I had a client who wound up with one of those not realizing what it was, which caused him no end of problems until I ultimately figured it out confiscated it from him. He got a regular US inch one in exchange. I had to look it up at the time, too, because the notion of there being a Chinese knockoff inch that's subtly inaccurate is one of those things that just seems so ridiculous on its face that it simply can't be true, right? Except it totally is.

[–] Decq@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

An Inch meant something different for most countries not too long ago. If the Chinese inch is a knockoff, then so is the US inch. Only the UK inch is the one truly inch!

[–] lunarul@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Except it's not. It's simply a completely different and unrelated unit of measurement, which was dubbed colloquially in the west "Chinese inch". Calling it a "Cinese knockoff inch" is like calling the yard a "US knockoff meter".

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I mean, that's a valid assessment of the yard as well if you're looking at it from a comedy perspective.

[–] lunarul@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes, calling the yard a knockoff of the meter would be kind of funny, especially since it predates it by about a thousand years. And calling the cun a knockoff of the inch is similar, since it predates that by another thousand years.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Just like how Hydrox are just knockoff Oreos!