Why won't the U.S. use the metric system ?

i usually mention dinosaurs, something like 'but how did you avoid all the t-rexs when you did that?'

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

That's it!!
Both of you young 'uns... go to your rooms.
Now!
Pfft, kids...

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

this is on a tangent but while discussing something with mum the other day i realised she was treating me like a kid so i told her to stop interrupting me while i'm speaking, and she shut up. was liberating lol, i haven't many such experiences.

also, you wouldn't say pfft kids in neverland, cos they have knives and shit there. they'd mess your crew up then feed you to a crocodile.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

It's always nice when you can do that.
Maybe I should introduce you to my mother.

Now that, sir is a foul insult.
Liken me to a filthy pirate?

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

I'm definitely a ninja, in fact a ninja elf.

 

Ooh.. I know.. Is it because of the human bladder's maximum capacity?..
That's a schoolboy rumor being passed around now.

 

Shakespeare OUT OF SCHOOL NOW!.
You there, begone before I shuffle you off your mortal coil.

 

I'm American, and I use both. Depends on whatever I'm measuring.

 

What does the government use ?

 

The answer if you are discussing the American government is both...depends on the venue.

I think most people recognize the value and logic of the metric system. But the average American Joe and Jane just do not want to change.

 

The United States is now the only industrialized country in the world that does not use the metric system as its predominant system of measurement.

Most Americans think that our involvement with metric measurement is relatively new. In fact, the United States has been increasing its use of metric units for many years, and the pace has accelerated in the past three decades. In the early 1800's, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (the government's surveying and map-making agency) used meter and kilogram standards brought from France. In 1866, Congress authorized the use of the metric system in this country and supplied each state with a set of standard metric weights and measures.

In 1875, the United States solidified its commitment to the development of the internationally recognized metric system by becoming one of the original seventeen signatory nations to the Treaty of the Meter. The signing of this international agreement concluded five years of meetings in which the metric system was reformulated, refining the accuracy of its standards. The Treaty of the Meter, also know as the "Metric Convention," established the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in Sèvres, France, to provide standards of measurement for worldwide use.

In 1893, metric standards, developed through international cooperation under the auspices of BIPM, were adopted as the fundamental standards for length and mass in the United States. Our customary measurements -- the foot, pound, quart, etc. -- have been defined in relation to the meter and the kilogram ever since. The General Conference of Weights and Measures, the governing body that has overall responsibility for the metric system, and which is made up of the signatory nations to the Treaty of the Meter, approved an updated version of the metric system in 1960. This modern system is called Le Système International d'Unités or the International System of Units, abbreviated SI.

The United Kingdom, began a transition to the metric system in 1965 to more fully mesh its business and trade practices with those of the European Common Market. The conversion of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth nations to SI created a new sense of urgency regarding the use of metric units in the United States.

In 1968, Congress authorized a three-year study of systems of measurement in the U.S., with particular emphasis on the feasibility of adopting SI. The detailed U.S. Metric Study was conducted by the Department of Commerce. A 45-member advisory panel consulted with and took testimony from hundreds of consumers, business organizations, labor groups, manufacturers, and state and local officials.

The final report of the study, "A Metric America: A Decision Whose Time Has Come," concluded that the U.S. would eventually join the rest of the world in the use of the metric system of measurement. The study found that measurement in the United States was already based on metric units in many areas and that it was becoming more so every day. The majority of study participants believed that conversion to the metric system was in the best interests of the Nation, particularly in view of the importance of foreign trade and the increasing influence of technology in American life.

The study recommended that the United States implement a carefully planned transition to predominant use of the metric system over a ten-year period. Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 "to coordinate and plan the increasing use of the metric system in the United States." The Act, however, did not require a ten-year conversion period. A process of voluntary conversion was initiated, and the U.S. Metric Board was established. The Board was charged with "devising and carrying out a broad program of planning, coordination, and public education, consistent with other national policy and interests, with the aim of implementing the policy set forth in this Act." The efforts of the Metric Board were largely ignored by the American public, and, in 1981, the Board reported to Congress that it lacked the clear Congressional mandate necessary to bring about national conversion. Due to this apparent ineffectiveness, and in an effort to reduce Federal spending, the Metric Board was disestablished in the fall of 1982.

