Originally Posted by
JohnDThompson
Nothing mysterious about it. French threads are based on the globally recognized «Système International d'unités», otherwise known as the "metric system." That the rest of the bicycle industry chose a hodgepodge of other thread specs is hardly their fault.
This is why it sounds strange *to me* when people talk about the French using weird standards. The world -- other than the US -- had pretty much decided that metric (aka SI) is the way to go, so I hardly blame the French bike makers for converting to it. How did they know the rest of the world would say "never mind" in the bicycle industry?