
Why Won’t America Go Metric? - AnonJ
http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2014/12/16/why-wont-america-go-metric/
======
jandrewrogers
Due to my background as both an American and (chemical) engineer, I am fluent
in metric, American, and domain specific unit systems used in chemical
engineering that are neither American nor metric. I can switch between these
as necessary quite fluidly; it is an elementary skill as a chemical engineer.

I would argue that being limited to a single unit system is like being limited
to a single language. In principle, no one needs more than one but in practice
the differences in expressiveness for different purposes are interesting and
useful. These differences in expressiveness are connected to the continued
existence of different systems.

America is big enough and is sufficiently independent of trade in its economy
(most of its stupendous production is also internally consumed) that the cost
of not transitioning to metric is marginal. I understand why metric is a good
system but simultaneously understand why the benefit of metric is dubious for
the average American. Remember, American units are defined in terms of metric
units; it is a preference, an American can precisely convert to metric at any
time if they deem it useful. But they don't because it serves little purpose.

Basically, like their language, Americans occupy a big enough economic sphere
that they get to define their standards. An enormous number of global
standards are American in origin as it is. I don't sweat the lack of metric
even though I use it routinely. Once you become familiar with enough unit and
arithmetic systems, you quickly learn that they _all_ suck in some context.

It is pointless to turn these things into religions.

~~~
D_Alex
>I would argue that being limited to a single unit system is like being
limited to a single language. In principle, no one needs more than one but in
practice the differences in expressiveness for different purposes are
interesting and useful.

After considerable reflection, I have come to the view that in fact the
differences are not interesing and not useful. What is useful though is
consistency and ease of application (which the metric system has) and
familiarity (which just depends on the circumstances).

I work in the oil and gas industry, and I had to learn to think in terms of
bizarre units like stcf/bbl, or pounds per gallon. In the end, the only driver
was that once you digest enough information, you can compare things on a like-
for-like basis... if you know the horsepower ratings of 10 car models, it is
more immediately useful to be given the horsepower of the car you consider
buying rather than its power output in kW.

But in the end I see no downsides, only upsides, if the entire industry
switched to the metric system.

stcf/bbl (standard cubic feet per barrel) by the way is a customary measure of
the amount of gas dissolved in the oil. After 25 years in the industry, I know
for example that 1000 stcf/bbl represents a gassy oil that will take some
effort to stabilise, and 100 stcf/bbl is a relatively dead crude... so
inormation about new crudes is useful to me in this form. But - what a weird
unit it is! The information could much better be provided as a dimensionless
ratio, eg gas-to-oil ratio of 200 for gassy oil would be intuitive and better
suited to use in further calculations, and once you've seen enough data
expressed in this way, the familiarity issue is taken care of.

I invite you to provide counterexamples, where the customary unit has an
inherent advantage (familiarity does not count). I can't think of any.

~~~
Mikhail_Edoshin
Cooking units are much better suited for the task than metric units.

Typographic units are non-metric and metric units are inconvenient in
typography, because millimeters are too big for character sizes and too small
for page units and centimeters are both too big and too small at the same
time.

French (?) shoe sizes are numbered like 38, 39, 40, 41, etc. and the
difference between these sizes are 2/3 cm, because it's a practical difference
to mass-produce different shoe sizes. It's not metric, obviously.

Parsecs are not metric. Heck, light years are not metric; and look at how rich
the unit is, it tells you a lot about the distance. Try to express the
distance to Alpha Centauri in metric units and comprehend it.

~~~
venomsnake
> Cooking units are much better suited for the task than metric units.

No they are not. Measuring everything on the scale to a gram yields much
better and consistent results than wondering if your dish will fail because
some inexpedient was more tightly packed or if your spoons are the same spoons
that someone else had.

And while a person could argue that ounce vs gram is moot, it is total
nightmare for volume given stuff on dry ingredients.

~~~
Mikhail_Edoshin
I agree that weighting is the key to stability for professional cooks and
bakers, but up to a gram or not depends on what you're weighting, how much of
it, and for what purpose (and yes, the gram itself as a unit is irrelevant).
This is engineering tolerance and it's same in every field; even a fine
metalworker can be imprecise provided he stays within the defined range.

