Why do the Dutch still use inches?

[Chris S]

I was looking at Dutch online bike adds and noticed that they still use inches to descibe wheel size.

Does anybody know why? As far as I know the Netherlands has been metric for 200 years. This would make the ERTO millimeter sizing system a lot easier to understand.

I'm surprised the EEC hasn't fined them for it!

 

[tyred]

I think the Germans do as well.

 

[Rasmus]

Denmark as well.

I have no explanation.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Would it be because the UK was the dominant bike producer once upon a time so they would have established the standard? Chains are still in inches universally.

 

[Stu9]

So are the States and Canada I think, I think all frames (and alot of other things too) should be in inches, I've never known especially bikes to be measured in cm's...when I got my mtb a few months ago, it was advertised in inches, which was fine for me, but he old school like me.
What really pi55es me off is when I'm watching something on the likes of Dicovery and they talk about a train or plane ect, they'll say "it's about 50 tons and 60 metres long"....ffs sake keep to one of the other

 

[theFire]

Dicovery and they talk about a train or plane ect, they'll say "it's about 50 tons and 60 metres long"....ffs sake keep to one of the other

You are mishearing them. They are saying tonnes

 

[Stu9]

That's what I meant to say

 

[avalon]

It's the same for measuring distance, Why does the UK still use miles when most of the world have switched to kilometers?

 

[Stu9]

[QUOTE 2526041, member: 259"]And the US uses cubic centimeters for engine sizes.[/quote]

No they don't and never have.....i just texed my sister in NJ and asked

 

[Stu9]

[QUOTE 2526041, member: 259"]And the US uses cubic centimeters for engine sizes.[/quote]

No they don't and never have.....i just texed my sister in NJ and asked

 

[RWright]

We use both in the US. Engine sizes are given mostly in liter now...yeah I know, we spell it different. My truck is 4.2 L v6. I don't even know what cubic inch it is. Just look on a U.S. new car manufacturer website, most are using L now. I grew up on cubic inches. The metric system is just part of a communist plot to take over the world. Oh and it also allows tool manufacturers to sell more tools. So the capitalist are getting in on the action too.

 

[robjh]

The French refer to their MTB wheels as '26 pouces' (=inches), and now in keeping with modern trends they also have '29 pouces', for what us old roadies would have called 700c wheels for mountain bikes.
I guess it comes partly from the manufacturers who market their products internationally, partly it's just convention - after all in the UK we happily use stones to measure people's weight but have real difficulty if asked to convert that into any other measure.

 

[wakou]

Perhaps OT but when I first lived in France I was surprised to hear ladies in the market asking for "un livre" of eg tomatoes (actually 500g but they called it a pound)

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Perhaps OT but when I first lived in France I was surprised to hear ladies in the market asking for "un livre" of eg tomatoes (actually 500g but they called it a pound)

Probably even more OT but related to standards and custom: when the Greenwich Meridian was established as the prime meridian, the French wanted to keep their Paris Meridian. Sensing that they losing the battle, perhaps, they made a bid to metricise time. The Anglo-Saxon response (US and UK) was that people could use whatever units they wanted to measure time. We could have ended up with 100-minute hours, and 100-second minutes.

Mind you, Paris still managed to establish itself as the guardian of the atomic clocks that coordinate the meridian, clocks needed due to the vagaries of the Earth not rotating evenly as a perfect sphere in perfectly constant motion. I could go on but I'm now late....

 

[Glenn]

There are plenty of bike frames now measured in cm, but with imperial measured wheels.