> Best laugh that I've had in a long time, Ian. Did you have to transport
> your old tank to the States to sell it to someone who would want
> non-metric measure?

> Actually, I have been using metric for so long that I now make mistakes
> when using feet and inches. I sometimes forget to multiply feet by 12
> instead of 10 when switching to inches, and find doing calculations of say
> finding 1/4 of 3' 7" 3/8" a pain. With metric it is just one
> division, not 3, and there are no fractions to have to change
> denominators.

Fair enough, the imperial system requires more steps but with a calculator who cares but my point was that one can measure 2 11/16" on a tape far more easily than 73 mmm. A properly graduated tape has all fraction lines on it of different lengths making placing of a pencil tick vitually goof proof while a metric tape has 9 of the 10 marks for the first 10 mm all the same length with the 5th one being a little longer. When the light gets low and the eyes get tired and the glasses are in the house all these little lines blurr into one big fuzz.

Except when we get into machinery design (where the decimal system is used anyway) 1/16 inch has sufficient accuracy even for steel buildings so there arn't too many benefits of a smaller division.

When one divides 10 meter by 3 one gets 3.333333 to infinity and when one divides 10 feet by 3 we get 3'-4". The imperial system has far more prime numbers in it.

When dealing with structural design, all section properties are huge numbers forcing one into an exponent system of math where errors in the order of 10 are very easy to make and not easy to spot. Now we are forever stuck with unreal numbers with prefixes of mega and giga and how soon before terra?

Bram