I am a retired surveyor for the Arkansas Highway Department. When I first started back in the 60's, we used feet and tenths/hundredths of a foot. Was told to forget about inches, as only whores and carpenters used that measure. Later I was doing bridge surveys, where I had to measure the existing bridges, in some cases. They had to be measured in feet/inches, carpenter work. Move on along and they starting the metric system, as that was what America was going to. So I had to have and understand, and carry with me three different units of measurement. Hard to get a crew that could or would understand this. They finally kicked the Metric units to the curb, thank goodness. miles
I'm an engineer in the transportation field and do a lot of DOT work and went through the conversion from english to metric. I know the DOT's spent considerable money to convert, I believe mandated by the Feds, only to convert back to english after a few years. I'm comfortable with either system, but my understanding for going back to english (whether true or not) was based on contractor issues related to metric units and construction materials produced in english dimensions and having to convert back and forth.
Much of the US was originally surveyed using the Government Survey system (Township, Range, Section). This is based off units dealing with miles and fractions of a mile. Those surveys make up the basis of legal descriptions for millions of existing properties.
That's an interesting point I hadn't previously considered...