Yet for part-time cooks as most of us are weighting is impractical: we don't
have scales, and even if we do the amounts are usually too small. And
stability is not necessary the goal :) For home cooks the usual task is to
scale a recipe up or down and with cooking units the math is much simpler.
Another thing about cooking units is that the number of different units helps
to convey that engineering tolerance I've mentioned; the smaller the unit, the
less the tolerance. When everything is expressed in one unit, you need to
specify the tolerance explicitly.

~~~
ajmurmann
This is a very American view. When I grew up in Germany EVERYONE had a scale
for cooking because every recipe gives all larger quantities in grams. I think
the only exception is the difference is the equivalent of "a pinch". When I
moved to the US I didn't have a scale and most recipes I cooked were American
and I ended up using cups etc. I got totally used ot it after a while and
everything was fine. However, I love cooing and wanted to get more into
modernist cuisine. That pretty much requires a scale. Having used a scale for
cooking again I cannot overstate how incredibly convenient it is. It saves a
lot of time and cleaning of measuring devices. You just put your container
(pot, bowl or whatever you will use later for processing) onto the scale; zero
the scale; and start puring in the first ingredients till you go tthe right
amount. Then you just zero the scale again and do the next ingredients. No
need to rinse measuring cups in between. The metric system also has the added
benefit that 1 liter translates for water based liquids to 1kg which means you
again just pour the liquid into your bowl that's on the scale. The scale has
pretty much only upsides. The downside that most people in the US don't have a
scale is only a downside because culturally US Americans don't use scales for
cooking. On the flip side you can say that measuring cups are incovenient
because Europeans don't have them.

~~~
Mikhail_Edoshin
I love to cook myself and I agree that using scales yields a more stable
result (provided the ingredients are stable). But to be simpler than volume-
based units the scales have to be pretty sophisticated, like the modern
electronic scales. Would the process be simpler if the scales could not zero-
out on a weight and you'd have to weight the ingredients separately or do the
math mentally? Or if they were mechanical and thus harder to read? Or if they
were balance scales with pans and separate iron masses? :) Well, this is too
much, perhaps, but I remember using such scales to mix solutions for
photographic process. But not for cooking; this would be completely
unpractical.

Of course, nowadays the scales are very smart and a pleasure to use. But
here's the thing: with smart equipment we don't need to bother about being
metric. It's not a problem for smart scales to display the weight in any unit
imaginable. I think there must be culinary apps that convert between weight-
and volume-based units to suit everyone's tastes and they're either free or
cost less than $5. The proponents of metric system claim it's simple. Maybe,
but it's a simplicity of a typewriter compared with a modern typesetting
program. Why would anyone with a smartphone care about this kind of
simplicity?

For example, there's ISO 216 standard for paper sizes: A0, A1, A2, etc. The
sizes form an interesting progression: each size is exactly 1/2 of the larger
size. But how did they select the 1st size in the row, the A0? It's pretty
interesting: the A0 size is exactly 1 square meter. I bet the designers of the
standard though it would be be a feature, because the users (e.g. printers)
will be able to use this fact to simplify their calculations; e.g. you need to
print 1000 A4, you know it's 1/16 of A0 and the paper is 100g/sq.m., and you
go from there. But I don't believe anyone does this kind of math nowadays;
everyone has computers and printer jobs have much more variations in paper
sizes and densities for this "simple" rule to be of practical use.

------
Derbasti
I think that the article is sorely missing the point of the metric system.
It's not about communication. For communication, the frathe of reference
doesn't matter, as long as both parties agree on the same reference. In fact,
I find imperial units to be somewhat more intuitive than metric units.

Instead, it's all about unit conversion. One liter of water weighs one
kilogram and is a one decimeter cubmore room degrees is where water freezes,
and 100 degrees is where it boils. This makes water the universal conversion
constant, which makes it easy to compare different units (eg weights and
volumes).

