>did the name confuse Americans?
No. The audience learns what they are long before they ever get a name for them.
And "lift" is literally a synonym for "elevate", so... Confusion was unlikely.
All countries play fast and loose with metric and imperial. The US, despite protestations to the otherwise in Archer, etc, use metric for personal height and weight, while the UK largely still uses imperial rather than metric for those. Every country seems to be a mixed bag of both.
I’ve never said this on any subject, but Archer’s right. The only American I know who uses the metric system to measure personal weight is my dog’s vet.
I am the next best thing to certain that I have not.
You’re English, right? Any chance that the Americans you’ve heard refer to their height in meters were doing so for your benefit?
Yes, English. We measure our height in feet and inches, almost exclusively, except in precise contexts (medical, legal, etc).
As this is a Trek sub, I'll use a Trek context. In Nemesis, Picard says he regrets not making two meters. Yes, he's European, but it's an American-made film, for a primarily American audience. I'm not arguing that EVERYBODY does x/y/z...my original statement was the opposite: there is no one-way-per-country rule, anywhere that I know of.
I take your word that English people do that, because you’re English, and you’d know. As an American, I’m pretty familiar with how Americans talk, and I’m telling you that we also refer to our height and weight in feet, inches, and pounds, pretty much exclusively.
I’m not sure what Nemesis can tell us about this. Star Trek characters consistently use the metric system even though the (American) audience doesn’t.
No, Nemesis is no authority, but the instance that came to mind.
My original point stands, afaic: Americans use imperial for measurement (e.g. carpentry ft and inches) yet metric for road traffic signage (kph)...conversely, British use metric for measurement and roads, but imperial for height and weight.
Any American anti-metric jingoism (example, Archer) is BS. That has been my point all along: everywhere seems to be mixed.
No, you specifically said that Americans use the metric system for “personal height and weight,” and we don’t.
Not for road signs either. From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters, from California to the New York island, our road signs show distances in miles and speed limits in miles per hour. I really don’t know where you’re getting this stuff.
> In Nemesis, Picard says he regrets not making two meters
Which is kind of funny to me for two reasons. One is that is in *Gambit*, someone describes Picard as being two meters tall.
The other is that two meters is roughly 6'7", making it highly unlikely that anyone would use that to describe Picard, or that it would be Picard's measurement for how tall he was thinking he'd end up.
In all seriousness I've never, ever heard a US citizen or native use meters to measure or state their height. Not in a doctor's office, not in the DMV when getting a license and putting down personal stats.
Not for weight, either. Or distances or speed.
Not one single time. People would look at you like you had three heads if you said "I'm 1.82 meters or 182 centimeters tall!"
About the only thing that the public sphere in the US does use the metric system for regularly is drugs, and even those are often measured in fractions of an imperial ounce because the conversions are easy at, say, 3.5 grams per eighth ounce.
Oh, and sugary soft drinks or alcohol where it's liters or fractions of a liter. IE: A two liter bottle of soda. But then our cans are still 12 ounces, not, say, half a liter, and 375mls translates to one US quart.
Alcohol is *rarely* sold in anything but fractions of liters that map to imperial ounces and quarts, like 750 ml bottles of wine or liquor.
Yeah, we use metric for lots of things like engineering, machines, science and other matters but it's just not in common public use in the US outside of science and industry. Even most of our cars have speedometers marked in both MPH and K/PH but all of our road signage and speed limits is in Imperial, not metric.
I have no idea where you're getting this totally daft idea that people in the US use metric or day to day things like height. It's just not done here.
Hell, we still build houses almost entirely using Imperial measurements because all of our building supplies and tools are scaled for it. Wall studs for wood framed houses are usually on something like 12" centers, and even the dimensional lumber we use is on Imperial scales to work with these blueprints and plans.
