DOF points to an article about the metric system and What's Kind of Wrong with America (The Island of Doubt : I HATE Fahrenheit ... and its link to presidential elections).
Now, let me say up front, I like the metric system. Yes, cleanly divisible-by-ten stuff is very keen and helpful and all that. If the US switched over to metric ("SI") magically overnight, I would weep few tears.
That said, a lot of the arguments for the metric system -- especially when you get beyond the "it's just plain easier to use and convert and do things in decimal" -- begin to approach the righteous finger-waggling that most of the arguments against conversion take on.
I mean, what could make more sense that setting the freezing point at 0? Degrees Fahrenheit, on the other hand, are just plain inscrutable. How is one supposed to know the difference between +7 and -7? They're both cold.
Well, depending on where you live, you can also have +/-7C, too. And having "100" as (inadvertently) the threshold for Bloody Hot is kind of convenient, too.
Why doesn't the US join the Metrics Bandwagon?
The answer, I have concluded, is that this country is currently in a backwards-looking phase. Change, progress, reform — they're all bad. Let's not expand the definition of marriage. Let's not tell our kids that evolution explains the diversity of life. Let's not invest in embryonic stem cell research. let's keeping burning coal like it's crack cocaine. And let's not ever use Celsius.
Which would make sense, except that metric has never gotten any traction in the US, except in the Groovy 70s.
The real answer -- if we're going to wax philosophical -- is not that we're backwards-looking, but inwards-looking. "We're Number One!" as they say, so why should we follow the same system as all those Foreign Types do?
And, in fact, we don't because we don't have to. The US is still a huge exporter and a (more) huge importer. By and large, nobody else has declared that, by gad, you'll buy (and sell) things in metric and darned well like it. Or, where they have, it's not caused anyone any particular cognitive grief. Nobody really paid attention as liquor turned into mL bottles; the measurement folks went by was "bottle," and if the wine/liquor folks got away with having slightly smaller bottles out of it by rounding down to an even measurement, the small grumblings were brief.
Familiarity is all.
Similarly, nobody works on their cars any more, seriously, so if some cars nuts and bolts are metric and others are fractions of inches, nobody much cares. Adjustable crescent wrenches work on both. It just means some extra shelf space at Home Depot to carry both set of measures.
Further, from a local perspective, while the Canadians and Mexicans both use metric, there's little enough cross-border travel (from a US population perspective) that there's little incentive there to make metric distance markers and the like. We don't expect the Canadians or Mexicans to change their system to ours, so why should we change to theirs? This is unlike Europe, where close proximity of dozens of countries means the potential for significant confusion if everyone does things differently. Thus, for (relatively trivial) things, most of those differences have been ironed out -- euros, typography, monetary units, etc.
Given how little most US folks travel out of country, confusion by a small group of Americans over what the weather man is reporting on the weather is not a huge deal.
You can see the same thing with the Brits. They held onto Imperial measures until their need to be more integrated with the rest of Europe -- and the costs of not doing so -- made the change necessary, despite the existential angst of doing so.
And, to take that a step further, as keen and easy as the metric system is, the advantages of changing are perceived as being trivial compared to the costs. Replace all those highway signs? We need to spend money on repaving, not new signage. Worse, the units of measure aren't (from lack of exposure) intuitive, so telling people they should start working things out in kilometers and liters sets up an element of confusion; it's not rocket science mind you, but the question comes back to, "Why should I?"
(And that's another answer -- the US lacks a strong, centralized authority to just make it happen by fiat. Even if Congresscritters and the President were inclined, they can't ignore that it would torque off a lot of inconvenienced people. In which case, the answer is, again, that we don't because there's nobody to tell us we have to.)
The impact on most people's lives of working with the old system rather than the new is relatively trivial, even in the areas where you'd expect it to be greatest. Yes, it's easier to remember that there are ten 100m lengths in a kilometer, vs. 5,280 feet.. But how often does that math really come into play in most people's lives? Adding up various sets of inches and dividing by 12 to come up with feet is sometimes annoying and error-prone -- but, again, a lot less annoying than figuring out taxes, and I'd say that's on most people's preference list to fix first.
