And yet, Pat points out that the garment industry in Australia has been held
back by trying
to use cm instead of mm.
And I would also contend this is not true. The argument is basically
- The garment industry's conversion has stalled.
- They elected to use cm rather than mm unlike other successful sectors.
- Therefore it is this choice that held them back.
This has the implicit assumption that if they had chosen mm then they
would have been able to metricate quicker. I believe this is a
fallacious argument.
Using mm rather than cm in the building industry makes sense: they need
the precision. Now you have a choice between nice whole numbers in mm
or clunky fractions of an inch (which is far too big a unit to base
measurements on). The gain in ease of use is considerable, and that
provides a powerful incentive to metricate, overcoming the natural
resistance to change.
Now consider a garment industry using cm.
For the purpose of clothes size, cm is about the precision you need (mm
is far too precise). However, although you are moving to whole numbers,
you are moving from whole number of inches (or at worst 1/2 inches) so
the gain in ease of use is not as marked, and is therefore less likely
to overcome the inertia of changing from something familiar. If the
garment industry had chosen mm, you would then have units that would be
over-precise (imagine what the clothes rail signs would look like). You
would be moving to something *less* convenient than what you had. Just
because mm is the more appropriate unit for most sectors doesn't mean it
is the one for all of them. Yes, the choice of cm did affect the pace
of metrication, not because it was the wrong choice (mm would have been
much worse) but because it didn't provide the same large leap forward in
convenience over what existed beforehand than was experienced going from
fractional inches to millimeters.
Now we can argue back and forward all day here, but the real acid test
is this: show me an example of a garment industry that successfully
completed a metric transition using millimeters rather than centimeters.
Show me even any garment industry in a metric country that is using
millimeters. Don't you think that if mm were the most appropriate units,
someone would be using them ?
---------------------------------------------------------
Tom Wade | EMail: tee dot wade at eurokom dot ie
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