I have seen Americans who claim US customary is simpler and easier to understand than metric. I found the following on-line that demonstrates how well many Americans understand their own system of measurements.
Those pesky fractions!
I have seen Americans who claim US customary is simpler and easier to understand than metric. I found the following on-line that demonstrates how well many Americans understand their own system of measurements.
Those pesky fractions!
Where do I start?
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Where do I start?
I’m a huge financial nerd, and have spent an embarrassing amount of time talking to people about their money habits.
Here are the biggest mistakes people are making and how to fix them:
Not having a separate high interest savings account
Having a separate account allows you to see the results of all your hard work and keep your money separate so you're less tempted to spend it.
Plus with rates above 5.00%, the interest you can earn compared to most banks really adds up.
Here is a list of the top savings accounts available today. Deposit $5 before moving on because this is one of the biggest mistakes and easiest ones to fix.
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It actually has, in 1975.
It was signed by one Gerald Ford
Since 1975, the metric system was the “preffered” system of weights and measures in the USA. There was a genuine but short lived effort to change all US weights and measures to metric, but there was too much inertia and the customary units survived, in a half-hearted, mutilated way. The people wanted to keep using the customary system and the government allowed them to do so, even though the new customary units were actually metric units in disguise.
See, one of the things the Act did was to redefine all customary units in terms of metric
It actually has, in 1975.
It was signed by one Gerald Ford
Since 1975, the metric system was the “preffered” system of weights and measures in the USA. There was a genuine but short lived effort to change all US weights and measures to metric, but there was too much inertia and the customary units survived, in a half-hearted, mutilated way. The people wanted to keep using the customary system and the government allowed them to do so, even though the new customary units were actually metric units in disguise.
See, one of the things the Act did was to redefine all customary units in terms of metric units. Previously one foot was defined as the length of the foot of a man of such and such height. After the metric conversion act, the foot is 12 inches and one inch is defined as 0.0254 metres exactly. In other words, one foot is the length travelled by light in a vacuum in the time the unpertubed cesium-133 atom experiences 2,801,919,767.3355 hyperfine transitions. Or if you perfer, one foot is 1200/3937 metres by definition.
This is the same as the old foot, but it’s clearly defined in terms of metric units. American customary units are a subdivision of the metric units in a fashion Americans find more comfortable. There’s a whole lot more to metric units than mere base 10 and convenience, this is just the byproduct of scientists and engineers not wanting to deal with unnecessary complexity. This is useful, but marginal next to what the SI units truly are: independent definitions of quantities, based on fundamental laws of the universe. This is what matters with metric units and in that, American units are entirely, 100% metric. They just then go and make them scientifically and technically inconvenient in order to make them more convenient for everyday use.
Or so they think anyway.
The real reason the United States does not switch to the metric system because there is no “switch”. That is, there is no governing body in charge of enforcing proper units on anything. For better or worse[math]^*[/math] Americans are free to use whatever units they want.
And so, we use whatever units make sense. Wine bottles are uniformly 750 ml, because that makes them exchangeable with the civilized world. Gasoline[math]^+ [/math]comes in gallons because that's the convention. And every weekend car mechanic has one of these:
which can completely disassemble a Toyota Tundra. It fits neatly around a 14 millimeter nut, a
The real reason the United States does not switch to the metric system because there is no “switch”. That is, there is no governing body in charge of enforcing proper units on anything. For better or worse[math]^*[/math] Americans are free to use whatever units they want.
And so, we use whatever units make sense. Wine bottles are uniformly 750 ml, because that makes them exchangeable with the civilized world. Gasoline[math]^+ [/math]comes in gallons because that's the convention. And every weekend car mechanic has one of these:
which can completely disassemble a Toyota Tundra. It fits neatly around a 14 millimeter nut, and the other end fits into a standard 3/8-inch wrench[math]^§[/math].
And apparently, fuel-hose permeability is measured in gallons-per-square-meter-per-day[math]^{**}[/math]. It’s metric, imperial, and natural all at once; because that's a convenient unit for anyone who cares about such things.
It has become generally accepted that any difference between American and European cultures represents an inferiority on the American side.
I mean, take a look at this: we spell “color” differently. If this were between Essex and Wessex, we might put it down to local convention and leave it alone. But no. Why do Americans spell colour incorrectly?
This affords the Old World an opportunity to feel superior, in some small way, to a culture that, frankly, has a lot more nukes.
I mean really. Why is cheese in America so awful? I dunno. Maybe different people like different things? It bothers me not a bit that people in other places will eat Marmite or Durian or Lutefisk; but Americans specifically are culturally deficient for their own peculiarities.
So, we measure insulation effectiveness in Fahrenheit-square-foot-hours-per-BTU. So what. I'm sure there's a conversion factor that is well-known in the industry[math]^{++}[/math].
[math]^*[/math] and by that, you read: “for worse”
[math]^+[/math] a much more mellifluous word than “petrol”
[math]^§[/math] “spanner”. Whatever.
[math]^{**}[/math] which dimensionally, is a unit of speed.
[math]^{++}[/math] apparently, 176 millikelvin cubic seconds per kilogram. Really. But most sources just say “multiply the R-value by 176 to convert to metric”.
Post Scriptum
My hard work in producing a popular answer has inspired someone to share it in the space “Beautiful Women Without Bra.”
Ordinarily, I might be flattered that someone finds my content worth sharing in any space; any yet… I suspect this is a cheap way to draw traffic to an unrelated space. Like, really unrelated.
While I enjoy the company of beautiful women, and I appreciate both bras and their absence, I do not condone the objectification of human beings, or the promotion of spaces that deal in it.
In any case, if you enjoyed the answer, gently tap the upvote button.
The primary reason is money. It would cost billions of dollars to change all the speed limit and distance signs across the country.
There was actually a study done in the late 1970’s on this very subject, and the determination was that it was too expensive to go metric.
Do you see the number 23 on this sign? It means that Zzyzx Road is 23 miles from the end of the highway you are on, or 23 miles to a state border. In this case it’s 23 miles from the Nevada/California state line on Interstate 15 traveling North. That number would have to be changed to 37 for it to be accurate. And yes, Zzyzx Road
The primary reason is money. It would cost billions of dollars to change all the speed limit and distance signs across the country.
There was actually a study done in the late 1970’s on this very subject, and the determination was that it was too expensive to go metric.
Do you see the number 23 on this sign? It means that Zzyzx Road is 23 miles from the end of the highway you are on, or 23 miles to a state border. In this case it’s 23 miles from the Nevada/California state line on Interstate 15 traveling North. That number would have to be changed to 37 for it to be accurate. And yes, Zzyzx Road is a real road, just don’t ask me how to pronounce it! My guess would be ziz-icks, but I’m not sure.
All of these would have to be changed too…
Along with all of these… This one would have to be changed to 140km/h, which is the highest speed limit in the country, it’s on a highway in Texas.
But the worst of all are these mile marker signs. When you are on a highway you’ll pass one every mile you travel. Not only will they have to be changed to distances in kilometers, they will also have to be dug up and moved to a new position, one kilometer apart instead of one mile. Since a kilometer is shorter than a mile new sign posts would also have to be added.
There are literally millions of these signs across the country, and the cost of making new signs and then sending out road crews to change them one by one all over the country is just mind bogglingly expensive.
A simple stop sign costs over $800.00, it’s because of the materials used to make them, such as rust resistant reflective paint and special coatings to reduce fading and corrosion over time.
Add in the price of the post, the bolts, the mounting brackets and the salaries of the people who dig a hole, pour cement in it an mount the sign in place and you get a good idea of what the costs behind it are.
This sign would cost a least a couple of thousand dollars to change…
And all we are talking about here is speed and distance.
What about weight?
Everyone would need to buy a new one of these…
What about other measurements?
These would become useless…
Factories would have to change their assembly lines to accommodate the metric system.
Building codes would have to be updated to represent metric measurements, no more 2 by 4’s every 16 inches apart. Thousands of documents on the city, state and federal level would need to be changed.
And come to think of it, no more 2 by 4’s either (which are actually 1.5 by 3.5’s, Americans measure wood strangely), they’d become 5 by 10’s which are a little smaller. That would change the lumber industry.
There would be so many impacts across pretty much every industry if the United States went metric, it’s not only about changing road signs.
The costs of doing it just aren’t worth it, that’s why the United States hasn’t gone metric.
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There's also the political angle, too, believe it or not.
I clearly remember that when I was in junior high (early 80s), there was a push of some sort to accentuate the metric system over the imperial system -- emphasis on metric measurements in textbooks and teaching, even outside of science and math.
What I found interesting was that we kids at the time were pretty much fine with this; heck, multiplying and dividing by powers of ten was a lot easier than slogging through much-more-confusing conversions within the imperial system. But our parents and grandparents (in the aggregate) were appare
There's also the political angle, too, believe it or not.
I clearly remember that when I was in junior high (early 80s), there was a push of some sort to accentuate the metric system over the imperial system -- emphasis on metric measurements in textbooks and teaching, even outside of science and math.
What I found interesting was that we kids at the time were pretty much fine with this; heck, multiplying and dividing by powers of ten was a lot easier than slogging through much-more-confusing conversions within the imperial system. But our parents and grandparents (in the aggregate) were apparently furious, even branding the new emphasis "un-American" and (I kid you not) "Communist!"
So while there were (and remain) substantial economic reasons holding back a U.S. movement towards the metric system, I believe we shouldn't overlook the strength of tradition and, yes, American pride in our stubborn adherence to what most would agree is a depressingly inferior measurement system.
Too much liberty, too much religious fanaticism, too much anti-intellectualism and too much pig-headed recalcitrance on any change.
When things are allowed to evolve on their own, they usually go from bad to worse, and the US customary system is a perfect example of that. To quote a certain Scot, the US customary system is a “sadistic horrorshow of mismatched measurements and illogical divisions.”
The problem is that it has never been properly designed, it is completely illogical, it is a hodgepodge assembly of chaotic and mismatching measures, and there is no connection with the length, area, v
Too much liberty, too much religious fanaticism, too much anti-intellectualism and too much pig-headed recalcitrance on any change.
