Introduction
Look. Am I horrendously attached to imperial units? No, not really.
I like them, I grew up with them, but fundamentally I don’t think I’d
pine for inches over centimeters, valuing the simplicity of the foot
over the fact that 1/3 of a meter is 333.3333333333… oh you get the
point, centimeters.
But I do dislike base 10 with a burning passion, and metric is pretty
much entirely constructed with the assumption that base 10 makes
sense. It doesn’t, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about.
Imperial units are fuckin’ wild and I like them, so let’s talk about
them.
(Fundamentally, though, imperial is easier to estimate based on your body
parts, which is a great tool to have when, idk, calling your
Homeowners insurance agent, or like… making things)
The Inch
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned much about this is that the name
itself comes from the latin Uncia, which means twelfth (1/12 a foot),
which is neat and makes me wonder if the inch was defined before or
after the foot. Probably the inch first, given the inch has been
formally defined based on how big barley is.
Before you get onto how arbitrary that is, let me point out that the
lowest point in Bhutan is 318 feet above sea level, and therefore
cannot reliably confirm the boiling point at sea level within their
own country.
The Hand
It’s 4 inches. It was used to measure horses because, y’know, people
who raise horses typically have at least one hand. And that hand was
always four inches wide, because before the barley thing an inch was
just the width of a man’s finger. This was also likely done before
“Man” meant “Person of the male sex”, and as such was likely when
“Man” was gender neutral and meant human.
This is about 1/3 of a foot, which is a useful way to divide things,
as pointed out in the first paragraph.
The Link
This one and the one two from here are fun in the fact that they’re
based on the number 100. As such I don’t really like them as much,
but they’re still largely fine.
This is also one of the more interesting ones, though, given that it’s
based on an actual verifiable tool: Gunter’s Chain. It was made to be
66 feet long (22 yards), and the link is the length of one link in the
chain, or 8″.
Gunter’s Chain was a tool used in surveying before they got replaced
with more modern tools.
The Span
It’s how long your hand is outstretched. It’s about 9″ officially,
though I will say my hands are… quite a bit larger than that, so a
span for me is about 12″.
The hand, link, and span don’t really get used much, it jumps mostly from
an inch to a foot, which is fine. These also aren’t fully
standardized.
The Foot
It’s thought that this was originally the length of King Henry VIII’s
foot, but given the barley thing we talked about earlier, I doubt that
highly. I have a feeling a foot was just originally defined as 12
inches.
Fun fact: Almost nobody has personally made the trip from the poles to
the equator, and thus cannot verify the length of a kilometer is
accurate. Then again, nobody can really determine if King Henry
VIII’s foot is actually 12″, so I consider this a neutral.
The Yard
Hilariously, this was originally 1/4 of a hide, which was the amount
of land that originally was thought to be able to support a family.
Nowadays it’s just 3 feet.
Again 1/3 is a valuable unit of division. 10 is not divisible by 3.
The Chain
We already talked a bit about this one in The Link, but this is
Gunter’s Chain. It’s 22 yards long.
Furlong
This one is sort of a functional measurement which requires a couple
of other measurements to explain it fully. Nowadays it’s mostly a
horse racing measurement though. But a furlong is 10 chains long (660
feet, 220 yards)
The furlong was used in measuring acres. One acre used to be measured
as 1 furlong by 4 rods (a rod is 5.5 yards), since ploughs were hard
to turn, and riverfront access was valuable so the acre immediately
next to a river would be more valuable than the one next to it.
This isn’t about 2d measurements though, this is about 1d
measurements, so that’s all we’ll be talking about acres for now.
It’s just kind of a neat piece of functional history that none of us
really use anymore.
The Mile
The final functional imperial measurmeent unit we use today, alongside The Inch, The Foot, and The Yard. It’s 8 furlongs. It
originated from a place that we’ve already discussed I don’t like
(1,000 paces, which is 2,000 steps), but it’s still one of the
functional ones we use today.
Why are we doing this on a blog about game development/nerd shit?
Here’s the thing. There’s a lot of online discourse about imperial vs
metric, and it’s all kind of pointless. Yeah, there’ve been
functional issues caused by teams from multiple countries using
different units and miscommunications, but also for most people in
most situations this doesn’t matter. Also the direct simplicity in
explaining a system (1 kilometer is 10 hectometers, 1 hectometer is 10
decameters, etc etc down to infinity) doesn’t necessarily equate to
value.
We saw a similar issue not that long ago when the Brits decimalized
their currency in 1971. They lost the ability to evenly split a bill
between 3 people consistently, and I think the world is worse for it,
especially since you can’t just keep adding another 3 after a decimla
place when it comes to currency. You can’t cut a penny into thirds
consistently, nor can you expect it to be taken by a bank teller as
anything but trash.
In general I like imperial because it was very clearly made for the people,
at the very least. 1 pound is 16 ounces, which divides in half evenly
four times as opposed to decimal, which can only do one. 12 has 6
factors, while 10 has 4, and of them 2, 3, and 4 are very common ways
to split. Decimal can only be divided by one of those numbers.
I’m a nerd for numbers just as much as I am for anything else, and I
like numbers to be functional and not just look pretty.
Do I hate metric? No, I use it in portions of my daily life where
small numbers are appreciated. Notably when I’m making coffee. But I
expect decimals when I’m measuring out 11.25g of coffee beans for my
225g of water to make my coffee.
I’ll point out as well that many Americans do this. A lot of people
who are really into baking use grams because grams handle smaller
numbers way better. The only way you can replicate that is by using
more decimal places, you’d need 3 to measure coffee the way I do.
But for big numbers? I think that imperial does have more advantages.
Then again, who cares. It doesn’t matter if 1/3 of a kilo is 333.33
or 333.333 grams. You’re just gonna put 330-336 grams and call it
good enough anyway, because we all do. It’s just easier to do in your
head, which I think is a value add.