rogerzilla wrote: ↑21 Jun 2022, 7:12am
The usefulness of the Park Tool website is somewhat limited by the bizarre in-lb units, something you won't see on many torque wrenches apart from their own. Some Americans really despise metric units.
Park Tool is based in the USA and their products are used in many countries. They use more than one system of units.
it's unfortunate, but that's the way it is. What can we do it about it... use SI and keep the period of hybrid working as short as possible. Less than a century would be good.
531colin wrote: ↑21 Jun 2022, 3:30pm
We are all still using the imperial (inch) system, only its tarted up to look like something else.
Why else would you make handlebars 31.8mm diameter?
Or a quill stem 22.2mm?
Or a seat tube 28.6mm?
They are all fractional inch measurements, bastardised into quasi-metric.
If we were really working in metric, handlebars would be either 30 or 35mm, and a seat tube 30mm.
The quill stem is more interesting.....a one inch steerer is one inch external, the wall thickness is one sixteenth of an inch, so the stem is seven eighths of an inch. Where would you start with metric....30mm steerer? or 25?
Even though most folk won't question why they talk about (eg) 28.6mm tubing, titanium tubing is still made in fractional imperial sizes, so for my lifetime at least some vestige of our proud engineering history will remain.
531colin wrote: ↑21 Jun 2022, 3:30pm
We are all still using the imperial (inch) system, only its tarted up to look like something else.
Why else would you make handlebars 31.8mm diameter?
Or a quill stem 22.2mm?
Or a seat tube 28.6mm?
They are all fractional inch measurements, bastardised into quasi-metric.
If we were really working in metric, handlebars would be either 30 or 35mm, and a seat tube 30mm.
The quill stem is more interesting.....a one inch steerer is one inch external, the wall thickness is one sixteenth of an inch, so the stem is seven eighths of an inch. Where would you start with metric....30mm steerer? or 25?
Yes. The system of measurement is only a system of measurement... the actual sizes and standards of real objects are much more complicated. The history of screw threads is the canonical example, but some British standard timber sizes also illustrate it beautifully.
But those examples of the sizes of bike components are one stage funnier than their history in English units. Because English units are now defined as derivatives of SI units! So the measurement is given in mm but the size was defined in fractions of an inch and the inch is defined as a fraction of the metre. : - )
Jdsk wrote: ↑21 Jun 2022, 10:13pm
Park Tool is based in the USA and their products are used in many countries. They use more than one system of units.
it's unfortunate, but that's the way it is. What can we do it about it... use SI and keep the period of hybrid working as short as possible. Less than a century would be good.
Jonathan
In the case of the UK, we've already had 138 years to adapt.