When things are allowed to evolve on their own, they usually go from bad to worse, and the US customary system is a perfect example of that. To quote a certain Scot, the US customary system is a “sadistic horrorshow of mismatched measurements and illogical divisions.”
The problem is that it has never been properly designed, it is completely illogical, it is a hodgepodge assembly of chaotic and mismatching measures, and there is no connection with the length, area, volume, draught, weight and time whatsoever, not speaking about things like force, power and energy. There is no connection with natural phenomena either, the units themselves are arbitrary (one “foot” equals size EU 47 shoe, which are not available in any general stores). There is no common base number for the units, and unit conversions are a sadistic horrorshow indeed. Can you fit a table 46 inches wide through a door of 3 feet 4 inches?
When our professors in the uni wanted to fsck us up, they gave all the dimensions in chemical engineering calculations as US customary units, and in really weird formats, such as volumetric flow in “acre-foots per minute”.
I mean, the USCS sucks. It actually sucks like a Hoover vacuum cleaner.
Okay, enough for rant. Then why not to convert?
The first reason is too much freedom. In such situation, a bad but established system will prevail despite a good but a new system. It is not about markets, but about the human innate resistance to change. This is the reason why software companies have planned obsolescence as their policy: they do not give their customers freedom. They do not give their customers the freedom to choose between an old, established and familiar product and a new and weird product - they make the old one unusable by planned obsolescence, hence denying the customer the freedom to choose. Is this a good or a bad thing? Certainly there would be no progress in the IT stuff without planned obsolescence and forcing it to customers. If there really was freedom, nobody would buy new products as they cause unnecessary headache and steep learning curve.
Too much freedom means there is no instance to impose the required chances to the populace - even if the results were better afterwards. I remember how Finland transitioned from markka to euro (exchange rate 5.95) and how much outrage it caused, but afterwards almost everyone has been content.
The same applies to the SI system. The USCS sucks and has been there since annodazumal, and it is the devil you know. The SI system is an angel you don’t know. And better the devil you know than the angel you don’t.
In the military I learned the true value of coercion: it can and will attain better results than free choice or letting things to evolve on their own. And this is the reason why the software companies do not allow freedom, but coerce their customers to update their systems through the planned obsolescence system.
The second is too much religious fanaticism. Religiosity goes hand in hand with conservativity - to the point of being retrograde. “If the US customary system was good enough for the Apostles, it will be good enough for us!” is the slogan. And such attitudes go hand in hand with incredible recalcitrance on anything a) secular b) progressive. USA is the most religiously fanatical of all Western countries, and I do not mean Christianity only: it is a home of really weird denominations, which would be laughed away in anywhere else in the Western world.
The Metric system had its birth in the 17th century. The greatest minds of the Enlightment - Newton, Bernoulli, Huygens, Papin, Leibniz - agreed that the measurement systems all around the world sucked big time and were fscked up, and they wanted a system which would be a) good for sciences, engineering and everyday use b) based on natural phenomena c) be coherent, combining length, area, volume, draught, weight and time d) be base-10 and e) be international. After 100 years, the work of the scientist was ready and the Metric system was born.
The thing is that it is secular. It does not appear in the Bible. The Apostles did not use it. Which means it must be Jewish Atheist Communist Nazi Reptilian conspiracy. And the religious fanatics tend to forget the Apostles used Pagan Roman measurements, not something imposed upon the by God. This is something which creates suspicions among the religious people.
USA is the most anti-intellectual of all Western countries. This is why I wish Judaism and not Christianity had become the Roman state religion - the Jews appreciate intelligence and education. Words like “nerd”, “geek”, “wahoo” and similar stuff originate in the USA and the Americans have always related to intelligence and education with utter suspicion.
The rugged individualism loathes intelligence and education and favours willpower and pulling your own weight even if the result was a train wreck. The result is that the American schooling system is a joke and American general education is the worst in the whole Western world. Most Americans never bother to travel abroad or learn a foreign language. They know next to nothing what happens in the world outside them.
This anti-intellectualism is one of the reasons why I would never consider moving to the USA (Germany and UK would be good) and also why the Americans have such a knee-jerk reaction on the SI system: it is nerd stuff. It is something for the geeks and eggheads. Too much thinking involved.
The last reason is the astonishing American recalcitrance on any change. USA must be the most conservative, reactionary and retrograde of all Western countries, retaining much of the stuff which was abandoned in Europe already a century or so ago. The Americans cling to their broken healthcare system albeit they well know it is broken and the cause of immense human tragedies every year - because it is American.
The SI system is not invented here. This recalcitrance makes me think why did USA adopt decimal currency in the first place, and not the LSD system as UK did?
My conspiracy theory: Food companies.
All quarts would have to become liters, which is a little more than a US quart.
All pounds would have to become a half-kilo, 1.1 pounds.
All food deliveries would have to INCREASE in size to go metric, and the price would be expected NOT to increase.
If a liter was a little LESS than a quart, or a half-kilo a little LESS than a pound, we would have switched years ago since that would be a source of instant profit while pretending to be civic-minded.
The soda companies are the only exception, having made the jump with the Two-liter bottle. Since the soda is so c
My conspiracy theory: Food companies.
All quarts would have to become liters, which is a little more than a US quart.
All pounds would have to become a half-kilo, 1.1 pounds.
All food deliveries would have to INCREASE in size to go metric, and the price would be expected NOT to increase.
If a liter was a little LESS than a quart, or a half-kilo a little LESS than a pound, we would have switched years ago since that would be a source of instant profit while pretending to be civic-minded.
The soda companies are the only exception, having made the jump with the Two-liter bottle. Since the soda is so cheap to produce, the costs savings afforded by the blow-molded 2 L bottle versus the classic 64 oz glass bottles dwarfed the costs incurred from addition of extra product.
Alcohol also made the jump, since 750 mL is less than the traditional 1/5 of a gallon (757mL) unit of alcohol sale.
It's all economics.
Further entertaining reading at Metrication in the United States.
Because the imperial system is superior to the metric system. No seriously, stop laughing. The imperial system is intrinsically better than metric.
Can you easily divide a meter by four? No, you get a fraction. Can you divide it by 3? You get a repeating fraction. You cannot easily and accurately represent one third of a meter!
One quarter of a yard is nine inches. One quarter of a foot is three inches. One third of a yard is a foot. One third of a foot is four inches. One third of a meter is 333.3333333333~ centimeters. Twelve is a much superior basis for a numbering system than ten. The follow
Because the imperial system is superior to the metric system. No seriously, stop laughing. The imperial system is intrinsically better than metric.
Can you easily divide a meter by four? No, you get a fraction. Can you divide it by 3? You get a repeating fraction. You cannot easily and accurately represent one third of a meter!
One quarter of a yard is nine inches. One quarter of a foot is three inches. One third of a yard is a foot. One third of a foot is four inches. One third of a meter is 333.3333333333~ centimeters. Twelve is a much superior basis for a numbering system than ten. The following description is copied wholesale and without apology from Wikipedia:
"The number twelve, a superior highly composite number, is the smallest number with four non-trivial factors (2, 3, 4, 6), and the smallest to include as factors all four numbers (1 to 4) within the subitizing range. As a result of this increased factorability of the radix and its divisibility by a wide range of the most elemental numbers (whereas ten has only two non-trivial factors: 2 and 5, with neither 3 nor 4), duodecimal representations fit more easily than decimal ones into many common patterns, as evidenced by the higher regularity observable in the duodecimal multiplication table. As a result, duodecimal has been described as the optimal number system.[1] Of its factors, 2 and 3 are prime, which means the reciprocals of all 3-smooth numbers (such as 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9...) have a terminating representation in duodecimal. In particular, the five most elementary fractions (1⁄2, 1⁄3, 2⁄3, 1⁄4 and 3⁄4) all have a short terminating representation in duodecimal (0.6, 0.4, 0.8, 0.3 and 0.9, respectively), and twelve is the smallest radix with this feature (because it is the least common multiple of 3 and 4). This all makes it a more convenient number system for computing fractions than most other number systems in common use, such as the decimal, vigesimal, binary, octal and hexadecimal systems."
And in conclusion, I offer this graphic explanation of why the Fahrenheit scale is superior to the Celsius scale:
USA has long used imperial system. Few folks in USA would not even know that the system that you are using is Imperial, and the Metric system is what the most of world is using.
Just look at the imperial system; what part of it is “fathomable”?
Now, given all this, one must be quick to judge, oh lets change to Metric system because what is more intuitive than Metric one right? Not really. Metric system has variants too.
But this does not mean imperial is superior over other. Metric, for sure, has upper hand in terms of its usability. Implying, 1000 meters is a kilometer, 1000 grams is a kilogram,
USA has long used imperial system. Few folks in USA would not even know that the system that you are using is Imperial, and the Metric system is what the most of world is using.
Just look at the imperial system; what part of it is “fathomable”?
Now, given all this, one must be quick to judge, oh lets change to Metric system because what is more intuitive than Metric one right? Not really. Metric system has variants too.
But this does not mean imperial is superior over other. Metric, for sure, has upper hand in terms of its usability. Implying, 1000 meters is a kilometer, 1000 grams is a kilogram, 1000 milliapms of current is 1 Amps etc.
Here comes the bottle neck; The cost of adopting Metric system (in USA).
Not like they havent tried..
Yes, we do have an experimental Metric signed legit Interstate freeway which indicates great urge for us to change over to Metric (at least the educated crowd does).
Yes, the signs on these roads do not belong to the league of those signs which usually say “Right lane ends, 1000ft”
The signs on the middle of freeway also shows you in KM.
Thats about it on the story of “Freeways with metric signs”
Yes, there are bunch of people who are tired of imagining 10 milk gallons when a gas pump reads that your car gobbled 10 gallons. I’d rather prefer, umm, 38 liters!
But at the end of the day, USA is capitalist country. All the expenditures must be justified by benefits. I and other citizens have once in past lived in country that is totally Metric. Yes, we understand that Metric system is “better for firsthand use” of measures. It is estimated that the cost of going all out on Metric system across the whole USA can be in Trillions. NASA claims its costs to convert its measurement systems would be over $370 million (and thats just limited to NASA).
