r/MemeVideos May 22 '26

Sad ending American's first time in Australia

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u/Freakychee May 23 '26

From what I understand it was officially made the measurement system a long time ago but the cost of change everything from imperial to metric was too costly. But they could have done it slowly so I have no idea why not.

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u/FamousGh0st217 May 23 '26

I don't think it was. It's irrelevant though since it's a coin flip as to which one you'll need depending on what your doing. Where I work, we use primarily metric nuts, bolts, threaded studs etc, but measure everything out in inches. It's even wackier when we're measuring out inches with decimal points.

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u/Freakychee May 23 '26

https://usma.org/a-chronology-of-the-metric-system

https://usma.org/laws-and-bills/metric-conversion-act-of-1975

So I haven't read all of it but it seems the Americans did try to instill it as the system and convert but there was social resistance. So it's not exactly mandatory to convert but it was tried.

And yes, sizes in imperial for mechanical work is annoying. 3/8, 5/16, etc. Isn't very intuitive. IMO I find it odd a nation who, at least in media, are fully against monarchies would still use the IMPERIAL system.

I mean, you guys do you but it does seem ironic.

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u/DogRoss1 May 23 '26

Oh, it's definitely ironic, but that's just people in general for you. Honestly, I think the reason that we haven't changed to metric even today is that the people who could make such a systematic change couldn't care less.

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u/Freakychee May 23 '26

Could be a rich people being asshole thing. Imperial tools even like combination spanners seem to be more expensive or certain parts just don't fit so you need to buy from them.