Metric vs. Imperial

[War Wagon]

Long, but interesting article. I use the metric system all the time at work but count me as a firm Imperialist.

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Story by Moni Basu, CNN

Only three nations do not use the metric system today: Myanmar, Liberia and the United States. But calling America a nonmetric nation is somewhat of a misnomer. The United States has given more than an inch even though it might not have gone the whole nine yards.

Consider that Coke bottles are sold in liters. So is wine. Medicine, in milligrams. Food nutrition labels are metric. And what about a 100-meter sprint or a 5K race?

Still, America is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not conduct business in metric weights and measures.

It's an issue that made the news again recently when Democrat Lincoln Chafee announced his candidacy for the White House. "Let's be bold -- let's join the rest of the world and go metric," Chafee said in launching his campaign, calling the move a "symbolic integration" meant to show good will to the world.

Easier said than done. To be or not to be metric has been a question of great consternation in this country.

Opponents have called pro-metric people communists and other not-so-nice labels. Proponents have called the anti-metric camp plain stupid and hell-bent on making sure America lags behind the entire world.


About this series

Great American Stories is an occasional series on the unexpected places and unforgettable characters that help define the country.

There are blogs like "Metric Maven" and even a book on the subject. John Bemelmans Marciano gave up writing the popular "Madeline" children's books started by his grandfather and last year published "Whatever Happened To The Metric System?"

Marciano says his young editor had no idea the United States had come within millimeters of metrication. The book reveals a fascinating history of how this nation ended up keeping a system in which 16 ounces make a pound, 12 inches make a foot and 3 feet make a yard.

The rest of the world calls Americans pennywise and pound foolish for still using a system that on its face makes little sense. And Americans, in turn, shun the metric system as a foreign creation. Never mind that Americans use the thermometer invented by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, a foreigner of Dutch-German-Polish extract.

So how did America end up being so allergic to metric? It's a long story that Marciano unearths in his book. And it begins near the beginning, with Thomas Jefferson.

It's not about science; it's capitalism

The nation's third president proposed dividing America's coins into tenths, hundredths and thousandths, Marciano writes. That makes Jefferson the father of American metrication. Congress approved his plan and (surprise!) the United States became the first country in the world to adopt a currency in decimals.





But the French were the first to adopt a metric system of measures during the French Revolution. Dividing by 10 was much easier than the old system, they argued. Water freezes at zero, not 32, and boils at 100, not 212.

Marciano, however, makes a credible argument for the old way of counting, which is based on everyday things and parts of the body.

"People say the metric system makes sense," Marciano says, "But in nature we don't think about dividing things by 10, do we? We think of halves and feet and thirds."

Acres, for instance, were based on the amount of land a man could plow in a day.

"Throughout history we have measured things by ourselves," Marciano says. "We are really losing something with metric."

And another thing: People think the metric system has something to do with science. It doesn't, Marciano says, except that it is used in science and every scientist will probably put forth a convincing argument for why it's silly not to be metric.

"That's the biggest misconception," Marciano says. "The metric system has everything to do with capitalism. It's all about a selling system."

He explains how virtually every town in Europe once had its own measuring system. As kingdoms unified and became nations -- like Germany -- they wanted one system of money and measures in order to trade with one another. But no one wanted to adopt the system of another nation. So they adopted an international system -- a metric one.

In 1866, the U.S. Congress authorized the use of the metric system and almost a decade later America became one of 17 original signatory nations to the Treaty of the Meter. A more modern system was approved in 1960 and is commonly known as SI or the International System of Units.

Metric accumulated a whole lot more fans when colonialism fell apart and newly independent nations like Indonesia, India, Kenya and others opted to join the international system.

"In America, there was never that push," Marciano says.

The global metric tsunami

What's better known about metric history in America is the last big movement that began in the 1960s.

The journal Metric Today was launched in 1966, Marciano writes, and it published warnings that if America kept resisting the global metric tsunami it would face a depression that would make the one in the 1930s look like a "Sunday picnic."

In 1975, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act, which declared metric as the preferred system of the United States, and the U.S. Metric Board was created to implement the conversion.

America began testing road signs in kilometers under President Jimmy Carter, who supported efforts to go metric. Interstate 19, which connects Tucson, Arizona, to Mexico, was one of them and today remains the only highway in America with distances posted solely in kilometers.

By the late 1970s, automakers had begun building speedometers that showed both miles and kilometers. Somehow, setting a cruising speed of 88 seemed so much cooler than 55.

But the debate over whether to go metric was acrimonious.

Metric supporters argued the road signs were a crucial step in helping Americans get over any psychological blocks to switching measurement systems. But Republican Charles Grassley, then a congressman and now a senator from Iowa, killed proposed federal regulations that would have forced states to put up signs in kilometers.

"Forcing the American people to convert to the metric system goes against our democratic principles," Grassley declared in June 1977.

Grassley had plenty of supporters in America. Anti-metric Americans came out of all corners and formed an unlikely coalition to make sure this country did not give an inch. They ranged from author Tom Wolfe to NPR chief Frank Mankiewicz.