Trivia: NASA lost $125 million when its Mars Climate Orbiter was destroyed after its altitude-control system mixed up U.S. customary units with metric units.
Lots of tries have been made, to have the metric system adopted. In 1866, President Andrew Johnson committed an act of treason in the eyes of the measurement community by signing into law an act of Congress that made it "lawful throughout the United States of America to employ the weights and measures of the metric system in all contracts, dealings or court proceedings." But even that couldn't kill the U.S. customary system. Neither could the push to convert in 1975 when Congress passed a similar Metric Conversion Act. Nor would our stubborn measuring ways die with the Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988.
In the end, it all boils down to “how tough is it for us to use Imperial system” and the answer to that is “Not that tough”. Yes, so you dont like gallon, but hey at least for the liquids that matters (Eg. your medicine dosages) FDA has adopted both systems. Next time you see your cough syrup with Hydrocodone, it will have dosage information in milliliter as well.
If you personally had to convert Imperial to Metric, the ever increasing adoption of smartphone makes it easy for any individual at any corner of country.
At the very end, every sovereign state has its choice to follow any measuring system it wants. USA just simply wants to follow Imperial. Primary reason behind it is “touch of familiarity” and “cost of adopting the change”.
Additional Reads on this
Why isn't the U.S. on the metric system?
http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/CostOfNonMetrication.pdf
They sort of have switched, but in a way that most Americans haven’t noticed and which doesn’t stop anyone from continuing to use the units they’re familiar with. As I understand it most of those traditional units are these days legally defined in metric, so a pound is so many grams and a mile is so many metres and so on. The deli scale may be showing that you’re buying precisely two ounces of cheese there, but as far as the scale’s calibration is concerned you bought 56.69904625 grams and it doesn’t care what the display says. Oddly volume seems to be the main exception as a US gallon is defi
They sort of have switched, but in a way that most Americans haven’t noticed and which doesn’t stop anyone from continuing to use the units they’re familiar with. As I understand it most of those traditional units are these days legally defined in metric, so a pound is so many grams and a mile is so many metres and so on. The deli scale may be showing that you’re buying precisely two ounces of cheese there, but as far as the scale’s calibration is concerned you bought 56.69904625 grams and it doesn’t care what the display says. Oddly volume seems to be the main exception as a US gallon is defined in cubic inches and obviously quarts and pints are derived from the gallon… but then again an inch is 1/36th of a yard and the official definition of a yard is apparently 0.9144 metres. So metric again.
Their electricians work in amps, volts, ohms and watts, which are all metric units. Small format film, when anyone still bought it, was 35mm. Terms prefixed with micro-, kilo-, mega- and so on, which being powers of ten are basically metric, are in daily use. Their track and field athletes train to run metric races or throw metric weighted objects like discus because while you could specialise in, say, a hundred yard sprint if you intend to compete at the Olympics or World Championships you may as well stick to the 100 metres. Many scientific and engineering work will be done in metric if only because everyone uses SI units for serious applications these days and the metric and SI systems have a lot of overlap. And most notably the US Army has been using kilometres for a century and most of their modern small arms and a lot of heavier weapons have calibre denoted in metric.
A US 155mm artillery piece
So it’s fairer to say that to a large extent the US uses the metric system, but to an even larger extent individual Americans have chosen to stick to what they’re comfortable with in day to day use. And you want to know the funny thing? To a degree they’re not the only ones.
Obviously imperial units are still used a lot in my native Britain. Proper ones too, so when you ask for a pint of beer you get 0.56 litres instead of 0.47. And of course road distances in the UK are also still in miles. But even down here in Australia where they’ve been officially and practically metric for decades you still sometimes hear the old terms being used informally, so a big footy player might be described as six and a half feet tall because it rolls off the tongue more easily that “198 centimetres”, or you might hear someone say something is miles away because precision isn’t necessary when you just mean a long way, or refer to a pound of flesh because there’s no need to convert old sayings to metric units. And standard gauge railways are 1435mm, which sounds arbitrary until you convert them to imperial and find that they’re a tenth of a millimetre away from 4 foot 8.5 inches, just like standard gauge in the UK and US.
So my thinking is that while metric is better to work in the old traditional units are often easier to talk about. It’s easier to say a 4x4 inch fence post and a 6 foot fence panel than it is to say 100mm by 100mm post and a 180 centimetre panel, and that’s rounding the metric ones into convenient numbers that are basically close enough equivalents. So when you’ve got a population of 330 million people who have a culture of doing their own thing there’s naturally a certain amount of inertia to overcome if you want to get them to switch units. Even the UK with a fifth of the population hasn’t fully made the switch. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily logical, but it is to be expected.
Because of the war.
But first, before I explain, a thought experiment:
Forget whatever logic argument you may have for metric, just imagine your own country wanting to switch to US customary units[*]. How receptive do you think the people would be? I'll tell you: not very. The people would hate it, they would oppose it, they would fight against it, and it would cost a fortune, so industry would also oppose it (at least initially).
People hate change. Especially change to something they have used since birth and have internalized to such a degree that it's second nature. Imagine your country ann
Because of the war.
But first, before I explain, a thought experiment:
Forget whatever logic argument you may have for metric, just imagine your own country wanting to switch to US customary units[*]. How receptive do you think the people would be? I'll tell you: not very. The people would hate it, they would oppose it, they would fight against it, and it would cost a fortune, so industry would also oppose it (at least initially).
People hate change. Especially change to something they have used since birth and have internalized to such a degree that it's second nature. Imagine your country announcing they will switch languages. Everyone has to learn the new language and the old one will no longer be used after x years. It wouldn't go over well. People might be forced to change depending on how determined the government would be, but they wouldn't be happy.
To continue that point: The UK switched to Metric in 1965. At the time most people were dead set against the switch. The switch only happened because industry forced it. Continental Europe had been entirely metric since the war, and industry in the UK was starting to see the higher cost of maintaining two production lines, one for Imperial and one for Metric. But even so, 50 years later, many Britons still refuse to move entirely to metric. Not just old ones either. I have a few young Brit friends here in Japan who insist on using Fahrenheit. Many still use inches and feet, and of course everyone still uses pounds and stone (which America doesn't use) for weight.
But anyway, moving on.
Mainland Europe switched to metric because they were building from the ground up after the war, so it made more sense to make the switch. UK switched because of industry pressure due to trade with the mainland. The other commonwealth countries switched basically because the UK did[†].
The US? The war didn't touch America: there was nothing to rebuild. Converting to metric would be too expensive, which is why industry always opposed it. Of course the people do too, but as mentioned above in both the thought experiment and in the case of the UK, people will always oppose large change.
I do imagine in the future, as the world continues to shrink, the US will eventually switch completely for the same reason the UK did. It will have nothing to do with logic (you can make arguments that US customary units are more logical for certain applications. But let's not get into that here; bottom line is it doesn't matter either way), it will be entirely because it will become too expensive for industry not to switch. And as they switch, the rest of America will follow. But it will take awhile.
*: There is some confusion that the US uses Imperial units. It doesn't. US customary units are similar to Imperial units but not the same. This is because both US customary units and Imperial units evolved separately from English units. Basically, both the US and Britain used English units at the time of the American Revolutionary War and sometime after the war both countries changed their respective systems into what they are today. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems
†: I'm not sure about Oz, but Canada still uses a mixture of Imperial and Metric, much like Britain.
- Why hasn't the US converted to the metric system?
Mostly because US educators made a brain dead tree stump stupid mistake about 40 years ago.
Schools all over the US began teaching “the metric system” by teaching kids how to CONVERT from English to Metric and back.
They took an unwieldy English system and made it WORSE with all that ‘conversion’ instead of simply teaching kids that their finger was a centimeter wide (or whatever), to hold their hands a meter apart, to pick up a heavy weight in one hand and call it a kilogram etc.
The Metric system is better for one and ONLY ONE reason: Conversions
- Why hasn't the US converted to the metric system?
Mostly because US educators made a brain dead tree stump stupid mistake about 40 years ago.
Schools all over the US began teaching “the metric system” by teaching kids how to CONVERT from English to Metric and back.
They took an unwieldy English system and made it WORSE with all that ‘conversion’ instead of simply teaching kids that their finger was a centimeter wide (or whatever), to hold their hands a meter apart, to pick up a heavy weight in one hand and call it a kilogram etc.
The Metric system is better for one and ONLY ONE reason: Conversions are trivial.
Teaching people to convert to English destroyed ALL of the value and made it counterproductive rather than beneficial to ‘use metric.’
Most people can’t tell you a inch or a foot to within 10% anyway. Just teach kids that “this much” is THIS MEASURE.
In a few years it would have been done.
And the road signs — they put up double signs. After 2 years they should have taken down the “Miles” and left only the kilometers.
Problem solved — but no.
The US federal government agreed with its major English-speaking trade partners, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, to switch to the metric system in the 1970s. A key component was that all government publications and notices would immediately switch to metric, and that private businesses would be required to label all products using metric units as the primary units and the traditional units as secondary descriptions. The big problem was that the US federal government did not first obtain consent from the 50 sovereign states, and the vast majority of the areas which had t
The US federal government agreed with its major English-speaking trade partners, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, to switch to the metric system in the 1970s. A key component was that all government publications and notices would immediately switch to metric, and that private businesses would be required to label all products using metric units as the primary units and the traditional units as secondary descriptions. The big problem was that the US federal government did not first obtain consent from the 50 sovereign states, and the vast majority of the areas which had to be changed were state responsibilities, not federal. And the US federal government did not intend to cover the costs to the individual states of the conversion. The individual states were just supposed to believe that in the end they would be economically better off. The cost of just changing the MILLIONS of speed limit signs and highway signs indicating the distance to various destinations was several billion dollars, and the states were expected to just absorb that cost because Washington said so. The states also would need to replace EVERY SCHOOL TEXT BOOK that had examples using traditional units with new textbooks. This is not just Physics texts, but also Math texts with questions like “A train starts from Boston going 60mph at the same time a train starts from New York 220 miles away at 50mph. When and where do they meet?” and Geography texts and maps with distances in miles, and all the yard sticks in all of the classrooms. The United Kingdom was a unitary state which had not yet devolved education in any of its components. New Zealand is a unitary state as well. Canada and Australia are federal states but with a long tradition of cooperative decision making so Canberra and Ottawa wouldn’t dream of making a decision like this without involving the states/provinces.