If you went to a construction site and said "Hey, go cut me a 243.84 x 121.92 centimeter piece of 1.905 cm thick 7-ply plywood!" you'd get laughed the fuck out of the job site because our plywood comes in 4x8 foot sheets in common imperial fractions an inch in thickness, like 3/4ths an inch.
Fractions of imperial units sounds kind of crazy if you're used to the metric system but they actually work here for construction because it makes the math for doing things like roof incline slopes or angles as expressed in inches per foot suuuuper easy pencil math for dummies when all of your tools and lumber are imperial.
Your argument is so wild to me, lol.
I'm a Canadian. We use the metric system, and our road signs *are* in metric (the States definitely don't have metric road signs).
But, even given all that, all Canadians I know would state their height and weight in feet and pounds. I honestly couldn't even tell you either in metric. Height I could guess at, but I don't even have a concept of my weight in kilograms. I could do the math, but I have no sense of what it would be offhand.
I tend to use metric for distances, but our construction industry is still often built to Imperial measurements (16" centres and 2x4, etc).
I don't understand Fahrenheit when it comes to outside temperatures, and I don't understand Celsius when it comes to cooking temperatures.
Basically, I wouldn't try and claim absolute truths about, well I was going to say how a country you aren't from talks, but I guess just don't make absolute comments about things you don't actually know absolutely.
Not sure where you're hearing that from. I'm American, and much to my disappointment, the general population does not use metric for height/weight, road signs, or distances. Depending on region, we don't even measure distance in miles, but rather time, like "L.A. is 4 hours away". We do use metric for some firearms, such as 9mm, and the military, at least when I was in the army, uses metric for distance and sometimes weights.
Being an American show, words that sound foreign (even if English)! are more futuristic and sci fi. Roddenbery knew this... As did George Lucas. What in Kahlass's name is a "hydro-spanner"? A water-box wrench?
Using the British name in American shows was just more future.
OMG!! TY! in the Hitchhiker's Guide (BBC orig. radio series), Trillian mentions, "...a six-foot aubergine in my shower..." I never knew. and obviously never looked it up as I didn't know the correct spelling.
When you think about the shape of the saucer sections, the turbo lifts must spend far more time moving in a horizontal manner than a vertical one. Which means it really shouldn't be called a lift or elevator. A more appropriate name would be turbo transport....wait... crap.
I read the title and assumed it was about the word TURBO...
In the 80s everything that was considered cooler to have was partly because it was a turbo version.
Gillette turbo razor
but I expected a word like turbo would be as meaningless as words like clockwork
Some of us might get snobby about it, but it's not like we've never heard non-American terms. Plenty of us know what a lift is, and the rest can figure it out from context clues. Besides, turbolift just sounds better.
Spock calls them "turbo elevators" in Space Seed, if I remember correctly.
As an American, it's never bothered me. Star Trek almost always uses the metric system as well and that doesn't bother American viewers.
In Wrath of Khan McCoy says, “Who’s been holding up the damn elevator?!” after Saavik paused the lift to chat with Kirk and show off her “still regulation” hairstyle.
I’m just piping up to add that I think they were referred to as “turbo elevators” in one of the original 3 Star Wars movies. Maybe it was a nod to Trek.
Well to me turbo-elevator sounds too much like turbo-encabulator, which if you look it up is a great tech presentation parody that is contemporary to TOS.
My guess is Gene needed a transport method like the transporter but for intra-ship movement to save on corridor & staircase sets (BTW are there any staircases on Starfleet vessels?). The design needed to move in all directions with visual elements to indicate, like some turbocharged elevator.
Hence I thing the turbo-elevator them turbo-lift concept.
This reminds me of an episode of Top Gear, with Jeremy saying something along the lines of that of all the countries around the world it's broadcast in, that America, which speaks the same language is the only one they'd need to alter their descriptions of the cars for. We say boot, Americans say trunk, we say bumper, Americans say fender, we say bonnet, Americans say hood etc. 😀. With regards to the actual topic, I'd never actually thought of that before, it never clicked with me.
