An underappreciated wrinkle in the great units debate is the kind of units used. Put simply, Imperial natively (that is, in feet and inches, not five-point-eight-six feet) uses fractions where metric uses decimals. Therefore the arithmetic of fractions is more relevant in the United States than foreigners. Fractions are also essentially negative binary in nature, going by powers of two (half, fourth, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second, etc). To an American kid, it’s easy to understand that any number can be expressed by the sum of powers of two (plus one for odds). Just look at a ruler. Therefore the basic concept of binary are intuitive in America where they may not necessarily be abroad. This would have helped shape the brains of the personal comluting revolution.