Actually despite over half a century of the use of the metric system in Canada most of the American traditional units are not a big issue. There are two exceptions:
- If I order a pint of beer, I am served the tiny American pint, 473ml, not the honest English pint of my youth, 568ml, or even the SI metric version typically served in Europe at 500ml! Even the Magna Carta enshrined my constitutional right to an honest pint of beer! If I buy beer in a bottle or can it is also the tiny 473ml foreign size. I accept that if I buy ground coffee at an American owned store like Starbucks I get 454g but I can always go to a Canadian store and get an honest 500g, but as for beer or soft drinks I am SOL.
- What the F**K is a British Thermal Unit and what does it have to do with air conditioners, furnaces, stoves, and barbecues? I sincerely doubt that the vast majority of Americans know what a BTU is without looking it up, and even then they will not understand what it means intuitively. How many times have you measured a pound of water into a sauce pan on your stove? A pint maybe or a quart, but a pound? And the American jingle “A pint’s a pound the world around” is a falsehood. It has only ever been true in the US. A pint of water in every other English-speaking country in the World is 1.25 pounds. So why do the so-called “engineers” responsible for heating and cooling in the US insist upon using units which their AMERICAN customers probably do not understand, rather than using Watts, which everybody on the entire planet, including the citizens of the Benighted States of America, has an intuitive grasp of. For that matter why does a nation which fought a bloody 7 year war against the King of Britain use a BRITISH Thermal Unit?
As an architect, I have worked on many metric projects around the world in my 40+ year career. Despite being American and living in New York, there were probably more metric projects on my resume than imperial. But my daily life is still feet, inches, quarts and gallons.
The doubters are always bringing up weird British units like drams, pecks and stone. Who uses these units? I don’t and I don’t kn
As an architect, I have worked on many metric projects around the world in my 40+ year career. Despite being American and living in New York, there were probably more metric projects on my resume than imperial. But my daily life is still feet, inches, quarts and gallons.
The doubters are always bringing up weird British units like drams, pecks and stone. Who uses these units? I don’t and I don’t know anyone else who does. Once you limit yourself to everyday units such as feet and quarts, it’s not so hard. As an architect, I dealt with fractions of an inch more than most. But we didn’t deal with 3/16 or 7/8 or 3/4. We used decimal fractions which could be easily added in the decimal system. (.1875, .875, .75) I had the decimal equivalent of common fractions well memorized. Besides, ft/in calculators were commonly found in architectural offices. I even wrote a script in Microsoft Excel to do ft/in calcs.
The metric system has its own peculiarities. Despite the frequent claim that it uses 10 as its base, 9 is more convenient, at least in architecture. As a Japanese architect I worked with once pointed out to me,...
The US has. NASA exclusively uses metric, which is why the incident occurred. The contractor inappropriately used the wrong units, and NASA didn’t check.
Cars must be marked in km/h. All goods sold, except milk and gasoline are labeled in metric. The fuel loaded into airplanes is measured in metric.
Every scientist and engineer uses metric. Cars are designed in metric, even if they deliberately include Imperial sizes for bolts and nuts, that’s deliberate anti-competitive action, dating back to the ’60s and ’70s when Japanese cars were taking over the US market, and using SI bolt sizes. The Ameri
The US has. NASA exclusively uses metric, which is why the incident occurred. The contractor inappropriately used the wrong units, and NASA didn’t check.
Cars must be marked in km/h. All goods sold, except milk and gasoline are labeled in metric. The fuel loaded into airplanes is measured in metric.
Every scientist and engineer uses metric. Cars are designed in metric, even if they deliberately include Imperial sizes for bolts and nuts, that’s deliberate anti-competitive action, dating back to the ’60s and ’70s when Japanese cars were taking over the US market, and using SI bolt sizes. The American makes went out of their way to not use SI sizes, to make sure to punish shops that worked on Japanese cars. Have to have multiple sets of tools…
Anyone who goes into the sciences or cares about them in the US is comfortable in both, but SI more.
The hilarious thing about all this to me is most of the insults about the “backward colony” with regards to American use of things is from England/UK, who invented it. “Soccer” (the term) was invented in England. It was local speak for Association Football, with Rugger (depreciated) for Rugby Football. When the Americans use the British term for Soccer, the British make fun of the Americans. Football is a mistaken translation of fubol, which the UK later adopted.
Same with the US using Imperial. Using the UK system is a reason for the UK to complain. “silly Americans, doing as we did.”
The US is metric. Many use it. Not all. And a few things are still Imperial-only. It’s much more mixed than some would have you think.
There would be a huge one-time cost to make the conversion and quite frankly most people/businesses do not want to bear it. Most Americans would be very angry to find out that a kilo weighs more than a pound but a centimetre is smaller than an inch. I can hear people complaining that the metric system should be consistent.
Someone once told me a story that at one point, Q&W introduced a 1/3 of a pound burger to compete with McDonald's quarter pounder The issue was that many Americans complained because they felt they were being ripped off, they couldn't tell that a 1/3 of a pound was more than
There would be a huge one-time cost to make the conversion and quite frankly most people/businesses do not want to bear it. Most Americans would be very angry to find out that a kilo weighs more than a pound but a centimetre is smaller than an inch. I can hear people complaining that the metric system should be consistent.
Someone once told me a story that at one point, Q&W introduced a 1/3 of a pound burger to compete with McDonald's quarter pounder The issue was that many Americans complained because they felt they were being ripped off, they couldn't tell that a 1/3 of a pound was more than 1/4 of a pound. I thought this was in jest, but then found this. The great third-pound burger ripoff
Most metric countries aren't very metric. Yes, Europe and especially continental Europe tends to be very metric. However, most still have a mixed system. In Canada when you buy bananas, you sometimes used to see two prices, the price per pound and the price per kilogram. The cash register receipts all stated the weight in kilograms. Today, most stores have consistent signs listing the price in pounds but the register gives you the weight in kilograms. Your weight, height is often in imperial but distances and speed are in metric. Temperature gets its own paragraph below.
Temperature in Canada is in Celsius and this is one area where I will admit that I have some confusion. Imperial measurement is "better" in that there is more of a range over "normal operating temperature", ie: 72 degrees Fahrenheit which is about 22.2222... degrees Celcius. Most doctors still measure temperature in Fahrenheit.
Math is easier in metric but there are certain things that for historic reasons used very old imperial measurements. If you buy gold or look at the price of precious metals, they're usually quoted in Troy ounces which is a whole other system of measurement, one troy ounce is slightly more than a standard imperial ounce. Contracts for oil are standardized set to a specific measurement, a "barrel" and even at a set temperature.
In the end for many things it won't take long for people to get used to things. Most businesses will post two prices one in metric and one in Imperial. The problem is that in many cases, there is a psychological point to pricing and there could be issues. This was brought out when Europe converted to the Euro. A law was passed stating that stores could only convert their prices, not change them. So businesses that were targeting price points like 9.99 in the old currency now had strange price points like 4.01, so something that looked like a bargain before now looked like a premium product At a very broad level, bargains end in .99 or .97, whereas premium/luxury is denoted by removing the decimals. To top it off, people usually only look at the numbers to the left of the decimal. So 4.99 seems closer to 4 than 5. In the case of businesses in Europe many tried to adjust and found that either they had to take a reduction in profit or deal with irate customers. Eventually businesses adjusted their pricing and things went back to normal.
Back to Canada. What you'll find is that many things are still sold in pounds or pound equivalents. So you'll often see a package of food and the weight will be listed at 454g (which is on pound.) I used to wonder why a cans of coke were 355ml but that 12 US fluid ounces. The metric system did win in some ways in that most Americans are familiar with a 2L bottle of Pepsi (which is about 67 ounces.) Or that a "cup" of water is defined as 250ml. Area house measurements are based on square feet.
The last point is that the US is an extremely litigious society and as such I'm sure there would be plenty of math lawsuits. Given the innumeracy of the average American, and I include US judges in that, it could be an extremely difficult and expensive change to make.
One last point. Most people do not know this but the French truly adopted the metric system after the French revolution. At the time there was a great shift towards decimalization and an attempt was made to do that for time as well. This did not work out because many people owned clocks, often it was their most expensive and prized possession. And any attempt to decimalize the clock would mean having to redo the old clocks or purchase new ones. There was push back and that's why we have 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute but after that its powers of 10, ie: milliseconds (1/1000) etc.
I’m going to tackle the argument about imperial measures being human-sized. I get it. I grew up in the UK, which is a bit of a fence-sitter in the unit conversion stakes. But here’s what I’ve found out on my travels.
If you speak to someone from a country where everything is metric and has been using metric their whole life, they’ve made the metric system human-sized. It’s all entirely relative and based on what you’re used to.
So, an inch is the approximate length of the end of your thumb. Yes, but a centimetre is the approximate width of your index finger.
100 degrees Fahrenheit is a very hot d
I’m going to tackle the argument about imperial measures being human-sized. I get it. I grew up in the UK, which is a bit of a fence-sitter in the unit conversion stakes. But here’s what I’ve found out on my travels.
If you speak to someone from a country where everything is metric and has been using metric their whole life, they’ve made the metric system human-sized. It’s all entirely relative and based on what you’re used to.
So, an inch is the approximate length of the end of your thumb. Yes, but a centimetre is the approximate width of your index finger.
100 degrees Fahrenheit is a very hot day. But 0 degrees Celsius is a very cold day, and the temperature where you’re likely to see frost and ice appearing.
Yards are often touted as being equivalent to a human stride. A yard is only slightly shorter than a metre as a unit of measurement and no less useful.
If you weigh 200lbs, you’re overweight. Guess what, if you weigh 100kg, you’re also overweight.
If you’re six feet tall, you’re considered tall. If you’re 2m tall, you’re considered very tall.
