Saw a really funny comment in the latest video when I did the face reveal saying I'm surprised
he's not really Napoleon. If I ever get to a million subscribers I will do a full video
in a Napoleon costume. So if you wanna watch that you gotta subscribe
This is an A4 paper sheet and it's the standard paper size for everywhere in the world
But this is a US letter paper sheet, which is the same thing but in the United States
Only a handful of countries follow this US model, the US of course, but then also Canada
Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America and the Philippines. And along with their difference in paper sizes, they're also different in so many other ways
that they measure things compared with other countries across the world. They use gallons instead of liters, miles instead of kilometers
inches instead of centimeters and Fahrenheit instead of Celsius not to mention the 12 hour cycle with the am-pm system instead of a
24 hour cycle. So why? Why are they so different in seemingly every single way that they measure things when compared to the rest of the world
The reasons are kind of connected and they're pretty interesting and that is what we are going to find out in this video
Let's start with that one, the paper. First, understanding why it is that the US actually
came to use it. The US letter is the US's standard document size, which measures 215.9mm
wide and 279.4mm tall, or 8.5 by 11 inches. Further ahead of the video, I'm also going
explain why they use inches instead of centimeters. While the rest of the world uses the A4 which measures 210mm by 297mm, 8.27 inches by 11.69
And I think the size comparisons instantly give us a hint about how this might be connected
precisely to the fact that one of them uses inches and the rest use centimeters
Maybe US printers were just built in a way that couldn't really allow for centimeters
to be the measuring unit, they weren't precise enough for that type of cut, and in fact
the official reason of why the US came to use the paper size that they do use, according
to the American Forest and Paper Association, goes a little hand in hand with this idea
They state that paper used to be made by hand and the molds that it was made from measured
44 by 17 inches. This was used to create 8 8.5 inch by 11 inch pieces of what became
known as letter size. At the same time, the rest of the world also used their own paper
sizes in the hundreds or thousands depending of where you were in the world and what type
of printers were available and used. But at one point everybody realized maybe it makes sense for us to come up with a single
measurement that we can all use. And so they did, creating what became known as the ISO26, an international paper standard
All of which have the same aspect ratio which is based on the square root of 2 over 1 and
this allows for the fact that when you fold one of those pieces of paper in half, or when
you cut it in half, the two new halves maintain the same aspect ratio as the original piece
of paper, switching from a 0 to a 1, a 2, a 3, a 4, a 5, and so on
And while this only came to be in around the end of the 20th century, the advantages of
using a square root 2 ratio for a piece of paper date a long way back to around 1786
It was, in this year, at least mentioned in a letter by a German scientist that was discussing
the topic with a colleague. Leave it to the Germans to come up with the most efficient way to fold a piece of paper
in half. In addition to the aspect ratio advantage, it also had the obvious advantage of making
paper production, stocking, and document reproduction cheaper and easier anywhere else in the world
And so, by the year 1975, almost everybody in the world adopted it, but the US didn't
And the reason why is a little uncertain and I think we can only really speculate about it I think it fair to say that they were used to having the US letter It worked for them The US are so big that they kind of exist within their own little microcosms
And so maybe they didn't think it was worth it to have their documents easily reproduced somewhere else in the world
Maybe now they regret it since we have a more globalized economy. But I think the main reason must really be the fact that their printers were made for inches
And so it would have been expensive to replace all of them. Now, before we keep going, a quick message from today's sponsor, Saley
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And now, let's get back to the video. So now let's move on to another difference, which for me is the most baffling of all
Fahrenheit versus Celsius. Because in this case, the US are pretty much the only country in the world that uses it
There's a few US-influenced Caribbean islands and Pacific islands that do too
Plus Liberia, which was kind of a US colony at some point. so it makes a little bit of sense. Let's begin by understanding what the difference is between
the two models. The Celsius or centigrade scale is based around the fact that 0 degrees Celsius
is the point where water freezes and 100 degrees Celsius is the point where water boils. While
the Fahrenheit scale measures the boiling point of water at 212 degrees Fahrenheit and the freezing
point at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature it measures is obviously the same, it's just
scaled difference. And when you have these two side-by-side thermometers, you can really kind
of visualize it and understand how wider spread the Fahrenheit scale is. You convert one to the
other by deducting 32 from the Fahrenheit temperature and multiplying the result by 5
over 9, which is a super confusing method in my opinion. Both of them are pretty old systems
Celsius was developed by Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius and Fahrenheit by German physicist
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. I feel like we should go back to naming inventions after the last name
of the inventors instead of having to come up with some weird cool brand name. I think this is much
cooler. The reason why the US came to adopt it was the fact that Fahrenheit was widely used in Britain
and the British Empire before they decided to switch to Celsius and so when they arrived in
America they brought that system with them. But then most of the world started switching to Celsius
and the reason that many people point to is the fact that the Celsius scale integrates well with
the metric system, maybe because of the 0 to 100 logic. If you take this into account, maybe it
makes sense that the US didn't implement it because they don't use the metric system, but then again
Britain doesn't really use the metric system either and they still switched from Fahrenheit
to Celsius. So how valid of an excuse is that? Early in the 20th century, some researchers in
the US pointed to the fact that Fahrenheit is a more intuitive scale for people to describe
the temperature that is felt on the outside. So if you have 0 degrees Fahrenheit it a pretty cold day and if you have 100 degrees Fahrenheit it a very warm day But I live in Europe and 0 degrees is freezing 40 degrees is scorching hot
and people just adapt the perception of the numbers on the scale to whatever temperature it is
So I also think that's not a very valid reason. But I do understand the fact that the Fahrenheit scale is a little wider
so maybe it's more precise in describing the temperature that you actually feel
In summary, the US didn't adopt Celsius because they didn't use the metric system
