Quote Originally Posted by CrossLOPER View Post
I am convinced that, at some point, you were replaced with a chatbot.
I just don't sound as pithy when not smacking a religious fanatic.

Look, I take iss ue with the contention that the Imperial measure is based on "barleycorns" and I take issue with someone pretending to be intelligent whilst rattling off all the various different Imperial Measures. I'm not saying the Imperial system is more or less accurate, or that we should use Imperial for everything. I merely pointed out that the Imperial measures are more useful in certain contexts and have certain advantages.

Imperial measures are always easier to divide into fractions, a 32nd of an Inch IS smaller than a millimetre and back when everything was in Imperial all measurements, like the length and diameter of screws, were in fractions of an inch which were marks on an inch rule.

A half-inch bolt is a simpler measure to work with than a 12.7mm one. Of course, it's all arbitary anyway - if we had used a Metric system originally we'd just have 15mm bolts and 10mm bolts.

Before you chortle too much at the "barleycorns" though you should think about WHY we didn't start with a base-ten system and why one had to be invented arbitrarily.