It’s just as easy to say 10 1/4 km as it is to say 10.25km and both are equally valid as an expression of distance.
I’ve even heard people talk about defining “metric feet”, “metric miles” and so on, to make conversion easier (a metric foot was to be 30 centimetres, a metric mile two kilometres, a metric pint 500ml, etc). They did it with the metric tonne, so why not with other units?
Because there’s absolutely no need.
Once people are familiar with the units, they make the associations themselves. It’s just those who are stuck between systems who will be confused.
I have seen many good answers here, but I feel like the strongest answer has yet to be said. I read this article (I can't find it, if I do I will post it, but it was based off of this book, or the author wrote it: Measuring America: How the United States Was Shaped by the Greatest Land Sale in History: Andro Linklater, Alan Sklar: 9781400130900: Amazon.com: Books), that talked about the distinctly American West Straight Lines. Now I am not talking about the States them self's per say, but more there counties. For example take a look at Ohio:
Look at those straight lines, all of these counties
I have seen many good answers here, but I feel like the strongest answer has yet to be said. I read this article (I can't find it, if I do I will post it, but it was based off of this book, or the author wrote it: Measuring America: How the United States Was Shaped by the Greatest Land Sale in History: Andro Linklater, Alan Sklar: 9781400130900: Amazon.com: Books), that talked about the distinctly American West Straight Lines. Now I am not talking about the States them self's per say, but more there counties. For example take a look at Ohio:
Look at those straight lines, all of these counties would be roughly the same size. Now you want to know why this was? (Of course you do, you are reading this) Any way long story short was, the Continental Congress decided to make more states, instead of incorporating land west of the Appalachian Mountains mountains into existing states (I mean, the claims at the time were not that biased.)
Any way, the short story of what happens is that, the American government (First under the North West Ordinance, and then continued under Federal Government) decided that they needed to know what lay on "their" land (Ignore Local Natives Living). Many people wanted this for different reasons, some wanted to exploit the resources, others wanted it for national defense (pretty handy knowing what the terrain is), but easily the most visible, and most easily argued point was Jefferson's "Yeomen Farmers" idea. He influenced this the most, as he believed in the "Yeomen Farmer" that the American Government (Among some other stuff) will survive if every one owned there own land and farmed. So what happened is the governments decided to send people across the nation with chains. To measure the WHOLE of the USA (OK, to the Mississippi River). What happened is the government gave survivors chains that had 100 loops long and were EXACTLY 22 yards long***(Go to bottom for math). They went across the nation noting every chain length. Through snow, heat, rain, swamp, mountain, natives, and what not. They did this. Pretty impressive, any way it gets much cooler. Going back to the first image, what Jefferson wanted was to take 1 perfectly square "county" that was (Tentatively going to say this, can't remember) 10 miles long, and then break it up further into 100 sub units, and then there would be 100 1 x 1 miles "units" or exactly 640 acres, or 2 groups of 320, so on (Fun Fact: 40 Acres gets in here for you history geeks that know about 40 Acres and a mule military order!).
Now at this point people are probably shaking there head thinking "and.... so what?". Well... we broke stuff down so far that we have houses labeled (And you wondered why houses often had the same dimensions of land, or multiples of that) areas. I kid you not, its on the house deed if you ever look at it.
The important part I am referring to is the "Government Lot 2 in Section 11, Township 43". Now I could not find the more correct version of this where it goes by State (Government), Section (County), Township (The 1X1 Miles Within Said County) Lot (Break the Township up once more, with a whole bunch of little square areas). But I shit you not, is the most convincing reason why to stay on the imperial system, as all that information is stored in the county/state records of land, go take a stroll some time if you are in the mid west and you will see no numbers (Unlike this picture) just simply State, Section, Township, Lot. Boom, done, nothing more. If you are going to convert from Imperial to Metric (Which I support) you have to convert every single one of these, and it will be a pain as you wont get even numbers for a lot of things, due to the conversion, and there might be land (And if there is oil there in 50 years....) loss. It can be done, but it would be a pain to convert all these different sections compared to places in feet to section to meters, as there is a lot of land. That's not even getting involved in the other arguments people have put out.
***(MATH TIME!!!!): Some people love to watch the world burn, now as I will/mentioned latter in what I wrote, on house deeds and such people need to know where there property line is, now as farming was the intended idea of this, large tracts of land were put down. So remembering/will learn that 1 Township is 1 Mile by 1 Mile. Now back to the chains. 22 Yards is 66 Feet. Now 66 goes into 5,280 Feet (1 Mile) exactly 80 times. I kid you not, go look it up now. Good. Now 80 is a nice number as it can be divided up into easy "quadrants", and so forth, to make squares within squares, within squares. So now that we have divided stuff up to multiples of 66 feet, we get the fun of transferring Feet to Meters. Hence how it will be nothing but a bitch to do.
I was given a great answer by my Fluid Mechanics teacher during one of our classes at university. Normally, some kids in my class often complained about why we worked pressures in lb/in^2 or worked with a friction coefficient in ft^2/s^2, or a variety of other units and the answer is quite simple:
We’re too far gone!
If we miraculously decided to switch everything to metric it would be an unmitigated disaster. Here’s why:
If we switched, every refinery,
water treatment plant,
gas station,
and others rated in ye old imperial would need to be rebuilt. Even things outside of the realm of fluids like in
I was given a great answer by my Fluid Mechanics teacher during one of our classes at university. Normally, some kids in my class often complained about why we worked pressures in lb/in^2 or worked with a friction coefficient in ft^2/s^2, or a variety of other units and the answer is quite simple:
We’re too far gone!
If we miraculously decided to switch everything to metric it would be an unmitigated disaster. Here’s why:
If we switched, every refinery,
water treatment plant,
gas station,
and others rated in ye old imperial would need to be rebuilt. Even things outside of the realm of fluids like infrastructure and car manufacturing would be adversely affected.
It would take decades and would more than likely devastate the US economy. And in all honesty, though people often complain about imperial being complicated, as many have already pointed out, that’s just a matter of poor public education for understanding these units of measure.
This also isn’t some greedy corporate scheme or some antiquated politician pulling the strings. The system worked, so we continued with it. Does it set us behind other countries? That’s always a possibility, but through dialogues in trade we counteract that major difference with safety ratings and manufacturing requirements that can be met in our system as well as the system of a foreign country.
No wonder we have been one of the biggest recipients of FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) around the world. We set the counterbalances in place to be as friendly as possible for foreign business operations so that they can pretty smoothly build their factories or refineries right here in the good old USA!
In short, switching is a bad idea, and despite the haters, the system works and should remain. (My education as a chemical engineer would also be a lie, so please don’t change it!)
Why do you say “again”? The US never used it. I remember that in the mid-70s the US government declared that we would be fully metric in “ten years".
But we Americans are too stubborn, and maybe too stupid to adjust to a new system, even though the rest of the world managed.
The only countries that aren't metric are us , Liberia,and Myanmar.
Do you remember when an international mars probe crashed because the US sent their data in feet, inches,miles without converting the numbers to the metric system, as used by THE REST OF THE WORLD?
You mean completely switched.
It is estimated that US measurements used by the general public are about 80% or more English (actually, the US Customary System version of English
) and only 20% metric, and metric use is much higher in manufacturing industries.Logical? Yes and no. From a technological and global trade perspective it may not seem logical, but from the practical, marketing, and political perspectives it does.
There are four short-list reasons the latter three have prevailed.
- No one made us change. The Metric Conversion Act of 1975 was voluntary. People don’t like change or making an
Footnotes
You mean completely switched.
It is estimated that US measurements used by the general public are about 80% or more English (actually, the US Customary System version of English
) and only 20% metric, and metric use is much higher in manufacturing industries.Logical? Yes and no. From a technological and global trade perspective it may not seem logical, but from the practical, marketing, and political perspectives it does.
There are four short-list reasons the latter three have prevailed.
- No one made us change. The Metric Conversion Act of 1975 was voluntary. People don’t like change or making an effort without an immediate, apparent benefit for themselves unless compelled, and this is particularly true of Americans.
- Marketing. Manufacturers and distributors are willing to accommodate the US system. The US is a big and highly competitive market, and changes that adversely affect marketshare are avoided. But what about 2 liter soda bottles?Pepsi’s change to the 2 liter bottle in 1970 was a part of the Coke vs Pepsi war to gain market share, actually playing upon consumer ignorance of the metric system. Coke followed. That is why consumers buy liters of Coke and Pepsi, but still buy them in smaller cans, plastic bottles, and glass bottles labeled in ounces. Market research determined there was no advantage to switching to metrics on the smaller sizes, but there was in having different sizes available in ounces. Cans come in 7.5 and 12 ounces, plastic bottles in 20 and 16.9 ounces, and glass in 8 and 12 ounces - and the sizes have changed over the years. Coke just introduced a new 13.2 ounce bottle this year. Why 13.2 ounces and not .4 liters or 390 milliliters (both rounded)? Marketing.
- Politics. The “America First, Make America Great Again” mantra is not new. The most recent previous incarnation was under Reagan in the 1980s, and some cheered when he dissolved the U.S. Metric Board at the suggestion of political advisors. To some, nothing says “I’m a loyal American” like saying f**k you to foreign outsiders. Pushing the metric system has become a political loser for elected officials. In 2015, only about 20% of US voters favor switching to the metric system, while about 60% definitely oppose it. Enough said.
- Old people like me. I used the metric system almost daily when working for an industrial cutting tool manufacturer in the 80s and then in supply chain management in the 90s and 2000s. Yet, I still have trouble visualizing length, distance, and volume using the metric system. Please don’t send me any helpful tricks. I’ve tried them all. You know all the metric measures that appear along with the English version on many products? Yeah, we older people tend to ignore them.
By the way, I know all about the history of metrics in the United States, dating back to Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, the Metric Act of 1866, the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, and President Reagan dissolved the U.S. Metric Board in 1982.
Doesn’t matter. Marketing and politics will continue to dominate. It could help if the government gave businesses tax incentives to move to metric measurements for consumer products, but only if the incentives were more profitable than possible losses in market share, and that would most likely be too costly. The importation of consumer products labeled according to the metric system is helping. The other thing that will help is old folks like me dying. Don’t rush us. We’re getting there.