Also, it's trivial to convert meters to millimeters and kilometers. But this
happens surprisingly seldom in practice compared to converting volumes to
weights or lenghts.

~~~
aragot
> more intuitive than metric units

I've seen that several times in the thread, but it's like asking what is the
most intuitive size of "a piece" of string: Depends where you're born and
which unit system you've used.

> and 100 degrees where it boils

I once thought that 0 and 100 degrees C were defined as the temperature of
water freezing and boiling, and 1Pa would be defined accordingly, but nope.
Boiling can happen at 98.5 degrees under ncpt.

------
rzimmerman
This article claims Americans initially rejected the metric system because it
was "too French", which is an inaccurate exaggeration.

Before the metric system was created, the US, which had recently won
independence, was put in the position of selecting a standard system of
weights and measures. Jefferson suggested a decimal system based off the
seconds pendulum at 45° latitude. He did this in coordination with scientists
in France with the direct goal of achieving a universal standard. Before
congress could adopt this system, the French modified their standard:

 _Although French scientists working on a decimal system had originally
supported using the seconds pendulum as a scientific basis, and Jefferson had
deliberately matched his seconds pendulum proposal to the French one, based on
a measurement at the latitude of Paris, the French decided to use the length
of a meridian of the Earth instead of a seconds pendulum. This and other
developments changed what had promised to be an internationally developed
system into a strictly French project. Jefferson wrote, "The element of
measure adopted by the National Assembly excludes, ipso facto, every nation on
earth from a communion of measurement with them."_

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_for_Establishing_Uniformit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_for_Establishing_Uniformity_in_the_Coinage,_Weights,_and_Measures_of_the_United_States#Subsequent_developments)

As a result the US wound up passing on Jefferson's system and eventually
settling on US "customary" units.

The real benefit of adopting the metric system is to have a consistent,
widespread system of units. The United States has had this for over 200 years
and most sectors of the economy have been isolated enough from Europe and the
rest of the world where adopting metric has not been worth it. Industries that
are increasingly global (automotive, electronics, etc) have already
effectively adopted metric.

------
btilly
(Devil's advocate time...)

I wish that the French had gone all of the way to a duodecimal system, and a
base 12 measurement system. Most of the arguments for the Imperial system
surround the fact that in convenient places you can divide things in half or
thirds. And a base 12 time system could have been compelling enough to replace
the Babylonian base 60 system that we are stuck with. The one that, even in
the metric system makes it hard to convert from meters/second to km/hour.

~~~
carsongross
A base 60 system is very practical: 3 * 4 * 5 = 60 so you can divide into
halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths, tenths, etc all very simply. And of
course, 3 * 4 * 5 * 6 gives you 360, and even more useful even divisions.

Our ancestors were not idiots.

~~~
btilly
Ever tried memorizing the 60 times table?

The duodecimal times table is actually easier to memorize than the decimal one
because while it is 44% bigger, there are many easy patterns.

------
lstamour
Mountains out of molehills. The truth of it is, it doesn't matter what the
default unit of measurement is as long as you know to clearly specify the
unit! :) Like language translation, let others convert your "native" units
into their local version. This is no different than how foods or tastes
change, or sometimes even color preferences, can change regionally. At least
we've moved beyond "m" means both "metre" and "mile". Generally people now say
"mi" when they mean "mile", so I'll take that as a win. I tried to convert the
word "mile" to other languages, but ended up finding that in many
translations, they converted US miles into native miles or kilometres, and so
did not have a clearly defined word for such things. Which is why I emphasize
being specific about the unit of measure. The rest doesn't really matter.
70°F? 21°C? Feels about the same to me! That said, I wish everyone would hurry
up on the YYYY-MM-DD adoption. Always confuses me to see 2-digit days and
months and not know which is which.

------
toolslive
Can't you just split the question in 2 parts ?

\- Is the metric system superior to the American (bastard) imperial system ?

\- Is it worth the switch ?

There are a lot of other accidental situations out there that are (perceived
to be) too costly to eradicate. For example, in Europe (not the UK) we drive
on the right hand side while yielding the right of way to the right as well.
For safety reasons, it would have been better to switch on of the two to the
left. Will it happen? probably not.

Actually, cost might even be irrelevant: The Chinese still use chop-sticks
while a fork is clearly more practical.