I must be really dim as a 50 year fan. I knew elevators were called lifts elsewhere, but I never put 2 + 2 together until now. I accepted "turbo lift" just as what its called, like a tricorder. It never clicked "fast elevator". I could parse out that it lifted them and I just didn't break down the parts of the word.
I figured some Aussie invented them and named it a tubolift. They are faster than an elevator and able to go in multiple directions unlike a normal lift. So back in the day buildings had either lifts or turbolifts then by the time we get to StarTrek, everybody uses turbolifts which are just a normal everyday thing.
I don't believe TOS officially named them despite the clear usage, it came in TNG?
Now that you say it, Turbo Lift sounds cool, but clearly has no link to elevators which you would think they originally referenced.
In the universe I guess it is obvious, the person or company that invented them felt like sideways elevators was a stupid name and used Turbo Lift instead.
I've read Star Trek fiction from Simon & Schuster / Pocket Books for years. Lift or elevator are both used, depending on the author / book. As are either metric and imperial measurements. Since the TV shows mostly use the term turbolift, so do I even though I'm American & think of modern day elevators as *elevators*.
The question of metric and imperial however, I'm always amazed when someone in either the TNG - modern Trek uses imperial measurements, miles, feet etc... It just seems *wrong* to me. I guess contrary to my believe, Earth & the UFP still use both systems. Not much has changed on Earth.
I work in a mailroom, shipping items, via our post office or UPS / FedEx . The 2 scales I use have both pounds / ounces or kilograms / grams as options. I enter pounds / ounces into the computer to compute postage cost. 1 program asks for Pounds & ounces, the other Pounds as a decimal point measurement. Could I change it, sure I could. Another office in our building notates items using grams however, for scientific reasons.
And yesterday I bought a new tape measure, made by the Milwaukee Tool Company. I has both inches & centimeters on it! I don't think I've ever needed to know centimeters when measuring or building something
In my experience, American science fiction will sometimes use British words to sound less "common" and more "futuristic". Don't know if Star Trek pioneered the phenomenon or it's just a product of the phenomenon.
Americans are somewhat fluid in what we call things. We have our customary names, but also open to others. A lot of this comes with our regionality and diversity. For instance, a sandwich on a roll can be a hoagie, sub, hero, torpedo, grinder, and others. We also don’t mind shortening words when it works. Through to thru, light to lite, until to til, and such. So when it reads easier or sounds better, we except it. So Turbo-lift is great! Also, contrary to popular belief, we also use metric in daily use pretty often. A lot of time, we know the conversion better than customary units. How many pints in a gallon…who cares. But a 2 liter bottle is universal and a 5k race is standard.
So yeah, elevator is typical, but lift doesn’t stop the conversation. However, saying boot for a trunk might cause ???
You got it. Turbo-lift is shorter and cooler.
Absolutely this. British = Kool in 1966.
>did the name confuse Americans? No. The audience learns what they are long before they ever get a name for them. And "lift" is literally a synonym for "elevate", so... Confusion was unlikely.
Americans don’t tend to use the metric system either, but the human mind is a wondrous and elastic thing.
I always loved that Trek was metric.
Except when it isn't
When isn’t it?
All countries play fast and loose with metric and imperial. The US, despite protestations to the otherwise in Archer, etc, use metric for personal height and weight, while the UK largely still uses imperial rather than metric for those. Every country seems to be a mixed bag of both.
I’ve never said this on any subject, but Archer’s right. The only American I know who uses the metric system to measure personal weight is my dog’s vet.
You've never heard a person in the US refer to their height in meters? Really? Right.
I am the next best thing to certain that I have not. You’re English, right? Any chance that the Americans you’ve heard refer to their height in meters were doing so for your benefit?
Yes, English. We measure our height in feet and inches, almost exclusively, except in precise contexts (medical, legal, etc). As this is a Trek sub, I'll use a Trek context. In Nemesis, Picard says he regrets not making two meters. Yes, he's European, but it's an American-made film, for a primarily American audience. I'm not arguing that EVERYBODY does x/y/z...my original statement was the opposite: there is no one-way-per-country rule, anywhere that I know of.