Footnotes
While some memes make this claim, the United States is not the only country that uses measurements besides the metric system.
The UK is another very obvious example, although some British people don’t seem to be aware of this (I suspect this is because they don’t know how to drive a car):
All of the road distances in the UK are in Imperial Units which overlap with US Customary Units, which the UK also translates to regional languages like Welsh:
Many English-speaking countries in the Caribbean region use Fahrenheit or a mix of Fahrenheit and Celsius, despite being otherwise metric. This includes
While some memes make this claim, the United States is not the only country that uses measurements besides the metric system.
The UK is another very obvious example, although some British people don’t seem to be aware of this (I suspect this is because they don’t know how to drive a car):
All of the road distances in the UK are in Imperial Units which overlap with US Customary Units, which the UK also translates to regional languages like Welsh:
Many English-speaking countries in the Caribbean region use Fahrenheit or a mix of Fahrenheit and Celsius, despite being otherwise metric. This includes Bermuda, Belize, the British Virgin Islands, and Jamaica.
Finally, many countries use their older measuring systems with specific things like lengths of wood. For example, Japan still heavily uses Japanese units of measurement in the construction industry and when measuring parts of musical instruments.
In a sense, American lengths are metric. Before 1933, the American inch turned out to be 2.540005 centimeters. In 1933, we (well, most of us) said the heck with it, and changed the definition of an inch to be exactly 2.54 cm. So the inch is basically a metric unit! It’s a good idea, since standards organizations are constantly trying to define more and more precisely the value of a given length, the inch now gets to piggyback its accuracy based on better and better definitions of what the meter is.
Of course not everybody converted from the 2.540005 cm definition. All the maps in made by the US
In a sense, American lengths are metric. Before 1933, the American inch turned out to be 2.540005 centimeters. In 1933, we (well, most of us) said the heck with it, and changed the definition of an inch to be exactly 2.54 cm. So the inch is basically a metric unit! It’s a good idea, since standards organizations are constantly trying to define more and more precisely the value of a given length, the inch now gets to piggyback its accuracy based on better and better definitions of what the meter is.
Of course not everybody converted from the 2.540005 cm definition. All the maps in made by the USGS use the old one, and across the width of the United States, the accumulated error on all the maps would be on the order of 30 feet.
The US had it’s chance in 1790, when Thomas Jefferson, an accomplished scientist, proposed adopting the metric system, and requested a reference Meter and Kilogram from France, but in 1793 the ship carrying Joseph Dombey bearing the instruments was blown off course, and captured by pirates.
By the time replacement measures arrived, the moment had passed, and a new secretary of state, Edmund Randolph, wasn’t interested. At that time, the importance of accurate measurements was growing, and imperial measures became entrenched in commerce, and have become hard to replace, at least in common use.
It
The US had it’s chance in 1790, when Thomas Jefferson, an accomplished scientist, proposed adopting the metric system, and requested a reference Meter and Kilogram from France, but in 1793 the ship carrying Joseph Dombey bearing the instruments was blown off course, and captured by pirates.
By the time replacement measures arrived, the moment had passed, and a new secretary of state, Edmund Randolph, wasn’t interested. At that time, the importance of accurate measurements was growing, and imperial measures became entrenched in commerce, and have become hard to replace, at least in common use.
It is possible - the UK went through several phases of “metrication” and “decimalisation” in the 1960s and 1970s, from linear measurement, to weights, and temperatures, and finally currency (which was previously on a base-12/20 system!). While imperial units persist in occasional common use, most citizens are comfortable with meters, kilograms, and degrees Celsius, (but interestingly, drive miles, not kilometers).
Maybe you don’t recall because you are too young, but the United States did try and switch to the Metric System.
You may not remember when the federal government forced adding Kilometers Per Hour to all the speed limit signs and distances in kilometers on road signs, or mandated that all cars have the speed shown in both miles and kilometers per hour.
They also mandated teaching kids the metric system in school.
It didn’t work, everyone just ignored it and kept using the system that they were used to and the government gave up.
But some residual effects remain, my car still shows kilometers per ho
Maybe you don’t recall because you are too young, but the United States did try and switch to the Metric System.
You may not remember when the federal government forced adding Kilometers Per Hour to all the speed limit signs and distances in kilometers on road signs, or mandated that all cars have the speed shown in both miles and kilometers per hour.
They also mandated teaching kids the metric system in school.
It didn’t work, everyone just ignored it and kept using the system that they were used to and the government gave up.
But some residual effects remain, my car still shows kilometers per hour, and packaging still shows both the standard and metric measurements on them.
It wasn’t always that way, I remember when a quart of milk was just a quart of milk.
Road signs though have reverted to just showing miles per hour and distances are just in miles.
Because the US has a greater focus on personal travel and the imperial system is better for daily calculations involving time/distance.
When you travel at 60 miles per hour one mile equates to one minute.
How long to Hancock? 3 minutes.
Washington D.C.? 106 minutes.
Baltimore? 108 minutes.
There’s just no easy calculation with kilometers per hour.
Granted, when you’re reliant on mass transit you don’t really need to think about it. You can just look at the train schedule and hope its on time.
But for a country like the US which has one of, if not the, highest rate of personal vehicle ownership in the
Because the US has a greater focus on personal travel and the imperial system is better for daily calculations involving time/distance.
When you travel at 60 miles per hour one mile equates to one minute.
How long to Hancock? 3 minutes.
Washington D.C.? 106 minutes.
Baltimore? 108 minutes.
There’s just no easy calculation with kilometers per hour.
Granted, when you’re reliant on mass transit you don’t really need to think about it. You can just look at the train schedule and hope its on time.
But for a country like the US which has one of, if not the, highest rate of personal vehicle ownership in the world?
The imperial system makes much more sense than the metric system.
The United States has not officially switched to the metric system, also known as the International System of Units (SI), and it's an interesting subject that raises some questions. The fact is, the United States, along with Liberia and Myanmar, is one of the three countries in the world that have not officially adopted the metric system. But why is that? Well, the answer is a combination of histo
The United States has not officially switched to the metric system, also known as the International System of Units (SI), and it's an interesting subject that raises some questions. The fact is, the United States, along with Liberia and Myanmar, is one of the three countries in the world that have not officially adopted the metric system. But why is that? Well, the answer is a combination of historical, cultural, and economic factors.
First, the United States has a long history of using the imperial system of measurements, and changing it would require a significant amount of effort and resources. Imagine the amount of work it would take to change all the road signs, update all the equipment, and re-educate an entire nation. It would be a monumental task.
Additionally, the United States has a relatively closed economy, meaning it doesn't rely heavily on international trade. So, it doesn't feel the pressure to conform to the measurements used by other countries. It's worth noting that the United States has adopted the metric system in some areas, such as science, medicin...
Well I have never seen so many nonsensical defences of the Imperial system.
The odd thing is that the US accepts the system of the hated Cornwallis and the Redcoats, (eg the British Thermal Unit) and do not accept a system from their oldest ally, the French, because it was proposed a mere eight years after the Treaty of Paris, and two years after Jefferson returned from being the French Ambassador.
The US doesn’t use metric because it won’t adopt standards invented after 1776, it seems. The benefit to US industry (only having to make one product for home and export) would be immense, not to ment
Well I have never seen so many nonsensical defences of the Imperial system.
The odd thing is that the US accepts the system of the hated Cornwallis and the Redcoats, (eg the British Thermal Unit) and do not accept a system from their oldest ally, the French, because it was proposed a mere eight years after the Treaty of Paris, and two years after Jefferson returned from being the French Ambassador.
The US doesn’t use metric because it won’t adopt standards invented after 1776, it seems. The benefit to US industry (only having to make one product for home and export) would be immense, not to mention the time saved every day in simple weights and measures.
This is why Chip and PIN (smart cards) and GSM (and therefore SMS) were so late to the US, and why it doesn’t have high-speed rail, and insists on its own banking system (ABA routing rather than IBAN the rest of the world use), NTSC TV instead of PAL and the curious practices of not using different colors on banknotes, and expressing dates month first. All unique to the US, and the rest of the world is in line with each other (well China does yy/mm/dd which is even more logical).
If it’s obviously better, does it matter which country invented it? The US is only 5% of the world, and not the ‘top’ country (that’s Norway or Qatar depending which metric you use), so why not go with the flow.
The UK used imperial measurements until the 1970s, when a concerted move was made to go metric. (We also used to have non-metric money, think of that!) We still measure roads in miles (and car speedometers are so calibrate), but in nearly everything else we are metric, because it’s obviously much simpler. There are still some old eccentrics who yearn for the ‘good old days’ of feet/inches and pounds/ounces, but even they don’t want subdivisions.
We are, piece by piece.
We started in the 18th century by decimalizing our money: $10 = eagle, $1 = dollar, $0.10 = disme (dime), $0.01 = cent, $0.001 = mill
The Ampere, Coulomb and Watt were adopted before 1900. The second was included into the SI so why not go with it?
Very small lengths have been metricized: millimeters, micrometers (microns, to distinguish the unit of length from the precision measuring device), nanometers.
Swimming, track and field and many other athletic endeavors are metricized: we run 400 m races instead of 440 yard races. (This is not complete, since the mile run is an ev
We are, piece by piece.
We started in the 18th century by decimalizing our money: $10 = eagle, $1 = dollar, $0.10 = disme (dime), $0.01 = cent, $0.001 = mill
The Ampere, Coulomb and Watt were adopted before 1900. The second was included into the SI so why not go with it?
Very small lengths have been metricized: millimeters, micrometers (microns, to distinguish the unit of length from the precision measuring device), nanometers.
Swimming, track and field and many other athletic endeavors are metricized: we run 400 m races instead of 440 yard races. (This is not complete, since the mile run is an event.)
Back in the 1970s, some bright marketers decided to sell soft drinks in 2 L bottles instead of 2 quart bottles, saying that they offered more for the same price. Others followed, and now the two-liter bottle is standard. It would be nice if a similar operation was performed on milk.
