First you need to check which mm/inch conversion value a denizen of the USA is using. In my days of CAD/CAM software support I needed to check out a customer complaint from the USA that our program was getting dimensions in ft+inches slightly wrong. We stored in mm, converting as required, and it turned out that they were using the old "US Survey Inch" instead of the current 25.4000000mm version for their work, and they were making things big enough for that to make a difference.
First you need to check which mm/inch conversion value a denizen of the USA is using. In my days of CAD/CAM software support I needed to check out a customer complaint from the USA that our program was getting dimensions in ft+inches slightly wrong. We stored in mm, converting as required, and it turned out that they were using the old "US Survey Inch" instead of the current 25.4000000mm version for their work, and they were making things big enough for that to make a difference.
Survey ft vs. feet is still the cause of about 90% of my CAD issues at work now, don't even need metric to futz it all up
I’ve returned a ruler and cutting mat recently because the measuring scales were off. If I hadn’t read a review of a competing brand that lamented they also had to return their ruler because the scale was off, I never would have thought to check
Yes, the annoying thing about customary units is not that the units are not easy multiples of each other, but that there are often several customary units with the same name that are significantly different from each other. Ounces, avoirdupois or troy. Gallons, Imperial or US. Miles, nautical or US. Blah.
In Japan some fancy craft beer bars serve their big-name Irish and British stouts and ales and whatnot in Imperial pint glasses like God ordained, but serve the really expensive foamers in US pints, which are significantly smaller. It's an outrage.
That's an interesting fact to learn. I looked it up and Wikipedia had the following info on it.
A pint glass is a form of drinkware made to hold either a British ("imperial") pint of 20 imperial fluid ounces (568 ml) or an American pint of 16 US fluid ounces (473 ml).
So a British Pint is 20% larger than an American Pint.
An American pint??? Some of my local English pubs were selling pints of beer (English & Imperial) long before the USA was founded.😁 This one's been open since 1568.
That's pretty old. I had a pint at Ye Old Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street. A pub opened at its location in 1538, but burned in the great fire of 1666 and was rebuilt.
We officially switched over in 1975.
"The Metric Conversion Act is an Act of Congress that U.S. President Gerald Ford signed into law on December 23, 1975. It declared the metric system "the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce", but permitted the use of United States customary units in all activities." 🤦
