The more I live around the world, the less I understand why we do things differently, such as:

Why does every country in the world have to have different electrical plugs, and sometimes different voltages? I've got about 50 kilos of transformers and adapters around the house.

Why does half the world drive on the left and the other half on the right?

Why do some people eat with their fork upside down and others right-side-up?

Why do some countries cut their food with a knife and others use a spoon; don't even talk about chopsticks?

There are bound to be other differences. These just happen to bug me.

The Engineer in me says there is one "best" way for each of these tasks, but I don't see anyone adapting to change.

quote:

hy does half the world drive on the left and the other half on the right?

many years ago in the sudan they decided to change from right to left hand, not wanting to rush into things they decided to do it in stages. week one the truck would drive on one side and the next week the cars would. african logic

I don't see anything getting standardized in my lifetime, but it did amaze me when many countries gave-up their currency for the Euro, I didn't think that would ever happen either.

I thought this was going to be about something completely different! 'Never too old to learn something new.

Standardization takes place slowly.Europe had different power standards even within a country as each independant power company had it's own system.In the USA there used to be many standards for things like sheet and wire gages and thread sizes. In fact Winchester kept their strange thread sizes long after everyone else had accepted the national standard. I asked members of the ASTM committee who were writing specs for an American metric thread if they were just taking the most common standard and adopting it .No, they said they were going to make their own American thread ! Kind of defeats the whole purpose ! We did make some cars that had both English and Metric bolts in the engine !! In college in the '60s we had English [fractional and decimal] and metric [cgs and mks] - that's four systems !

I got the bright idea once to put a clutch and pressure plate in a 1987 dodge dakota 4x4.
the bolts that went from the engine and threaded into the transmission were standard.The ones that went through the tranny and threaded into the engine block were metric.

I think about 45 years ago they told us to get ready, metric was coming, and going to replace non-metric. It still hasn't happened. In parts of the world I've worked we still record data in FEET but at times refer to it in METERS. Mud is still lb/gal. in most places.

Our little anomoly at home is that my wife weighs herself in kilograms and I weigh myself in pounds.

Golf courses tend to screw me up. I still think in yards, while most I've been on lately measure in meters.

I know a 7.62mm is .308; and 10mm is .41, but the other designations have me completely in the dark.