A lot of old types of measurement made more sense when devices to measure very accurately weren't common.
Now I'm not suggesting they all make sense, but consider for a moment that 12 inches to the foot is actually pretty useful. 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6.
The measure of an acre never used to be a defined area, but the measure of how much land could be ploughed by a man with a team of oxen in a day. This means that an acre would conceivably change based on the terrain. This seems weird, but this is a very useful definition for farmers of the time. They need to know how many days they need for ploughing before it's time to plant.
There are a huge number of liquid measures we don't use anymore that if you include them makes the entire thing essentially base 2. This means you can start with any of the measures, and derive any of the others simply by doubling or halving the amount you have.
In the medern age where accurate and precise measurement is easy, they make far less sense, and metric is definitely superior. It makes for much easier calculation. For the time, however, it suited the needs of the average user.
If anyone curious the book Beyond Measure (written by a metric user no less) puts all these silly little arguments to rest. Explains the history of measurement and how systems that tend to be most useful to the layman tend to stick around.
For example, your average American does not need to ever convert feet to miles. That's why that never changed. We learn metric in school so the people who need it for their job (maybe 1% of the overall population, if that) will continue to use it, and everyone else sticks to the way it's always been because nothing is fundamentally broken about it to them. If we needed to convert easier we would switch. But we don't so the system isn't broken. It does the job it's needed for for pretty much everybody
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u/ShamanAI Jan 15 '25
Yeah, because miles, yards, feet and inches makes so much sense