machines that were >> setup in inches and replacing them with machines setup in millimeters. >> Many of the machines were old so I was happy to see them go and be >> replaced with new machines. >> The school was very unique in that they encouraged students to use the >> machines and the facilities after hours. They had a shop supervisor who >> was paid to stay late most weekday nights. Even the garage was >> available, so we could put our cars on the lifts to do repairs and >> modifications. When I wasn't chasing girls, I "lived" at school. :-) >> >> Dave >> >> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Live Security Virtual Conference > Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and > threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions > will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware > threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