The Board's demise increased doubts about the United States' commitment to metrication. Public and private sector metric transition slowed at the same time that the very reasons for the United States to adopt the metric system -- the increasing competitiveness of other nations and the demands of global marketplaces -- made completing the conversion even more important.

Congress, recognizing the necessity of the United States' conformance with international standards for trade, included new encouragement for U.S. industrial metrication in the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988. This legislation amended the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 and designates the metric system as the Preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce." The legislation states that the Federal Government has a responsibility to assist industry, especially small business, as it voluntarily converts to the metric system of measurement.

Federal agencies were required by this legislation, with certain exceptions, to use the metric system in their procurement, grants and other business-related activities by the end of 1992. While not mandating metric use in the private sector, the Federal Government has sought to serve as a catalyst in the metric conversion of the country's trade, industry, and commerce.

The current effort toward national metrication is based on the conclusion that industrial and commercial productivity, mathematics and science education, and the competitiveness of American products and services in world markets, will be enhanced by completing the change to the metric system of units. Failure to complete the change will increasingly handicap the Nation's industry and economy


http://ts.nist.gov/WeightsAndMeasures/Metric/lc1136a.cfm

 

The Metric System in the United States
Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution gives Congress the power to "fix the standard of weights and measures" for the nation. The First Congress, meeting in 1789, took up the question of weights and measures, and had the metric system been available at that time it might have been adopted. What actually happened is that Thomas Jefferson, who was then serving as the first Secretary of State, submitted a report proposing a decimal-based system with a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar names for the units.

Jefferson's system actually resembles the metric system in many ways. Its biggest shortcoming is that Jefferson didn't hit on the idea of using prefixes to create names for multiples of units. Consequently, his system was burdened with a long list of names. For example, he divided his basic distance unit, the foot (it was slightly shorter than the traditional foot) into 10 inches. Each inch was divided into 10 lines, and each line into 10 points. For larger distances, 10 feet equalled a decade, 100 feet was a rood, 1000 feet a furlong, and there were 10 000 feet in a mile (making the Jeffersonian mile about twice as long as the traditional mile). His basic volume unit was the cubic foot, which he proposed to call a bushel (it was about 3/4 the size of a traditional bushel). The basic weight unit was the ounce, defined so that a bushel of water weighed 1000 ounces. (This is very similar to the metric system, in which a liter of water weighs 1000 grams).

Congress gave this plan serious consideration, but because it lacked independent support from other scientists it was easy to criticize. Ultimately, Congress took no action. This left Americans with a version of the traditional English weights and measures, including:

distance measurements identical to those of the 1592 Act of Parliament,
the traditional avoirdupois system of weight measurements,
a system of measurement for dry volumes based on the "Winchester" bushel used in England for wheat and corn since the late Middle Ages, and
a system of measurement for liquid volumes based on the English wine gallon of 1707.
It is remarkable that Congress never established this traditional system, or any other system, as the mandatory system of weights and measures for the United States. In 1832, Congress directed the Treasury Department to standardize the measures used by customs officials at U.S. ports. The Department adopted a report describing the traditional system, and Congress allowed this report to stand without taking any formal action. This is the closest the U.S. has ever come to adopting a single system of measurement. Ironically, the U.S. missed two opportunities in 1832. Americans could have adopted the metric system, which was then at an uncertain point in its history; or they could have decided to align their measurements with the British Imperial measures established by Parliament in 1824 and thus created a possible alternative to the metric system in international commerce.

The metric system originated in France in the 1790's, a few years after Jefferson's proposals. During the mid-nineteenth century, as expanding trade demanded a consistent set of measurements, use of the metric system spread through continental Europe. As they imported goods from Europe or exported goods to Europe, Americans became increasingly aware of the metric system. In 1866, Congress legalized its use in an act reading:

It shall be lawful throughout the United States of America to employ the weights and measures of the metric system; and no contract or dealing, or pleading in any court, shall be deemed invalid or liable to objection because the weights or measures expressed or referred to therein are weights or measures of the metric system.

As a result, the U. S. has been "metric" since 1866, but only in the sense that Americans have been free since that time to use the metric system as much as they like. Although there has always been popular resistance to changing the traditional measures, the metric system has actually enjoyed strong support from American business leaders and scientists since the late nineteenth century. In 1875, the U.S. was one of the original signers of the Treaty of the Meter, which established the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM). This agency administers the International System of Units, the official version of the metric system. American scientists and engineers have always been among the leaders in improving, extending, and revising the metric system. The general public, however, has lagged far behind.