Still unconvinced? Ask, then, why even the most rabid metriphiles don't seroiusly propose changing our time system to metric (hundred minute hours, ten hour days, ten day weeks, ten month years, whatever). Ask why folks in France, home of SI, still use compasses with 360 degrees on them. Heck, if you want standardization, why doesn't everyone shift their language to Esperanto? The answer is, there's not a compelling reason to, and the costs of changing everything to make it happen becomes less and less palatable over time. As long as it doesn't interfere with everyday life, folks aren't likely to change something something fundamental. And the US shifting to metric -- or a change in the Gregorian calendar -- is a fundamental, deep-reaching change that would require pretty much everyone to be willing to go along with it.
Indeed, that calls to mind the one place the US did go metric, and long before most of the world. Money, as we rejected the British pence-shillings-pounds for metric-based dollars and cents. Because that's something that lent itself to decimals (for accounting), because pricing was fluid (inflationary) enough that the change in "what something costs" from changing units was relatively trivial -- and because we were starting with something fresh. Today, pretty much everyone uses metric money.
And, who knows, eventually the US might very well shift. But it will have to do so based on immediate, acknowledged problems in people's lives that shifting will solve. Failing that, there's not a good enough reason to do it -- and I say that, again, as someone who wouldn't at all mind seeing it happen.
Filed under :: Geopolitical Brouhaha :: Science
Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.
Dave Barry (1947 - )
Yeah. I like the description of us as an "inward-looking" people. We're the most important people on Earth, we won WWII single-handedly, etc. Anything that isn't how we do it is weird and probably wrong. Eventually it will be our undoing, but not for reasons of measurement standards.
Unfortunately president Carter associated the metric system with do-gooderism which is the kiss of death in this country. The fact is, we have been gradually switching over and that's the right way to switch - dual labelling and such. We'll get there when we darn well get there. In the meantime we'll just crash an occasional Mars probe.
One of my favorite metrification stories is the "Gimli Glider", a Boeing 767 that ran out of fuel in midair due in part to the Cdn parliament's decision to fuel airplanes in metric units.
But in certain parts of the country when highway departments put up signs that say "83 miles (132 km)" they get a storm of protest letters and calls. That's just plain old xenophobia.
Eh, maybe in Denver, people don't work on their own cars. But in the Springs and the entire state of South Dakota, people do. Lots of Iowans, too. In fact, anyplace where a lot of people don't have a lot of money, a lot of people work on their own cars. Doesn't change your point, though.
Cool story DoF. :)
Things that amuse me:
If you watch the old Mork & Mindy intro the elevation sign coming into Boulder on 93 has both Metric and Feet listed. It went away under Owens.
My other Great Metric Story involves the Flats, BNFL and U.S. Engineers inability to even try and understand Metric. But, we will save that for later when I can spend more time typing.
And yes De, as someone that worked on a lot of cars (English, Japanese, and German) with Metric you have to know what you were doing.
One thing that made life easy and annoying back in the day when I raced in the SCCA was that:
1: American cars were an annoying mix of English units and Even Metric units.
2: Japanese cars were Even metric Numbers only.
3: German Cars were Odd metric numbers only.
So, this made it really easy if you were bringing basic tools to work on you car if something needed tweeking. Bad if you were trying to borrow tools from someone else.
Thanks BD - it makes me smile to think about how they landed that thing on an old airstrip where people were drag racing and barbecuing and just having fun. Since the front landing gear didn't lock, there was a small fire, which the locals put out with their fire extinguishers when it came to a stop. No big explosion because no fuel.
Volkswagen Beetles (the old ones) used a lot of 13mm and 10mm fasteners. They even included a 13-10 open-end wrench with the car because it fit so many things on the car.
I still have my metric wrenches from my VW days. :-)
I realize that some folks work more on cars than others. In general, though, the increasing use of computerized widgets and so forth make it tougher for many people to do so.
I do agree that there's been an unfortunate (intentional or not) association between the metric system and Those Damn Furriners with their devil languages and ignorant peasants and United Nations and all that. And Jimmy Carter, too, of course.
But, again, as much as I would, aesthetically and philosphically like metric, or dual measurements on signs -- what's the actual value (vs the possible confusion) of such signs. In some ways, people aren't going to learn kms through dual measurement signs. In some ways, it's only going to happen when the signs just bloody *change*. And there's no political will (or support) for such a thing.