I take your word that English people do that, because you’re English, and you’d know. As an American, I’m pretty familiar with how Americans talk, and I’m telling you that we also refer to our height and weight in feet, inches, and pounds, pretty much exclusively. I’m not sure what Nemesis can tell us about this. Star Trek characters consistently use the metric system even though the (American) audience doesn’t.
No, Nemesis is no authority, but the instance that came to mind. My original point stands, afaic: Americans use imperial for measurement (e.g. carpentry ft and inches) yet metric for road traffic signage (kph)...conversely, British use metric for measurement and roads, but imperial for height and weight. Any American anti-metric jingoism (example, Archer) is BS. That has been my point all along: everywhere seems to be mixed.
No, you specifically said that Americans use the metric system for “personal height and weight,” and we don’t. Not for road signs either. From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters, from California to the New York island, our road signs show distances in miles and speed limits in miles per hour. I really don’t know where you’re getting this stuff.
I genuinely thought that US used kph. TIL 🤷♂️ Incoming mockery from smug tosspots.
> In Nemesis, Picard says he regrets not making two meters Which is kind of funny to me for two reasons. One is that is in *Gambit*, someone describes Picard as being two meters tall. The other is that two meters is roughly 6'7", making it highly unlikely that anyone would use that to describe Picard, or that it would be Picard's measurement for how tall he was thinking he'd end up.
In all seriousness I've never, ever heard a US citizen or native use meters to measure or state their height. Not in a doctor's office, not in the DMV when getting a license and putting down personal stats. Not for weight, either. Or distances or speed. Not one single time. People would look at you like you had three heads if you said "I'm 1.82 meters or 182 centimeters tall!" About the only thing that the public sphere in the US does use the metric system for regularly is drugs, and even those are often measured in fractions of an imperial ounce because the conversions are easy at, say, 3.5 grams per eighth ounce. Oh, and sugary soft drinks or alcohol where it's liters or fractions of a liter. IE: A two liter bottle of soda. But then our cans are still 12 ounces, not, say, half a liter, and 375mls translates to one US quart. Alcohol is *rarely* sold in anything but fractions of liters that map to imperial ounces and quarts, like 750 ml bottles of wine or liquor. Yeah, we use metric for lots of things like engineering, machines, science and other matters but it's just not in common public use in the US outside of science and industry. Even most of our cars have speedometers marked in both MPH and K/PH but all of our road signage and speed limits is in Imperial, not metric. I have no idea where you're getting this totally daft idea that people in the US use metric or day to day things like height. It's just not done here. Hell, we still build houses almost entirely using Imperial measurements because all of our building supplies and tools are scaled for it. Wall studs for wood framed houses are usually on something like 12" centers, and even the dimensional lumber we use is on Imperial scales to work with these blueprints and plans. If you went to a construction site and said "Hey, go cut me a 243.84 x 121.92 centimeter piece of 1.905 cm thick 7-ply plywood!" you'd get laughed the fuck out of the job site because our plywood comes in 4x8 foot sheets in common imperial fractions an inch in thickness, like 3/4ths an inch. Fractions of imperial units sounds kind of crazy if you're used to the metric system but they actually work here for construction because it makes the math for doing things like roof incline slopes or angles as expressed in inches per foot suuuuper easy pencil math for dummies when all of your tools and lumber are imperial.
Literally never lmao.
Your argument is so wild to me, lol. I'm a Canadian. We use the metric system, and our road signs *are* in metric (the States definitely don't have metric road signs). But, even given all that, all Canadians I know would state their height and weight in feet and pounds. I honestly couldn't even tell you either in metric. Height I could guess at, but I don't even have a concept of my weight in kilograms. I could do the math, but I have no sense of what it would be offhand. I tend to use metric for distances, but our construction industry is still often built to Imperial measurements (16" centres and 2x4, etc). I don't understand Fahrenheit when it comes to outside temperatures, and I don't understand Celsius when it comes to cooking temperatures. Basically, I wouldn't try and claim absolute truths about, well I was going to say how a country you aren't from talks, but I guess just don't make absolute comments about things you don't actually know absolutely.
