Title: Every 3.14 years I have this question. I know that changing all highway signs would cost a lot of money and would take a long time. Well, had we started fifty years ago we would have been done by now.<p>When designing mechanical components or circuit boards (or looking at other's designs) one recurring thought is that our fractional unit system might actually cause inefficiencies and increased cost of goods.<p>You can look at an American design product and identify it as such by taking a few measurements.  Mechanical designers will think in fractional terms and specify "nice round numbers".<p>For example, a feature might be set to 1/16 of an inch, when, perhaps, a smaller thickness or length would have worked just fine.  In this case 1/16 is 0.0625 in, which happens to be 1.5875 mm.  Now, a designer working in SI units will probably specify 1.5 mm for the same feature.  This doesn't seem like much, but you are talking about 5.5% more material.  That's not a trivial amount if you are making a bunch of widgets.<p>We ship liquids in gallon containers.  A gallon is 3.8 liters.  If we worked with liters, might we buy and ship three liters instead?  Perhaps generating less waste?<p>This is a very simple example to illustrate one of   the mechanism that might be at play here.<p>Don't know.  Just a though in between coding sessions on a fine Saturday evening (Los Angeles).
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