This might be a rather odd subject to wright about, and on first reflection, trivial. At least that is how I thought about the matter for most of my life.
I have worked as a carpenter for 17 or so years, and have, like every other tradesman in the UK, used predominantly metres and millimetres for my measurements. But thanks to our tape measures still having the imperial as well as the metric on them, I was always intrigued by feet and inches, and about a year ago I decided to start using them for my measurements instead. I was surprised by what I discovered.
Once I had put in the effort of learning the fractions, I found the metric tape measure much easier on the eye - while mental calculations became far less effort compared to the metric measurements. For one thing, the numbers one is dealing with rarely go above one hundred - whereas with the metric you’re dealing in hundreds and soon thousands of millimetres before you’ve even reached the hight of the average person.
Of curse, the average person who uses metric uses centimetres, not millimetres. And here lies one of the issues with it. In the trade, it's millimetres only so as to avoid the complication around decimal points. So if someone talks in centimetres on the job site not only do they increase the scope for confusion and costly error, but they sound like a DIYer. This means that tradesmen speak a different measurement language to their clients most of the time, even though we are all using metric. Not so with feet and inches.
Some people assume that imperial isn’t as accurate as the metric system. But they are mistaken. The beauty of the inch is that you can be as accurate as you need to be, whereas the metric almost encourages a pedantic focus on minute measurements even when it is not necessary.
But I don’t imagine I can win anyone over with rational arguments to which one can always make perfectly justifiable counter arguments. Both forms of measurement work at getting the job done. I’m appealing to something else besides the pure functionality - an intuition you get when you use feet and inches. It's almost as though the difference between metric and imperial is something like the difference between a technician and a craftsman. What that difference is is somewhat ineffable. No doubt the metric system makes calculations easier when engineering something like a rocket. But as a craftsman, working in peoples homes on a human scale, there is an ease in which feet and inches map onto the real world that is simply lacking with the metric measurements. I get the feeling my clients are also relieved when I talk in feet and inches rather than throwing hundreds and thousands of millimetres at them. I have found a deep respect for feet and inches, and it comes as no surprise to learn that they have arisen out of hundreds of years of practical usage - whereas the metric measurement was devised in the minds of French intellectuals who I doubt ever did much in the way of practical work themselves.
Far from being a trivial subject, I sense the metric system has aided the steady transition from craftsmanship towards a digitised automation, where the role of the human being is more and more compartmentalised, so that you have “expert technicians” over-seeing the monotonous construction of mass-produced, pre-fabricated homes and furniture, designed on CAD and cut by CNC machines that require digital inputs (fractions are not suitable for this). We lose in the process hand-made products constructed by fully embodied craftsmen with a living sense for proportion and aesthetic, where pride is taken in making objects of real beauty. It is a world dominated by technicality and automation that finds the imperial so archaic and backwards. But as a craftsman, I cannot deny the practicality and wisdom of it.
No doubt there will be many a craftsmen who disagrees with me. Let me know in the comments!
