That's an... interesting point I haven't seen brought up before. Makes me appreciate the "traditional" system more.
Still, I guess we aren't going to drop base-10 any time soon, so I believe the US should just accept the "traditional" measurement system as something that used to be very practical, but no longer is due to progress of technology, and switch to SI.
Agreed; this is a really interesting perspective. It points to how different applications yield different optimizations. Base 60 is fucking cool. I really like musing on how we arrived at the duration of a second.
It really is! The number of digits might be a bit much for normal use, so perhaps base-12 is more realistic. If we're going to upend tradition, might as well do it for good, well-founded reasons …
Of course, that would have been equally a problem had one team been using kilogramme-metre-seconds and the other gramme-metre-seconds, and could have been avoided by standardising on customary or on French Revolutionary units!
Still, I guess we aren't going to drop base-10 any time soon, so I believe the US should just accept the "traditional" measurement system as something that used to be very practical, but no longer is due to progress of technology, and switch to SI.