Medicines were dispensed by the grain. They are now dispensed in the appropriate metric unit: gram, milligram, microgram. The quantity of alcohol in the blood is in mg/dL.
So, we are converting to metric units, in the slow, half-ass way we usually approach things that we don’t feel are emergencies…like (unfortunately) universal health care.
Math phobia. Most United States citizens are reluctant to engage problems that require numeracy to solve, and this has a big effect on many peoples’ interaction with base-10 math, which ...
America? Who's America? I knew a woman named America and a few men named Americo. Including Americo Vespucci.
Well, regarding standardized systems of units and measurement, there isn't one named “The Metric System”. The system in widest use in the world is known as the “SI" — or “The International System".
The USA has adopted it too (by Congressional Act, signed by President Ford). It is already in use in the USA. A large fraction of the industry is employing it.
Sure the public at large still is not apt. But that's normal. It may take a century for the new generations to learn it and to become p
America? Who's America? I knew a woman named America and a few men named Americo. Including Americo Vespucci.
Well, regarding standardized systems of units and measurement, there isn't one named “The Metric System”. The system in widest use in the world is known as the “SI" — or “The International System".
The USA has adopted it too (by Congressional Act, signed by President Ford). It is already in use in the USA. A large fraction of the industry is employing it.
Sure the public at large still is not apt. But that's normal. It may take a century for the new generations to learn it and to become proficient.
Costs money, and the only real advantage is we are using the same system as everyone else.
Otherwise, there’s literally nothing wrong with the Imperial units of measurement. The only argument I ever hear is “The metric system is easier to remember” because it is based on the number 10.
Okay, but I memorized how many feet were in a mile when I was in elementary school. I kind of got this. It’s not that difficult.
When your main argument is “I can’t remember this bit of trivia that other people can easily remember” which doesn’t even come up pretty much ever when actually measuring things like dist
Costs money, and the only real advantage is we are using the same system as everyone else.
Otherwise, there’s literally nothing wrong with the Imperial units of measurement. The only argument I ever hear is “The metric system is easier to remember” because it is based on the number 10.
Okay, but I memorized how many feet were in a mile when I was in elementary school. I kind of got this. It’s not that difficult.
When your main argument is “I can’t remember this bit of trivia that other people can easily remember” which doesn’t even come up pretty much ever when actually measuring things like distance, oh well.
That’s not worth the billions of dollars it will take to change it.
I also know how far away five miles is. I’ve lived it my whole like. Tell it to me in kilometers, and I will ask, how far is that in miles?
The metric system is convenient for you and it is what you know.
It is not convenient for me and it costs a lot of money to switch.
Same reason some countries drive on the left, and most drive on the right. The few holdouts that drive the other way, they’re used to it, and it costs a ton of money to switch.
Even if it is confusing to you, it’s NOT confusing to me, and that was my country that I was living in, so the stuff that works for me is the stuff I would rather have.
The Imperial system is ripe for parody. Liquid measurements are pretty laughable, I get it.
But I also pretty much only ever use gallons and pints. I don’t care at all about hogsheads.
I can’t picture offhand how much 40 milliliters of water is. I know you can, and that’s great.
Imagine if somehow, everyone else in the world used the imperial system and the Fahrenheit scale, and the numbers just so happened to be easier to remember, in this fantasy land. Okay.
So, now you have to learn a whole new unfamiliar system, have to constantly consult a conversion chart, and it costs your country billions.
I never got what was so better about the Celsius scale. Other than water freezing at 0 instead of 32 (wow, so hard to remember) and boiling at 100 instead of 212 (also ever so hard to remember), what is the big advantage?
If I measure anything now, the measurement is absolutely worthless to me unless I use decimals.
The scale in whole numbers is not very precise. You have to use decimals to get an accurate temperature reading, almost all of the time.
If you told me what the temperature was like outside in Fahrenheit, you can just give me a whole number, and I know exactly what that feels like, assuming it is a temperature humans can survive in.
Tell me it is 14 degrees out in Celsius and I am like, okay. And in Fahrenheit, that equates to what? Cool-ish?
Not useful to me.
Now I live in Norway, and I absolutely have to use this system that is ever so much better.
Look, on the ruler, everything is in centimeters now. Great. The temperature is in Celsius. Awesome.
If it were in degrees Kelvin, would that be objectively better than Celsius? Someone could make that argument.
IT IS SO MUCH EASIER BECAUSE YOU NEVER NEED TO GO BELOW ZERO THAT MAKES IT BETTER.
That doesn’t mean it is cheap to switch, easy to learn, or actually more convenient in any way.
It means you never have to use the negative sign, whoopdy-doo, Basil.
Someone not using the Kelvin scale is not dumber than you. The argument you’re using for a Celsius thermometer is basically that you prefer your scales to start at the number 0 and end at the number 100, because you like those numbers.
32 is a perfectly legitimate number, and not really harder to remember than zero, folks.
And if we are talking about literally any other temperature, it’s not exactly zero or 100, now, is it?
So it really, really, does not ever matter that those two numbers are rounder.
It’s actually a childish argument. I don’t like the number 32 because the universe just does not make sense if water freezes at 32 degrees and I prefer it to be zero instead.
Okay.
Look, I am not saying the Fahrenheit scale is obviously or even arguably better than the Celsius scale.
I am saying, the Celsius scale’s benefits in no way come close to outweighing the negatives for someone who grew up knowing the Fahrenheit scale.
It is inconvenient, less precise in whole numbers, and literally the only argument for using this scale is either because a lot of people do it (a lot used to use Fahrenheit, that’s not an argument) or because you prefer water to boil at an easy to remember number.
Because when you turn on your stove, you have to input a precise number, right?
Or you just twist a knob and let the water boil, and it boils at the correct temperature regardless which temperature scale you use.
All the arguments for Celsius temperature scale are basically as unpersuasive to me as using the Kelvin scale.
None of these scales are actually objectively superior to the other.
And I have no idea how tall someone is if you tell it to me in meters or centimeters. Give me feet and inches and I know it.
If I have to be a witness to a crime, I’m going to give the height of the suspect in what I know. You pull out your conversion tables and deal with it.
Sorry. It’s what I know. Someday, no one will know it.
Well, here in Norway, people grow up learning Norwegian, even though in no other country is Norwegian the primary language.
So? It’s what YOU know. It’s what is convenient for you.
Maybe someday there won’t be a Norwegian language, but you’re in no hurry to make that happen, won’t spend billions of dollars to make it happen, still teach in Norwegian primarily, and you really don’t give a flying fig that a lot more people speak Chinese, or Arabic.
Yeah, a lot of folks do it that way, you don’t.
Relax, people. Not everyone has to understand the world the same way. It’s okay, chill the eff out.
The metric system is a legal form of measurement in the US, and is used in certain administrative capacities, but the reason why it isn't commonly used is that by the time the metric system was up and running in Europe, the growing US had already standardized its use of English units and had no real external pressure to convert.
Back when the metric system was being developed in France at the turn of the 19th Century, and the US still figuring out its weights and measures (which were not uniform across the States), the US and France were on less-than friendly terms. As such, France did not invi
The metric system is a legal form of measurement in the US, and is used in certain administrative capacities, but the reason why it isn't commonly used is that by the time the metric system was up and running in Europe, the growing US had already standardized its use of English units and had no real external pressure to convert.
Back when the metric system was being developed in France at the turn of the 19th Century, and the US still figuring out its weights and measures (which were not uniform across the States), the US and France were on less-than friendly terms. As such, France did not invite a US delegation to its international convention to study the metric system in 1798.
When the US undertook a more rigorous study of the metric system in 1821, per the Constitutional authority to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures (Art. I, Sec. 8)," President John Quincy Adams concluded (in brief) that while the metric system was pretty cool, the system of weights and measurements in the US was sufficiently standardized as to warrant no further changes.
The use of a single system of weights and measurements across Europe was a more urgent matter as the nations' economies became more intermingled in the 19th Century, a trend which spread to their colonies abroad. It would be the growth of commerce between the US and a fully-metric Europe in the 20th Century (and Canada's conversion in 1973) that would be the impetus for the US' Metric Conversion Act of 1975 - 109 years after the metric system's legalization - that declared the metric system "the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce."
But for the average American, there is still no major, external pressure on their daily activities to compel their conversion (international perceptions of Americans being unduly stubborn notwithstanding). Miles and pounds works fine for them, so kilometers and kilograms will have to take a backseat.
Besides, adding 33 feet of length to every football field in the US to convert them from 100 yards to 100 meters (plus converting end zones from 10 yards to 10 meters) would be a hassle.
Quick answer: Because there is no need to. Why?
- All engineering, manufacturing and scientific work is done using the metric system and has been for the past 25 years. Note these tend to be world-wide entities.
- Day to day usage does not require nor benefit from the Metric system. Feet, miles, quarts and cups, Ounces and pounds work just fine in the kitchen, on roads, on scales for people and volume measurement. For example, changing all speed limit signs from Mile Per Hour (MPH) to Kilometers per Hour (KPH) has zero benefit to drivers and on the down side, costs a lot of money and confusion to im
Quick answer: Because there is no need to. Why?
- All engineering, manufacturing and scientific work is done using the metric system and has been for the past 25 years. Note these tend to be world-wide entities.
- Day to day usage does not require nor benefit from the Metric system. Feet, miles, quarts and cups, Ounces and pounds work just fine in the kitchen, on roads, on scales for people and volume measurement. For example, changing all speed limit signs from Mile Per Hour (MPH) to Kilometers per Hour (KPH) has zero benefit to drivers and on the down side, costs a lot of money and confusion to implement. We do not export Miles, Feet and Inches. SO, once again, please let me know what benefits we would gain from converting non-exportable domestic measurements to Metric. How useful is expressing the volume of a teaspoon as: 4.9289e-6 Cubic Meters, or ~ 5 ml.? I know hat a Teaspoon is, and don’t need it expressed as some small fraction of some other volumetric measurement.
We use the traditional standard called US customary measurement system. It’s a subset of the British Imperial measurement system that was adopted after our revolution against Britain. Why don’t we use the metric system? National pride, mostly, in my opinion. Just because everyone else is using it, doesn’t mean we need to. We’re the largest economy in the world, people should be building to OUR standards if they want to sell to us, not the other way around.