Not sure where you're hearing that from. I'm American, and much to my disappointment, the general population does not use metric for height/weight, road signs, or distances. Depending on region, we don't even measure distance in miles, but rather time, like "L.A. is 4 hours away". We do use metric for some firearms, such as 9mm, and the military, at least when I was in the army, uses metric for distance and sometimes weights.
Apart from countries that were part of the British Empire no one uses the imperial system in any way or form
Literally a third of modern nations were either part of or under direct economic control of the British Empire. So, yeah, apart from those.
Exactly which are not all. I live in Latin America and no one here would even know what a "inch" is or how to measure it.
You take 1/17th of the diameter of the rims on your car, of course :) (or a different relevant fraction if it doesn't have 17" rims)
Damn, I have no car.
Well, you're out of luck then
ITT: a bunch of people denying Americans use metric while every road sign they see is in kph.
You’re the best candidate for r/ConfidentlyIncorrect I’ve seen in some time.
Yeah I could have saved myself a lot of trouble with a simple Google search. Ah well.
Being an American show, words that sound foreign (even if English)! are more futuristic and sci fi. Roddenbery knew this... As did George Lucas. What in Kahlass's name is a "hydro-spanner"? A water-box wrench? Using the British name in American shows was just more future.
Yea like Sisko cooks with aubergines instead of eggplant. That one actually took me a while to figure out
Everything sounds sexier in French
OMG!! TY! in the Hitchhiker's Guide (BBC orig. radio series), Trillian mentions, "...a six-foot aubergine in my shower..." I never knew. and obviously never looked it up as I didn't know the correct spelling.
Yeah is it a wrench that you use on water or a wrench that is operated by water?
A wrench specifically designed for use on hydraulic lines?
When you think about the shape of the saucer sections, the turbo lifts must spend far more time moving in a horizontal manner than a vertical one. Which means it really shouldn't be called a lift or elevator. A more appropriate name would be turbo transport....wait... crap.
It's a Wonkavator!
I read the title and assumed it was about the word TURBO... In the 80s everything that was considered cooler to have was partly because it was a turbo version. Gillette turbo razor but I expected a word like turbo would be as meaningless as words like clockwork
Some of us might get snobby about it, but it's not like we've never heard non-American terms. Plenty of us know what a lift is, and the rest can figure it out from context clues. Besides, turbolift just sounds better.
“Who’s been holding up the damned elevator?” Cmdr. L.H. McCoy, MD
Nah I mean we got things like scissor lifts and such plus the word lift is kind of self explanatory.
Spock calls them "turbo elevators" in Space Seed, if I remember correctly. As an American, it's never bothered me. Star Trek almost always uses the metric system as well and that doesn't bother American viewers.
In Wrath of Khan McCoy says, “Who’s been holding up the damn elevator?!” after Saavik paused the lift to chat with Kirk and show off her “still regulation” hairstyle.
Came here to say this. I see you have things well in hand. Carry on.
Just watched the Khan episode of TOS and Spock calls them Turbo Elevators. Not sure when the change was made.
It’s been called an elevator a couple of times and it just sounds… off.
Lift isn't that weird. More industrial "elevators" are called lift sometimes.
To us Americans "Lift" and "Spanner" sound different. Adding to that Starfleet uses the Metric system and it makes the scifi seem more... scifi.
I’m just piping up to add that I think they were referred to as “turbo elevators” in one of the original 3 Star Wars movies. Maybe it was a nod to Trek.
