John B. writes:

Remember that a measuring, or gage, system is simply
a method of keeping track of something. In some
countries a horse is measured as a number of hands
high., in other countries they are so many
centimeters high. Either system works perfectly
well,,, for those who are failure with it.

The traditional top tube diameter on a bicycle was 1
inch in the U.S. and 25.4mm in Europe :-)

Well, the English system makes sense because they were
the pioneers of industrialism and whatever embryo of
"systematic craft" that was before it, and it is
natural they used the body as the first "tool" to
measure stuff.

OK, so then the super-rational French who lagged just
a bit behind had the advantage of seeing where all
this lead, while still not having invested too much
into it mentally to be unable to let it go. So their
systems are better if compared as systems, but it
makes sense it appeared not as the first attempt.

Here, we also have tons of units that relate to the
body. Not everyone even knows of them anymore and no
one works by them. It appears our "thumbs" are somewhat
bigger than those in England

And I've heard stories of joint Swedish-Norwegian (or
Norwegian-Swedish) projects when the carpenters almost
came to blows because nothing they did checked out.
What had happened, the Swedish and Norwegian inches
were very close to, but not entirely identical!
So everyone laughed and then the carpenters were happy
ever after. Probably an invented story, but doesn't
seem entirely impossible.

We also have an expression "det var som sjutton" which
is "I'd be damned", only literally it is "that was
like 17", and the origin is the 16ths of an inch.
If it amounts to 17 rather than 16 something isn't
right

--
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573