Comments on: Dragging America Into the 20th Century

By: Brainstorms

Brainstorms — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 23:54:11 +0000

I think I was confusing the 1866 U.S. law that made metric system measurements legal, but did not mandate them as a national standard to replace imperial units.

The U.S. Metric Conversion Act of 1975 encouraged the conversion to the metric system, but it was made voluntary — and so was stillborn.

Canada’s conversion was a drawn out affair, occurring throughout the 1970’s, with most things metric by 1977.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 23:33:50 +0000

Another possible example of the Imperial-Metric problem for Space Robots:

http://themetricmaven.com/?p=440

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 23:21:40 +0000

Esa, see? Confusing, isn’t it!

Eric, Metric, 10 times better!

Congress made an edict, an organization was set up, Schools started teaching it in preparation for the transition. It wasn’t going well by the end of the 70s because there was no mandate, then Reagan killed it. The evil Lyn Nofziger had a hand in it.

The Soviets, after all, were metric.

By: Brainstorms

Brainstorms — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 20:26:36 +0000

Canada switched around 1982, I think. It would have been best if manufacturers standardized on metric sizes, and put the fractional non-metric equivalents in parenthesis. That would have led people to adopt it, I think. They never did this, except in a few cases, such as soda bottles.

You can hang this whole snafu on Congress. In the 19th Century, they made switching “voluntary”. Code-word for “Ha-ha, it’ll never happen and we’ll help you avoid it.”

By: Eric Lund

Eric Lund — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 20:19:34 +0000

I have vague recollections that the US was about to go metric sometime in the latter half of the 1970s. We got one- and two-liter soda bottles, and as Christopher@3 notes, 750 ml bottles of wine and distilled liquor. That was it. If anything we have been backsliding: road signs that were once posted in both miles and kilometers are now posted in miles only.

But it apparently had a bigger effect north of the border. I am told that Canada switched to the metric system specifically because the US was about to switch to the metric system.

Here and there you will find remnants of the old system even outside the US. The UK still signposts roads in miles, not kilometers. In Canada, even in Quebec, land is sold by the acre rather than the hectare. And there are are historical references in many places, e.g., China’s Ten Thousand Li Long Wall (most English speakers know it as the Great Wall), which is actually closer to 13,000 li long (the li is a historical unit of length in China, a bit short of 500 m). But outside the US, these are exceptions. Only in the US is 32 degrees associated with ice; elsewhere, it’s a warm or even hot summer day.

By: Brainstorms

Brainstorms — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 18:54:05 +0000

NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter, which was lost in 1999 when someone forgot to convert between imperial and metric units…

Credit where it’s due: Lockheed Martin was still in the stone ages and gave NASA avoirdupois measurement units in a metric arena.

The interface specifications they were in possession of specified metric units. They ignored that, and the engineers at JPL who (were using metric units and) caught the discrepancy were not listened to by their management…

By: Brainstorms

Brainstorms — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 18:51:27 +0000

Chemicals are metric. Industrial gasses. Aerospace engineering is metric. A good percentage of the fastener industry make metric nuts & bolts. Etc.

By: Christopher Winter

Christopher Winter — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 17:57:59 +0000

I have long hoped for this to change in the U.S. It has changed in a few places. Wine and liquor, for example, are now measured in liters. But those are the exceptions.

And isn’t it passing strange that a country which has pushed globalization so strongly for the past several decades should continue to resist signing on to the only global system of measurements?

By: Esa Riihonen

Esa Riihonen — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 06:28:56 +0000

As an European physicist – YES! 🙂
As a physicist – a nit pick. 🙂
The SI measure of biological effect is Sv (sievert) the corresponding “American” unit is rem – not rad.
The SI counterpart of the rad is Gy (gray).

By: Doug alder

Doug alder — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 05:39:34 +0000

Given that it seems there is a better than distant chance that your country is about to elect a complete anti-science psychopath as President all I can say is good luck trying to convince the rest of your citizens to switch to metric.