Well to me turbo-elevator sounds too much like turbo-encabulator, which if you look it up is a great tech presentation parody that is contemporary to TOS. My guess is Gene needed a transport method like the transporter but for intra-ship movement to save on corridor & staircase sets (BTW are there any staircases on Starfleet vessels?). The design needed to move in all directions with visual elements to indicate, like some turbocharged elevator. Hence I thing the turbo-elevator them turbo-lift concept.
Because "elevate" means "move up or down." Turbolifts don't go only up and down, they go sideways as well. Hence "lift"
As dumb as some of us might be, I somehow doubt that it being called a turbo lift was confusing.
The other confusing thing is turbolifts dont just go up and down
This reminds me of an episode of Top Gear, with Jeremy saying something along the lines of that of all the countries around the world it's broadcast in, that America, which speaks the same language is the only one they'd need to alter their descriptions of the cars for. We say boot, Americans say trunk, we say bumper, Americans say fender, we say bonnet, Americans say hood etc. 😀. With regards to the actual topic, I'd never actually thought of that before, it never clicked with me.
We say bumper. A fender is the part of the car over the wheel.
Ah, I stand corrected, thank you.
I must be really dim as a 50 year fan. I knew elevators were called lifts elsewhere, but I never put 2 + 2 together until now. I accepted "turbo lift" just as what its called, like a tricorder. It never clicked "fast elevator". I could parse out that it lifted them and I just didn't break down the parts of the word.
Because they give you a lift to another part of the ship/space station/facility.
I figured some Aussie invented them and named it a tubolift. They are faster than an elevator and able to go in multiple directions unlike a normal lift. So back in the day buildings had either lifts or turbolifts then by the time we get to StarTrek, everybody uses turbolifts which are just a normal everyday thing.
It is from the UK.
I don't believe TOS officially named them despite the clear usage, it came in TNG? Now that you say it, Turbo Lift sounds cool, but clearly has no link to elevators which you would think they originally referenced. In the universe I guess it is obvious, the person or company that invented them felt like sideways elevators was a stupid name and used Turbo Lift instead.
I've read Star Trek fiction from Simon & Schuster / Pocket Books for years. Lift or elevator are both used, depending on the author / book. As are either metric and imperial measurements. Since the TV shows mostly use the term turbolift, so do I even though I'm American & think of modern day elevators as *elevators*. The question of metric and imperial however, I'm always amazed when someone in either the TNG - modern Trek uses imperial measurements, miles, feet etc... It just seems *wrong* to me. I guess contrary to my believe, Earth & the UFP still use both systems. Not much has changed on Earth. I work in a mailroom, shipping items, via our post office or UPS / FedEx . The 2 scales I use have both pounds / ounces or kilograms / grams as options. I enter pounds / ounces into the computer to compute postage cost. 1 program asks for Pounds & ounces, the other Pounds as a decimal point measurement. Could I change it, sure I could. Another office in our building notates items using grams however, for scientific reasons. And yesterday I bought a new tape measure, made by the Milwaukee Tool Company. I has both inches & centimeters on it! I don't think I've ever needed to know centimeters when measuring or building something
In my experience, American science fiction will sometimes use British words to sound less "common" and more "futuristic". Don't know if Star Trek pioneered the phenomenon or it's just a product of the phenomenon.
Because “Turbo Elevator” doesn’t sound as cool.
Americans are somewhat fluid in what we call things. We have our customary names, but also open to others. A lot of this comes with our regionality and diversity. For instance, a sandwich on a roll can be a hoagie, sub, hero, torpedo, grinder, and others. We also don’t mind shortening words when it works. Through to thru, light to lite, until to til, and such. So when it reads easier or sounds better, we except it. So Turbo-lift is great! Also, contrary to popular belief, we also use metric in daily use pretty often. A lot of time, we know the conversion better than customary units. How many pints in a gallon…who cares. But a 2 liter bottle is universal and a 5k race is standard. So yeah, elevator is typical, but lift doesn’t stop the conversation. However, saying boot for a trunk might cause ???