Give 240cm or 360cm a name (like STL for "standard-timber-length", 1 stl = 240 cm) and you're effectively doing the exact same thing as the imperial system. Then it's just a popularity contest (which is fine and appropriate and metric wins except for wrt time) but at least conceding the fact that base-10 scaling of units is not intrinsically superior for all units & situations.
Edit: If the argument is that metric is more intuitive (less memorization because of consistent scales) then I think that's a great argument. If the argument is that it's more standardized and more widely adopted, I think that's also a great argument. But I think that the argument that the metric-system is somehow superior intrinsically because only scales of powers of 10 are worth naming (as the name implies) is a poor argument, as you've helped illustrate.
You're claiming that the ability to divide evenly is an intrinsic quality of Imperial, and then when I point out that actually it can be done in any measurement system (including metric), you claim that this makes metric like Imperial, because...well, because dividing evenly is a property of Imperial.
Unless you're suggesting that timber should only be available by 1 inch, 1 foot and 1 yard measurements in the US and by 1 cm, 1 meter, ermm...I kilometer(?) in other countries?
Edit: I didn't claim metric was better at all (it is, but I didn't claim it!). You claimed that Imperial was better for dividing up lengths of timber. I explained why it wasn't.
I guess the real issue is which units get names. Yes, you can do with 12cm exactly what you can do with 12in- but the latter gets its own named unit. The Imperial system has a preference for scaling its units by some slightly more practical number of sub-units- 12, 60, etc. I can imagine someone saying, for example, "why name 1000 centimeters as another unit? Can't I say 'thousands' using the same number of syllables? What's worth naming a different unit is 240cm since that's used a lot with timber..."
Someone strictly advocating the metric system would say "that's the point, kilo is another way of saying 1000 no matter where you live in the world or what you're measuring. Feel free to call 240cm a 'frob' if you like, but please, only do so in private- don't order 14 frobs of lumber, order 33.6 meters." (edit: which is a perfectly valid point. It's the slow accumulation of frobs that made the imperial system untenable. We trade a little bit of efficiency at a local level for greater global efficiency when we adopt metric.)
Actually, I can remember at least one commonly used alternative name from my time in a German-speaking country. The term "Pfund" (literally, pound) was frequently used to refer to a half-kilogram. I remember it being particularly used in reference to a loaf of bread, by both bakers and customers. (That was a long time ago, don't know if it's still common.)
There's really only one unit for length: the meter. Centimeters aren't a different unit, they're "hundredths of a meter".
You can call your lengths of timber "frobs" if you want, even in public! You could have people order them that way and sell them that way. The only requirement most places have is that you also specify what that is in meters so that people who don't know what a frob is, know what they're buying.
It just makes sense that your frobs should be a useful number of meters so that they can be divided or handled easily and don't require 15 decimal places to express.
Edit: I have a question for you: would you support changing your currency away from 100 cents to the Dollar to something like the old Pound with 240 pennies to the Pound?
After all, if you're talking about measurements everyone uses and need to divide up, it's far more commonly required for cash in people's everyday lives than length or volume or anything else!
Seriously though good question. First though it made me realize that you never see prices in thirds of a dollar- as if everyone avoids it and have simply gotten used to avoiding it. I can't imagine a situation where ease of dividing by three for money actually adds any efficiency. Similarly, while I do see the value in dividing the day into 24 hours, I certainly wouldn't advocate a unit that's defined as one 60th of a second (even though it has even more prime factors than 12 ;)
I concede that the use-cases where having more prime factors and therefore easy non-decimal division are few and far between. I guess what surprised me when doing construction was that there was a very rational reason for a foot being 12 inches rather than 10- that it's not simply a relic of the fact that a human foot seems to be about 12 thumbs long- some arbitrary number accidentally ingrained in some cultures. And as illustrated by the fact that stocks were eventually decimalized and then made to trade at penny-granularity, computers and the fact that we don't do a lot of division in our heads or on paper anymore will probably eventually erase most remaining efficiencies.
> I certainly wouldn't advocate a unit that's defined as one 60th of a second
Veering sharply offtopic, seconds are actually called seconds because they're "second order minutes". So, just as a minute is 1/60 of an hour, a second-order minute is 1/60 of 1/60 of an hour.
