America Has Two Feet. It’s About to Lose One of Them. (2020) (opens in new tab)

(nytimes.com)

7 pointsmkotowski3y ago5 comments

5 comments

A much better article on this topic: https://www.nist.gov/pml/us-surveyfoot

nytimes slogs through boring narrative before describing the actual definitions of the two types of foot.

> Since 1893, the legal definition of the foot in the United States has been based on the meter.

Imagine all the pain we’d have saved just switching to metric back then, back in eighteen ninety-three. Sticking to imperial measures is an anachronistic cultural third rail, not a rational decision.

Epiphany213y ago

That one has a better title, too. I wandered in here thinking America had diabetes or something.

karmakaze3y ago

> The two feet differ by about one hundredth of a foot (0.12672 inches) per mile [...]

> In one case, in a certain city that Dr. Dennis declined to name, the construction of a downtown high-rise that sat in the approach path to an international airport was delayed while the building was redesigned to be one floor shorter.

How could that make sense? Seems like an absurd claim to blame the difference in measurement. There had to be some design buffer to stay under the height limit so other errors had to dominate. It's a curious situation but I suspect not nearly as critical as presented. We don't do rocket science or engineer medical devices in US survey inches.

simonblack3y ago

A much better solution would be remove both feet, and replace them with the metre.

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