this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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Mildly Interesting
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I feel like the US has a very strong resistance to change regarding standards.
The 110v for example used to be the norme in France, but they changed it to 220v in the 50' and then 230v in the 90'.
Same thing for the plugs, the paper size, the measurement system ...
I think "US doesn't use the metric system" is really overblown. Sure some common things like miles and weights and cooking that people use every day are still done with standard units. But you could say that about many other countries that are "officially" on the metric system. You can't really force people to stop using units they're familiar with. Any product I can think of in America is required to have both metric and standard units labeling it. Technical fields like science and medicine don't touch standard units, would be ridiculous. All metric. If you tell your doctor your weight in lbs it's instantly converted to kg and that's what's used in the system (dosing is done in mg per kg bodyweight often). Every kid in America learns how to use the metric system in school. Construction is probably the big place where it still gets iffy, but even then you can easily get metric or standard bits and things like that. Like what do people want to say we've "converted?" Slap all the current cooking/measuring cups out of people's hands that say both mls and cups, saying no how dare you use cups to measure out the water for your recipe, here have a measuring cup with only mL labeled instead, you're welcome.
Also ripping out and replacing the entire electrical system of every building in the United States, and scrapping every 120v electrical appliance in the entire country, seems like it would be horrifically expensive and wasteful for some very minor benefits. Maybe a switch could have been made early on in the development of the electrical system, but that ship has sailed. And you can wire up outlets in America for 240v plugs too, the breakers let you do both. So if you need more current for your clothes drier or another large appliance for instance it can be done.
Standard is alive and well in engineering and architecture. We have slugs as a unit. g is ~32ft/s^2 and buildings have feet.
I fucking hate the slug unit. Evil little bit of science.
I've heard that a lot of countries still have a bunch of legacy infrastructure that was on the older standards too, worldwide. Studd like the widths of plumbing pipes and such. I think the digital era is probably the easiest time to convert. When I drive across the border, the change to metric is effortless on a digital car. Same for basically everything else, 24h time, temperature, etc.
Converting to metric would mean using it in normal speech. You know, like in most civilized countries.
“What’s your height?”
“187 centimeters.”
While the US system gets called 110/220, my house actually puts out ~242v. Right now I have a smart plug saying 121.5v.
And since you mentioned the word "plugs", here are our 220 15a and 20a outlets.
120/240 is the nominal voltage in North America. 110/220 is archaic/colloquial/wrong.
And the standard includes a plus or minus that I don’t remember: it’s unreasonable to expect an exact voltage and everything is built with that in mind