In the past, people have indeed used "thirds" (1/60 of a second) and in the 13th century, Roger Bacon went as far as using "fourths" (1/3600 of a second)!
I actually would support changing the divisions of the dollar to a non-base-ten standard. Specifically I would make it dollars and quarters and dispense with anything smaller. We used to have a half-penny coin. We got rid of it when a penny was the same value as a quarter today.
You miss the base-10 point: you can switch in zero time from 240cm to 2.4m and vice-versa, as you can switch in zero time from $2,40 to ¢240 when you expect ¢60 in return.
And you can totallyignore the "2", and focus on the "40" part, if you care about the precision, in zero time, and switch back to a global view.
The real problem then is our counting system. If base-12 is the most convenient, then we could count in base 12 too. That, however, is clearly never going to happen, so we are stuck with the less efficient base 10 system.
The other thing is that if everything is in powers of 10, then complex calculations are done that require multiple units, it's much easier to calculate. You don't need to keep a dictionary of 'conversion factors' to have these complex calculations make sense.
Not one of the downvoters, but working in (hundreds of) centimetres (240cm) as opposed to meters (2.4m) is not as crazy as it sounds. Tape measures or carpenter's rulers will have centimetres on them all the way.
Also, people consider it a matter of precision. If I ask for a piece of wood that's 2.4m long, I am probably less concerned with the precise length than if I ask for one that's 2400mm long.
What? The precision of $2.40 and 240 cent is exactly the same. Two significant digits.
It's kinda funny, every time this debate comes around, I see that the people advocating imperial are always confused by the concept of precision, which is handled very naturally in the metric system, but people advocating metric are confused about the way the imperial system uses subdivision.
For a metric person, a measurement such as 13/64" looks weird, and for an imperial person, a measurement such as 5.2mm looks weird, when in reality they are very close, and of the same precision.
They're usually referred to as 2.4m and 3.6m if that makes it easier for you to track. I converted them to cm as I thought that would be simpler for people.
(replying to the wish for a name for 2.4m; edited out): Why for the 2.4m, but not the 1.8m or the 3.6m? Surely it makes just as much sense to refer to it as the "two point four" as anything else?
A piece of 2" x 4" timber is still referred to as "2 by 4" in the UK, except it now measures 50mm x 100mm (actual conversion is 50.8mm x 101.6mm, the difference being moot when building scale is taken into account)
Perhaps not to you, but most folk I know (in the UK) aren't quite so hung up about it. I'll sometimes refer to a half-liter as a pint, or a liter as a "couple of pints", or a meter as a yard.
Though the pint is by far the stupidest unit. Why on earth wasn't it standardised at 500ml? It would have fixed pints, quarts and gallons all in one go!
I know, you can think up immediate objections, but having 568ml to the pint and 4.546 litres to the gallon, is just wrong!
Nah, I just couldn't picture anyone doing woodwork in hundreds or thousands of units (now, where did I get that idea...?), or dividing base 10 units. Since it sounds like wood is sold and worked in base 12, I'd use metric no problem. But that makes the difference between imperial and metric pretty arbitrary, doesn't it?
I've actually worked in the construction industry in New Zealand, which was thoroughly metric when I was building houses ~10 years ago.
And we did everything in mm, standardised timber was "100x50" - mm was assumed, which was close to 2x4 Inches.
(Actually, I think the finished standardised timber is smaller than 100mmx50mm, but for some reason was still called 100x50)
sheets of Gib plaster (Drywall?) were 1200x3600,(possibly 1600x.. I don't remember) sometimes bigger. rooms had 2400mm or 3600mm stud heights.
90mm nails were used to assemble the house frames, and 50mm nails were used when the 90mm nails would have been excessive.
We only really used Meters when we were being vague - "Go about a meter further out!" and usually converted to mm when we were actually cutting or fastening something. I never poured any concrete myself, but I'm pretty sure the foundation boxing would have been measured out to the mm, even over 10s of meters of distance.
If I ever gave someone a measurement in cm I'd get told "Only Dressmakers user centimeters!" I don't think I ever used feet, and I only ever used inches when discussing lumber, and would always be told to use metric.
Standard lengths for timber are things like 240cm or 360cm. There is no difficulty dividing them into thirds, or quarters, or fifths, or sixths.