The whole metric system is based upon an erroneous measurement of the circumference of the Earth. Why should anyone use it? Especially since it was first espoused by the French? Napoleon! Why not hundredths and thousandths of inches, and (American) gallons and pounds? mm are for films and lenses, inches are for paper sizes and board sizes, meters are for human races, miles are for cars. Liters are for gin, not gasoline. It is obvious. ta-tat-- doug /snip/
This is all Ronald Regan's fault. He's the one who killed the effort to transition to the metric system. IIRC his argument was something like 'America is the strongest economy on the planet, if *they* don't want to use our system tough, it's good enough for *us*.' And before you go flaming me for dogging a Republican, let me tell you my Dad the engineer has never supported a Democrat for dog catcher, and he agrees with me on this.
Guess I have to agree with you on this one, although I am still trying to get used to the "liters per 100 kilometers" measurement the Europeans use. Miles per gallon still seems to make a lot more sense to me.
Using just one system would have also saved the US a couple of billion $ on spacecraft a couple of years back...
How many inches are in a mile?
12 x 5280. The actual calculation is left as an exercise for the reader.
Cheers, Sean