[Colin2B]

Interesting points Alan, history tends not to forget but leaves puzzles for archeologists.
Measurements of old musical instruments made in Spain and Italy show the proportions don't fit easily into metric, but it appears they used a scale very close to the inch.

[Marika]

At this point it would be too difficult and too expensive. As an engineer from the U.S., I can tell you that we learn both unit systems growing up in school, and learn engineering problems in both systems as well throughout University. We actually hated getting problems in English, metric is a lot easier to solve with. In the industry, unless it's an international contract, a lot of engineering projects are done in English. Many of our measurement tools are capable of English and metric, but we try to avoid or prevent the need to perform conversions on one project. Conversion failure is not fun. That being said, although I have solved many problems in metric, it is still hard for me to visualise how fast 60 km per hour is, but 60 mph is easy.

[chris]

done in English

Is that American for "Imperial"?

[Marika]

done in English

Is that American for "Imperial"?

Yes! In the U.S. "English" = "Imperial" and usually we just call metric "SI".