~~~
dirktheman
Sweden switched from left side driving to right side driving as late as in
1967. So it is possible, but, like you said, not likely. Sweden isn't an
island, so I can imagine the safety hazards when crossing a border. The
UK/Ireland are islands of course, so there's more of a physical barrier. I
guess this applies to the metric/imperial system, too. I think we can all
agree that the metric system is more logical. But there just isn't enough
incentive to make the switch.

~~~
adventured
Countries are always funny about making such huge switches though. For example
Sweden still has Swedish as its official language, which makes absolutely no
rational sense. They should obviously standardize on English. There's no good
reason for a country of ten million people to have their own language, it's
extraordinarily inefficient.

The counter argument to this is always: but 90% of Swedish people also speak
English. Ok, so what's the point of maintaining Swedish then? It's like
arguing it'd be ok for the US to keep / use / teach both metric and imperial -
in reality there is no good reason for that, it would be backwards.

------
santacluster
Amongst all the rationalizations I miss the one thing that is typical for the
US as a young immigrant nation with little history: a desperate need to cling
to any kind of custom or tradition to create a sense of identity. Especially
if those customs set them apart from the rest of the world.

This goes well beyond the metric system. In many ways the US is extremely old-
fashioned in the eyes of other Westerners, clinging to customs most of us have
abandoned many decades ago. Unless there is a clear economic advantage in it,
the US is strongly resistant to change for fear of diluting its still
relatively young and shallow identity.

On typical form of American deflection is coming up with elaborate
explanations why what works for other countries won't work for America.
Sometimes these exceptionalist arguments are not entirely untrue (the US is an
exceptional nation in many ways), but they become really transparent when they
try to argue why other countries are different. (Most of those arguments just
show a willful cultural ignorance, especially remarkable when coming from
well-educated and well-traveled Americans.)

No, for the US there is no compelling economic reason to go metric. But that's
not the reason why it doesn't, that's just the rationalization du jour. Any
other country would not be afraid to adopt the simple convenience of joining
the rest of world in a single standard.

~~~
adventured
Clinging to customs is definitely a common human trait. I don't see anything
special about the US doing it.

For example Europe clings to one of the most absurd customs of all: large
numbers of unnecessary languages. Instead of standardizing, countries in
Europe go out of their way to preserve extreme inefficiency in communication.
So there's Europe, not a young world, desperately clinging to languages to
hold on to tradition and supposedly culture.

If it's important to standardize measurement, it must be dramatically more
important to standardize on language.

Why does Europe have three dozen major languages in use? Half of Europe shares
no common language, with only 50% of people there speaking English. The only
thing that would make sense, is to standardize on English, Spanish or perhaps
Mandarin (it doesn't make as much sense as the other two for Europe).

I see non-stop talk about how the US should adopt the metric system, and I
completely agree because it makes logical sense. And Europe should abandon all
of their languages and adopt English - let's see which happens first.

~~~
TimJRobinson
They are standardizing on English. I recently moved to the Netherlands and
only speak English and 99% of people I've met speak English. Nearly all
meetups and tech conferences in western Europe are also done in English.

Also almost the entire world uses metric, it would really suck if everyone in
the entire world spoke English except for the country you grew up in.

~~~
adventured
The countries in Europe with a high % of English language use, are
simultaneously maintaining their old languages. For example the Netherlands
are keeping Dutch, and Sweden is keeping Swedish.

It'd be like arguing the US is standardizing on metric, while still commonly
using imperial, keeping both would be extremely inefficient and pointless. I
believe language standardization is more important than measurement
standardization, and yet, again, half of Europe has no common language.
Somehow language gets treated with special kid gloves, because it's supposedly
an important tie to culture. I completely reject that claim as being any more
valid than trying to claim imperial is an important tie to culture and thus
should be preserved.

Only about 35% of people in France speak English; for Italy it's sub 30%;
Spain is only 22% or so. And this isn't fluency, it's the % of people with any
meaningful knowledge of English. The rate of moderate fluency would be far
lower.

------
jacobsimon
I learned both systems in school--our rulers always had inches and centimeters
--but we never really learned the metric system until much later in science
classes. I think there's a strong argument to be made that the metric system
is easier to learn and could be taught at the same time as counting and basic
arithmetic. It would make learning science and math easier in higher grades
and waste less class time. I'm honestly surprised there are so many comments
here defending the Imperial system.

------
jeffdavis
I rarely see anyone consider that the American system has at least one
fundamental advantage: it's closer to a binary system, rather than decimal.

Why do we want a decimal system? The only reason for a base of 10 that I can
see is that we have ten fingers. But binary systems map better to a lot of
real-world problems.

If baking, are you more likely to take a recipe and halve it or cut it by a
factor of ten? In construction, are you more likely to subdivide an area into
two, or ten? If you split a stock, are you more likely to split two-to-one or
ten-to-one?