Truth be told, however, we do use the metric system, as well as the US customary measurement system. The healthcare and military fields have
We use the traditional standard called US customary measurement system. It’s a subset of the British Imperial measurement system that was adopted after our revolution against Britain. Why don’t we use the metric system? National pride, mostly, in my opinion. Just because everyone else is using it, doesn’t mean we need to. We’re the largest economy in the world, people should be building to OUR standards if they want to sell to us, not the other way around.
Truth be told, however, we do use the metric system, as well as the US customary measurement system. The healthcare and military fields have been metric for decades. We buy two-liter bottles of soda pop. We buy 750 ml bottles of booze. We measure the grams of fat in our food, the micrograms of vitamin c in our pills. Nobody buys a “lid” of pot, anymore; we buy grams. Our bottled water isn’t in pints, it’s in half-liter bottles.
Mostly because we in the US are stubborn, and a massive change (or so it appears to us) at the national level is, we think, overwhelming (and, to most Americans' way of thinking, unnecessary) to implement. Unfortunately, attitudes in the US can be Europhobic and even global-phobic, in the sense of "Why should we do it the way they do? It works just fine for us," etc. You'll notice we still use the worthless penny, and all our paper money has looked the same, apart from some very superficial changes, for a century.
1915 $5 dollar bill, which is really very similar in all major ways to today's $5
Mostly because we in the US are stubborn, and a massive change (or so it appears to us) at the national level is, we think, overwhelming (and, to most Americans' way of thinking, unnecessary) to implement. Unfortunately, attitudes in the US can be Europhobic and even global-phobic, in the sense of "Why should we do it the way they do? It works just fine for us," etc. You'll notice we still use the worthless penny, and all our paper money has looked the same, apart from some very superficial changes, for a century.
1915 $5 dollar bill, which is really very similar in all major ways to today's $5 bill. For all the US's dynamism, we can be very slow to embrace change at a federal level.
As others will no doubt point out, the US did make a major metrication effort in the 1970s, which failed and which you can read about in articles like this: ‘Whatever Happened to the Metric System?’ by John Bemelmans Marciano
Others will also tell you that the US in many ways does use the Metric system. All food labels show Metric equivalents. It's used in many official capacities. However, this line of discussion tends to overestimate the extent which Americans know Metric measurements (and Celsius temperatures). In reality and daily life, such measurements are not only not used, but they're also not conceptualized.
Americans already use the metric system. They are not all aware of it. Gradually with imported goods from other parts of the world that metric system will spread.
Many industries and all science are metric because they work in conjunction with the world. There is no benefit by being incompatible.
We went metric officially some fifty years ago. Most people are quite content with that. But there are still some small areas of hold outs that maintain non metric units for some purposes.
So I can see the same future gradually taking effect in the USA. The difficulty is that for some things there must b
Americans already use the metric system. They are not all aware of it. Gradually with imported goods from other parts of the world that metric system will spread.
Many industries and all science are metric because they work in conjunction with the world. There is no benefit by being incompatible.
We went metric officially some fifty years ago. Most people are quite content with that. But there are still some small areas of hold outs that maintain non metric units for some purposes.
So I can see the same future gradually taking effect in the USA. The difficulty is that for some things there must be universal agreement. When you see a road sign marked “60” we must all agree that it is either in miles per hour or in kilometres per hour. Hence to make some changes requires a legislative approach.
So when we “went metric” it involved saying that all speedos must be calibrated in km/hr and all speed signs must mean km/hr.
It didn’t force people to stop using imperial measures. It did say that you couldn’t FAIL to put metric measures on products. Most packages in the USA already conform to this principle.
The U.S. official position is that metric is the preferred system for measurement. In the U.S.it is a matter over which Congress has complete jurisdiction (U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 8). Congress officially approved use of the metric system in 1866. Despite this official encouragement, not many industries or businesses have switched to the metric system.
The main reason is that it is expensive and difficult to make the switch and, in most cases, there is little or no immediate benefit. In fact, in many cases there could be a negative market reaction from domestic U.S. markets, as US
The U.S. official position is that metric is the preferred system for measurement. In the U.S.it is a matter over which Congress has complete jurisdiction (U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 8). Congress officially approved use of the metric system in 1866. Despite this official encouragement, not many industries or businesses have switched to the metric system.
The main reason is that it is expensive and difficult to make the switch and, in most cases, there is little or no immediate benefit. In fact, in many cases there could be a negative market reaction from domestic U.S. markets, as US customers may prefer to purchase equipment that can be maintained using SAE tools. So the resistance is understandable. Markets will not likely force the change. The only way the conversion will occur is if it is done gradually and there is some kind of government incentive to do so.
I expect that the last hold-out against the metric system will be the NFL. Converting yards to metres would make it more difficult to get first-downs and field goals, not to mention changing the entire vocabulary of football announcers.
Aside from the fact that virtually nobody in the U.S. — aside from scientists and world travelers — has any real experience with the metric system, I do believe there is one good practical reason for retaining at least one non-metric measurement.
When it comes to weather in particular, I think Fahrenheit is a better way than Celsius to measure temperature. Why? Because for the typical range of weather conditions, Fahrenheit allows you to be more accurate without employing the use of decimals. Consider the following:
While this doesn’t show the negatives in Fahrenheit, you can see that there are
Aside from the fact that virtually nobody in the U.S. — aside from scientists and world travelers — has any real experience with the metric system, I do believe there is one good practical reason for retaining at least one non-metric measurement.
When it comes to weather in particular, I think Fahrenheit is a better way than Celsius to measure temperature. Why? Because for the typical range of weather conditions, Fahrenheit allows you to be more accurate without employing the use of decimals. Consider the following:
While this doesn’t show the negatives in Fahrenheit, you can see that there are simply more numbers in the Fahrenheit system compared to the Celsius system. 30°C can be anywhere from 85 to 87°F. While that may not affect your decision on whether to wear a jacket or shorts, there is something to be said about conveying accuracy.
Perhaps a more apt example. I’m a physician. If a nurse were to tell me that a patient has a temperature of 38°C, I would need to know a decimal. If it were 37.5°C and rounded up, then the patient would simply be running a high-normal temperature (99.5°F). I would keep a watchful eye, but I wouldn’t do anything in particular. On the other hand, if it were 38.4°C and rounded down, the patient would be running a considerable fever of 101.4°F. Just by using whole numbers, you can for the most part quantify whether someone has a fever or not. That’s useful for medical laity. If a patient says they were about 101°F this morning, I know they had a fever. If they say they were about 38°C, I don’t necessarily know that without a decimal.
tl;dr — Fahrenheit allows you to be more accurate for practical purposes. It is therefore more useful for non-scientists. Aside from this, switching to metric would constitute an unnecessary change for most Americans, whose system works perfectly well for them.
Primarily because to many American’s don’t like what they perceive as change, and no politician is going to enforce it.
That said, there are a number of things in Metric, including things that we buy like soda in 2L bottles. The auto industry has gone metric with bolts for years.
So we haven’t swapped out speed limit signs and started listing gasoline in L instead of Gal. No politician wants to expend political capital on something that to be perfectly honest, isn’t going to improve the lives of Americans.
And anyone of moderate intelligence can do the conversion. For those with less than moderat
Primarily because to many American’s don’t like what they perceive as change, and no politician is going to enforce it.
That said, there are a number of things in Metric, including things that we buy like soda in 2L bottles. The auto industry has gone metric with bolts for years.
So we haven’t swapped out speed limit signs and started listing gasoline in L instead of Gal. No politician wants to expend political capital on something that to be perfectly honest, isn’t going to improve the lives of Americans.
And anyone of moderate intelligence can do the conversion. For those with less than moderate intelligence, they can google ‘2 gallons in liters’ and it tells you
Or you pull out one of several thousand apps on your smartphone to do it for you.
Personally, I think lots of Americans simply don’t care, but those who do will pitch a fit, and politicians will back off this because as I said, there’s really no express benefit besides being like everyone else.
I’m all for doing it, but there are at least several dozen other things I’d rather have my government spend time, effort and my tax dollars fixing first.
The US has converted to metric in most important ways. Factory tooling, for example, is metric now.
Customary measurements are hard to dislodge from household and less formal usage. The British still drink points of beer and may mark the distance to the next town in miles.
Customary units are often convenient for their special niche. Many customary kitchen measures are easy to divide into thirds, which is not easy with metric.
The mile is a useful customary measurement. It is 1,000 paces for an average adult. Sheet goods in construction are often sold 4ft by 8ft. That is the perfect size for a ma
The US has converted to metric in most important ways. Factory tooling, for example, is metric now.
Customary measurements are hard to dislodge from household and less formal usage. The British still drink points of beer and may mark the distance to the next town in miles.
Customary units are often convenient for their special niche. Many customary kitchen measures are easy to divide into thirds, which is not easy with metric.
The mile is a useful customary measurement. It is 1,000 paces for an average adult. Sheet goods in construction are often sold 4ft by 8ft. That is the perfect size for a man to handle and for erecting a home. Meters don't work out cleanly for home construction. Sheet goods in metric countries are sold as 1.2m by 2.4m.
The metric system is far from perfect. If we could make a new modern system from scratch, it would be base 12, so that things could be factored into 2,3,4, and 6 instead of just 2 and 5. The basic length unit would be closer to a foot (or closer to 4 ft) so it would work out nicely for construction. The basic volume unit would be that “metric foot” cubed, and the basic weight unit the weight of that volume of water. Instead, the liter, meter, and gram all are related but don't line up.
The meter was originally defined such that 10,000,000 meters was the distance from the equator to the pole. Funnily enough the distance from the equator to the pole in feet is 31,600,000. So we can define the “metric foot” such that 10,000,000*pi feet stretch from the equator to the pole. That would be 31,416,000 feet. A metric mile would be 12x12x12x3 = 5128 metric feet.
In elementary school, we master arithmetic, including multiplication and division with numbers other than 10. Is that something that people in other countries struggle with?