In 1981, The New York Times reporter attended an anti-metric party at which Wolfe, in his customary white linen, judged a "Most Beautiful Foot" contest.

''I hear that the meter is based on a rod somewhere outside of Paris,'' Wolfe said, according to the Times story. ''To use that as a basis for measurement is completely arbitrary and intellectual. I should say I have tremendous admiration for the French, but a matter of this importance should not be left to them. I like the idea of the foot - as a measurement in relation to the human body.''

The story ended with a quote from a French lawyer, who said it was "fantastic to see Americans giving so much energy to something that is not important. It is much better than selling atomic nuclear bombs.''

But the discussion pretty much ended the next year.

Correspondent Bob Schieffer made it known on the CBS Evening News on February 19, 1982. The newscast highlighted President Ronald Reagan's budget, the Solidarity movement in Poland, atrocities in El Salvador and the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island. But audiences were just as eager to hear the last story of the night.

"After a lot of hoopla and millions of tax dollars spent on commercials and other things to tell us why we needed to go metric, it is the metric system that's about to go," Schieffer said in announcing the dismantling of the Metric Board.

With it died America's efforts to live solely by the meter.

New rationale for going metric

Fast forward to 2015. Many people believe the United States will again have to consider metric now that the world is far more connected.

International business interests may once again provide rationale for going metric. Hawaii and Oregon have recently introduced metric legislation, a reflection perhaps of those states' relationships with Pacific trade partners, tourism and efforts to build a high-tech workforce, says Elizabeth Gentry, metric coordinator for the federal National Institute of Standards and Technology.

"Major opportunities for metrication have occurred when emerging technologies or new products enter the U.S. marketplace, developed from the bottom up using metric measurement practices," Gentry says.

She uses the example of fuel for cars. Americans buy gasoline in gallons but when they start using new fuel sources like hydrogen, they will be forced to use kilograms since sales are based on metric.

Gentry says metric adoption is not a one-time event in America, but rather a process that is happening over time.

"Consumers are often unaware of the level of metric use because gradual changes have taken place around them over time," she says.

Marciano ends his book on the metric system with this thought: Think of America as preserving important ways of thinking that human beings used for centuries.

"If we get rid of our measures, we will never bring them back. To be for a metric America is to be for a global monoculture."

No doubt that many people would argue with Marciano on that point. But for the time being, America is keeping itself on its feet.

[mvscal]

The journal Metric Today was launched in 1966, Marciano writes, and it published warnings that if America kept resisting the global metric tsunami it would face a depression that would make the one in the 1930s look like a "Sunday picnic."

That's a typical progtard for you. Can't sell his point with making some ridiculous proclamation of impending doom if you don't buy into whatever stupid shit he's pushing.

[R-Jack]

The only reason Americans have not gone fully metric is because measuring our dicks would be problematic.

You think Irie Lagos can handle the conversion? You got another thing coming.

[Wolfman]

I'll always remember a trip to Toronto years ago to a nephew's wedding. Crossed the border into Ontario and hit the QEW. Saw my first road sign that said "SPEED LIMIT 100.) My first thought was "why bother with a speed limit if they let you do 100?" Then it dawned on me. I read the next sign a little more closely and verified my suspicion as it was KM/HR! Asked a brother in law about it. He told me they woke up one day and all the road signs were in metric. They had these peel and stick signs and crews were out overnight pasting them onto the existing signs. Later they installed permanent signage. Image trying that in the US? Just as easy for us, and a hell of a lot less expensive, to do it the way we do. BTW--the Army was metric going back into the 60's.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

You can come out of the Bronze Age now, America. We promise...it won't hurt.

[BSmack]

Wolfie, remember when a stretch of the NYS Thruway around Syracuse had distances posted in Km and speed in Kmph? It was supposed to be part of a larger plan to do all the signs in metric. But then Ford was voted out and Carter was too busy being attacked by killer rabbits to finish the job.

[War Wagon]

Time magazine, of which i subscribe, insists on converting every imperial measurement into the metric equivalent. Half of the time, they get it wrong. Annoys the pancreas out of me.

i want to bitch slap Nancy Gibbs and Joel Klein. Further, I would strangle Joel Stein if ever I got within arms reach.

On a completely unrelated topic... if I owned an AK-47 and Mumford & Sons came to KC, that problem would be permanently removed.

[smackaholic]

I am all for metric measurements except in sports. A football field is 100 yards. Don't fukk it up and go to meters. And a baseball diamond is the perfect size, in feet. Don't fukk with it.

[The State]

i want to bitch slap Nancy Gibbs and Joel Klein. Further, I would strangle Joel Stein if ever I got within arms reach.

Who ?

I have no idea who these people are... and why I should give a shit.

I do know, that whitey is one unhappy miserable slob, with anger issues.

On a completely unrelated topic... if I owned an AK-47 and Mumford & Sons came to KC, that problem would be permanently removed.

see the above post...









the truth