In 1893, Thomas C. Mendenhall, then Superintendent of Weights and Measures in the Treasury Department, concluded that the metric standards, the official meter and kilogram bars supplied by BIPM, should become the standards for all measurement in the U.S. With the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, this decision was made and published; it has since been called the Mendenhall Order. The order didn't mean that metric units had to be used, but since that time the customary units have been defined officially in terms of metric standards. Currently, the foot is legally defined to be exactly 0.3048 meter and the pound is legally defined to equal exactly 453.59237 grams.

In 1901, Congress established the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to support technical standards for American industry and commerce, including the maintenance of standards of weight and measurement. In 1964, NBS announced:

Henceforth it shall be the policy of the National Bureau of Standards to use the units of the International System (SI), as adopted by the 11th General Conference of Weights and Measures, except when the use of these units would obviously impair communication or reduce the usefulness of a report.

In the 1970's there was a major effort to increase the use of the metric system, and Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 to speed this process along. However, American consumers generally rejected the use of metric units for highway distances, weather reports, and other common measurements, so little was accomplished except for the encouragement of faster metric conversion in various scientific and technical fields.

In 1988, Congress passed the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, which designates "the metric system of measurement as the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce." Among many other things, the act requires federal agencies to use metric measurements in nearly all of their activities, although there are still exceptions allowing traditional units to be used in documents intended for consumers. The real purpose of the act was to improve the competitiveness of American industry in international markets by encouraging industries to design, produce, and sell products in metric units.

The debate over metric conversion continues. Although metric units have become more familiar and more widely used, the United States remains a "soft metric" country. (The phrase "soft metric" refers to designations like "1 pint (473 mL)" in which metric equivalents are simply tagged onto traditional measurements.)

Proponents of the metric system in the U.S. often claim that "the United States, Liberia, and Burma (or Myanmar) are the only countries that have not adopted the metric system." This statement is not correct with respect to the U.S., and probably it isn't correct with respect to Liberia and Burma, either. The U.S. adopted the metric system in 1866. What the U.S. has failed to do is to restrict or prohibit the use of traditional units in areas touching the ordinary citizen: construction, real estate transactions, retail trade, and education. The U.S. has not made the crucial transition from "soft metric" to "hard metric", so that "1 pint (473 mL)" becomes "500 mL (1.057 pint)", with the traditional equivalent fading into smaller type sizes and finally disappearing.


http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html

 

Whoa, thanks dude.

So are your odometers/Speedometers in km or mile ?

Because safety wise it might make a difference.

 

Mile.

 

Most odometers have both printed.

In all of my physics and dynamics classes we use strictly Metric. Though my father in Aerospace Engineering often contracted by NASA can hardly recognize the units. He can of course figure it out when the units are drawn out to kg / m / s format. So apparently Honeywell Aerospace is still in full American Standard.

 

What's so bad about using both?

 

Most odometers have both printed.

for rate both are printed .. but distance is miles traveled

 

Do you mean speedometer?
Unless the auto has a digi odometer(the mileage counter, not the speed), it's only reading one or the other.
Show me a car that has an analog odometer that lists both mileage and kilometerage.
Even the autos with the digi odometers don't show both simultaneously, at least not the ones I've driven. You still have to toggle between the two, and the fuel consumption, trip a, trip b, etc.
Now, most cars I've seen with an analog speedo have the mph in the outer circle, then the kph in a smaller circle inside that.

Yep, chemistry and science classes tend to use the metric system.

 

For the same reason Europe won't use the US system.

 

Because in general when it comes to formal education most Americans are illiterate. With metric since it is based on Base 10, you don't have to memorize a bunch of names and odd sizes. Also unit conversion is usually as simple as moving as decimal point.

Many do not realize that a measurement system is arbitrary. Therefore, pick the most convenient one which certainly is not the imperial system.

 

I would bet most American labs (maybe kitchens) use Metric already for the majority of their work.

I was in school during our change to Metric. It boosted the local economy for a while as many posters, ads, flyers, measuring devices were discarded and replaced. Containers, etc. .

It may seem odd but Canadians still mostly use pounds to describe their weight aside from Medical notes.