this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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imperial system is based on metric(on wikipedia) so they calculed on metric, converted to imperial, that is basically metric but worse
Kinda sorta not really.
One problem with units is defining them precisely.
For example, a meter is ostensibly "one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle". That's not exactly precisely defined because the earth isn't a perfect sphere.
So currently, a meter is defined to be the distance light travels in a vacuum in 9192631770 / 299,792,458 hyperfine structure transitions of caesium-133.
Rather than doing the same sort of thing with updating the standard definition of a foot or pound, the US just piggybacked off the work precisely defining metric units and defined imperial in terms of metric.
So now a foot is officially the precise distance light travels in some number of hyperfine structure transitions of caesium-133, and the US government didn't need to do a thing.
If only they made a meter equal a yard. I'm okay with a bigger yard.