why does a few countries like the US use a different unit of measurement for size/distance than the rest of the world?

Question

why does a few countries like the US use a different unit of measurement for size/distance than the rest of the world?

In: 1

Answer 1

For the USA, it’s force of habit. Having used the old British units for centuries, hard conversion seemed too much trouble. (Things like changing from 2″x4″ lumber to whatever dimensions are used elsewhere.) And it’s a large country that mostly trades with itself.

Though soft conversion mostly has happened. E.g. the inch was redefined to be *exactly* 25.4 millimeters. And a lot of technical/scientific work is done using metric.