and also because they actually thought that Fahrenheit was a little better, and they were used to it
Which brings us precisely to another difference of the US, which is arguably behind the other two that I just mentioned
imperial versus metric. And the uniqueness of it is very similar to the temperature one
because almost every single country in the world uses the metric system, with units such as meter, liter, and gram
to measure distance, weight, liquid volume, and mass. The exceptions are the United States, Burma, Liberia, and the UK, which sort of uses a mixed
model, although I never really understood which parts of each system they use. If you know
just let me know in the comments. These countries use the rival imperial system
or at least a version of it, which instead of meters, liters, and grams, uses other measuring
units like feet, inches, gallons, and pounds. So now let's understand when and how each of
these systems came to be. The metric system was developed in France in around 1795. It was the
time of the French Revolution and after it, the French government asked scientists to come up with
a single measuring system that could unite the various measuring systems that existed at a local
level and sort of unify the country in the way that they measured things. And so they did. The
meter was developed by measuring one-tenth million of the quadrant of the Earth's circumference
running from the North Pole to the equator through Paris. Its method for scaling and dividing is much simpler
1 km equals 1,000 m and each m equals 1,000 mm, 100 cm or 10 dm
The same thing applies with kg and l. 1 kg equals 1,000 g and 1 l equals 1,000 m
It makes the measuring of things much easier and especially more accurate
While the imperial system got its name from the British Empire, in which it was widely used from 1824 onwards
until the year of 1965. And while it is kind of confusing, especially for an outsider, as I'm
going to mention a little bit, it does make a little sense because at the time the British
Empire had provinces all over the world and all of these places used their own ways to measure
things. Sometimes they even use the same terms, but a pound in the UK could be different than what
a pound in South Africa was. And so they created this unified system to standardize all of those
values, which perhaps justifies the strangeness that they have, at least for me as an outsider
because it is kind of confusing to learn that one mile equals 1760 yards, one yard equals three feet
and one foot equals 12 inches, when one inch is equivalent to 2.54 centimeters. To make it more
confusing, there's a few key differences between US imperial system and the imperial system used
in Great Britain. For instance, when it comes to liquids, one cup is 240 milliliters in the US
but 250 milliliters in the UK. So why doesn't the US just switch to the metric system since
the majority of the world did too? Well, the main reason seems to be connected with the fact that
the US customary system was in use at the time of the industrial revolution. So American industries
from their very first moment were based on this measuring system. Because of that, businesses have
been against the idea of switching to metric every time that the government has tried doing so
because it would mean a big economic cost for them, with little to no benefit. However, despite
that lobbying, the US government still tried to do it, and it was around the same time that the US
switched to Celsius and to their mixed model. The entire world was uniting around the metric system
and so the US thought that they should do the same. It would make economic and scientific
cooperation much easier. And so Congress passed a law in 1975 called the Metric Conversion Act that was to begin the process of metrification setting up a metric board to supervise the transition But they made a key mistake they made it optional instead of mandatory
and so people didn't like it, so they didn't use it, and the process failed. A quote from the time
writes how motorists rebelled at the idea of highway signs in kilometers, weather watchers
blanched at the notion of reading a forecast in Celsius, and consumers balked at the prospect
of buying poultry by the kilogram. And to be honest, I get it. I remember when I was like five
years old and Portugal switched from our currency to the euro, it was so confusing to adapt to a new
monetary system. If we were to suddenly switch the way that we measured things, the way that we weighed
things, the way that the signs looked on the road when we're driving, I think I would be against it
because of how confusing it would be. And so in 1982, the metric board was dissolved only seven
years after they started to try implementing it and they just kind of accepted that this was going
to be one more thing in which they would be different from the rest of the world. Maybe they
just felt that it was too late to change. But despite this, the accurateness and arguably the
superiority of the metric system is made evident by the fact that researchers in the US still use
it and it's also used by the US military. Some people argue that even for everyday people it
would be more useful, but people seem to disagree and I guess they're in their own right to do so
In addition to these, the US also has a few other things in which they're different from the rest
of the world. For instance, their date format, writing it in month, day, year instead of day
month, year, which I guess is related to the fact that they read it as November 11th of 2024 instead
of the 11th of November of 2024, but for me it is a little confusing that it doesn't scale up as it
goes, you know, day, month, year, and it's month, day, year, it would be almost as crazy as saying
it's the 44th week of the year 2024, day 11 of the month of November. Kind of sounds like a date
that Tolkien would write for something in Middle Earth. They also use a 12-hour cycle with an AM
PM system instead of a 24-hour cycle, although the US military also uses the 24-hour cycle
because it's more precise and less subject to confusion. Or stuff like their floor numbering
calling the ground floor the first floor and the first floor the second floor, while for most of the world, it's the ground floor and the first floor
But this isn't exclusive to the US, I know a lot of other countries do it as well
So, that's pretty much it. The US are different from the rest of the world in many things
like their paper size, their temperature scale, and most of all, the way that they measure things
The reasons why seem to be the historical implementation of these models, and then the subsequent opposition by businesses to change
as well as the opposition by regular people, because they're just used to the old ways
and they either preferred or they just don't want to change. What do you think about this
Should they keep these old systems or should they just change it
and get in tune with the rest of the world? Let me know in the comments, along with any other unique things that you know of
not necessarily of the US, but just unique ways of countries doing things
that set them apart from everybody else. Thanks so much for watching this video
I'm really enjoying this new format where my face is here because I feel I can really dedicate myself to these specific and more niche topics
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You guys like the Moomin cups? My girlfriend has a collection of them
Maybe I should make a general knowledge collection. I don't know