I always figured inch-pound was just a way to promote customer lock-in for the defense/aeroapace industry. It’s one of our biggest exports, after all.
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While you have a point part of it is what you are used to. But I would argue Fahrenheit is better for temperature reporting because it has more degrees per scale. (Dunno if I termed that correctly),
So from freezing to 100 F you have 68 degrees, vs Celcius you have just under 38 degrees.
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The thing that makes metric easy to deal with is that all its units of measure are easily divided by 10, so saying the weather outside is exactly 32.2 degrees makes sense since you learn to split all measurements that way.
But I don’t want to prove that Celsius is better in this respect, just that you learn to adapt so that it makes simple common sense. Fahrenheit isn’t all bad, in fact, its only brought down a peg by being associated with pounds and feet.
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Aren’t the Cubits at Wrigley Field?
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But the problem is, that works in imperial too. An ounce of water weighs an ounce, so the saying “a pint’s a pound the world around”. A cup of water weighs half a pound and occupies the space of 8 fl oz. A quart weighs two pounds, and a gallon eight.
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Well that was a load of nonsense made up reasons.
The reason why engineers like the metric system is that it makes doing the math a whole lot easier. It’s that simple.
The reason why America doesn’t use it is because America.
It’s some vague foreigner invasion to do what other countries are saying you ought to do. It’s a matter of Patriotism.
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Can you feel a degree Fahrenheit? probably not.
Can you feel a degree Celsius? Probably.
The extra granularity offers no advantages to those who ordinarily would shy away from using fractions of a degree.
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As shown above, Americans have these deeply ingrained reasons why they shouldn’t go to metric. It’s just too tough and of no value.
Countries all around the world have managed the conversion. A bit of advertising, a set date, a time of transition, and you just do it. And old people grumble about it and life goes on. But maybe Americans aren’t as capable of dealing with change as other people.
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You’re only half right. The 0 to 100 Fahrenheit scale was based on salted ice (at the time, the coldest temperature that humans could create), and the average temperature of the human body. Where the extra 1.4 degrees came from is lost to history.
Skin “sensitivity” has little to do with temperature, but the Fahrenheit is based on the human body.
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I’d agree with you, but then we’d both be wrong.
Not exactly. 0 was just the lowest temperature Fahrenheit’s device could measure at the coolest he could get brine. The upper end was based on the average human temperature (although not at exactly 100, he originally choose 96 to represent that value).
Thing is, the Fahrenheit scale you use now is actually based on what eventually became Celsius. Because of Fahrenheit’s oddly chosen end points for his scale, the freezing and boiling points of water weren’t originally integers. Scientists later recalibrated the scale to read exactly 32 at the freezing point of water at sea level, and 212 for the boiling point, so the average human temperature is now 98.3°F instead of the original 96.
Eventually, scientists saw the wisdom in basing this scale from freezing to boiling water with numbers from 0 to 100 and thus Celsius was born.
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Cool.
Which goes spectacularly well with the rest of my comment:
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Ten is an atrocious number compared to twelve. The metric system perpetuates the cognitive violence of base 10. Free yourselves with dozenalism!
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I’d be prepared to go up to 11, except its kinda sexist. 
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Is that a phrase you often choose to use?
As a programmer, I beleive we should all count in Hex.
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Maybe if it was renamed the Freedom Measurement System it would gain some traction in the US…
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Yeah, but only an ounce of water (or another liquid with the same density). Bugs me, that. The volume should scale with the density of the liquid.
Well of course we rejected it when you spell it metre.
I thought it sounded familiar! But I’m not sure if it’s often.
