@debcha Odds are good you already know this story, but piracy interrupted the first serious attempt at metrication in the US, which arguably derailed it for 200 years: https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/pirates-caribbean-metric-edition
@vruba @debcha I have heard some cogent arguments against decimal/metric in the book "Measuring America" by Andro Linklater.
Basically they boil down to whether you are calculating on paper or by eye. On paper it is easy to shift decimal points. But out in the field - where calculating on paper can be inconvenient - it is often easy to do a good job measuring halves, thirds, quarters (and multiples, such as 12ths) of things by eye or with simple tools, like a straightedge, a piece of string, or a chain.
(E.g. to cut a board in half just draw diagonal lines between corners - where they cross is the center. Thirds can be obtained by folding each end of a string/chain to very accurately end up with a triple-thick string/chain that is 1/3 the original length.)
So in the era of illiteracy the old system made sense. And even today it is often easier to do a lot of measures by eye using 1/2, 1/3, ... rather than trying to do it decimally.
@karlauerbach @vruba @debcha this will blow your mind, but the unit of measure does not preclude in any way the use of those techniques ... but illiteracy may make you think it makes a difference ...
@vruba @debcha
down with metric! We don’t want no foreign rulers!