A possible test case would be a country that switched from Imperial to metric and used millimeters in their clothing industry.
If other possible variables could be eliminated, the fact that the clothing industry in that country metricated more easily than Australia did would argue in favor of Pat's thesis. Conversely, that industry having similar problems metricating despite using mm would weigh in favor of Tom's claim. Anyone know of such a country? Ezra ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Wade" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu> Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 6:31 AM Subject: [USMA:36337] RE: Prefix choices <snip> > I have never bought into the argument that using cm slows down a metric > transition. It is just that the areas that used the mm (because they needed > the precision) went better because the benefits from whole-number usage were > a significant advantage over fractions of an inch. The clothing industry > adopted cm because they don't need the level of precision of mm, and thus the > benefit of metrication wasn't a huge advantage over inches. I doubt if > metrication would be any faster if they chose to label clothes in mm sizes > (in fact, it would have made metric quantities far more unwieldy, and thus > slowed down metrication "damn, there are only 846 mm waist sizes - where are > the 849 mm ?"). > >