The answer, in all those cases, is the former, which is favored by a binary
system. Forcing decimal upon us is what leaves us with numbers like 0.125
rather than 1/8.

So rather than move to metric, let's come up with a more consistent base-two
system, and then we can all use that. (Just saying that to make a point; not a
serious proposal.)

~~~
D_Alex
>If baking, are you more likely to take a recipe and halve it or cut it by a
factor of ten?

You are more likely to halve it. How does the "American" system help, if you
have to halve say 1 lb of butter and 1 quart of milk? It just means you need
to retain in your head a bunch of definitions and inconsistent conversion
factors.

~~~
Mikhail_Edoshin
Not that inconsistent; if you look up the scale, you'll see that most ratios
are powers of two; sometimes there's an occasional 1/3, like the teaspoon to
tablespoon ratio. What is convenient is that the ratios are small; as soon as
you need a bigger amount, you just use bigger units. This not only keeps the
math simpler, but also indicates the precision of the numbers; "1 cup" means
you can err by a tablespoon, perhaps, but "16 tablespoons" (although formally
equal to 1 cup) indicates much higher degree of precision.

In metric countries, however, you routinely see recipes like "140 g cornmeal"
or hear people asking for "500 g meat" in a grocery store. Nobody really deals
with these things in grams, but still somehow everybody uses grams here. The
inventors of the metric system might think there would be decagrams or
gectograms, but I've never heard of such units and even my spell checker just
underlined them; somehow people using metric system ended up with kilograms
and grams, units of 1:1000 ratio.

------
beloch
Metrologically, even the pound is defined in terms of metric kilograms. Yes, I
speak of the least worthy metric unit that is still defined in terms of an
ingot sitting somewhere in France instead of a phenomena of nature. As such,
the U.S. has gone entirely metric, and has been metric for over a century.
It's just that some people insist on using second-rate translations of metric
that are based on units inherited from the good ol' colonial days when the
British ruled all.

As a Canadian, I am forced to use some imperial units to this day because of
my close proximity to the U.S.. This is in spite of the fact that the empire
that created imperial units has now gone totally metric. Way to go U.S.A.. You
crazy living anachronistic monarchists. I bet you even think sticking to
Imperial units is patriotic somehow too! Freakin' hilarious.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
> the empire that created imperial units has now gone totally metric

Huh? Not according to either of these two links.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_speed_limits_in_the_United...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_speed_limits_in_the_United_Kingdom)

[http://www.ukma.org.uk/speed-limits](http://www.ukma.org.uk/speed-limits)

Edit: BTW in the USA when I grew up we called them "imperial units", but
nowadays the schools are calling them "customary units". Just to add to the
confusion. :)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units)

------
disillusioned
I live in Phoenix, a city built entirely on a mile-demarked grid. It's useful
to be able to approximate how far everything is in whole units based on the
grid, and I reckon it would take a very long time before people just referred
to them as "blocks" or something similar.

------
jrjarrett
For me, it's not about the length or the scale of the temperature, it's having
grown up with the "feel" or the "time" of a measurement.

If I see a road sign that says it's 130 miles to Chicago, then I know how much
time it's going to take me to get there. I don't have that "feel" for seeing
209km.

If I see it's 60° (F) out, I know how that feels, I know how to dress for it.
I have a very different expectation if I see it's 15° (C).

I personally think that's the biggest barrier to conversion, the learned, in-
grained expectation of time or sensation when seeing a measurement expressed.

------
robbrown451
Going metric isn't economical in the US as it has been elsewhere. You can't
expect all the individual businesses to do something that isn't in their
interest, and in general, when you've got this big a country with a single
measuring system, it's not going to be in an individual business's interest to
retool. This was not the case in most other places, where there was a lot more
pressure to standardize because you might have a few different measuring
systems within a few hundred mile radius.

------
dmichulke
While I appreciate the history lesson in the article I strongly disagree with

> Is global uniformity a good thing? Not when it comes to cultural issues, and
> customary measures are certainly a part of our national culture.

because you can define everything as a part of culture. I don't even want to
go into examples (think "ugly things countries did and do").

So, yes, ideally there is no need for anyone to adopt anything, but it's not
because it's part of culture.

------
w1ntermute
The real question is "why _should_ America go metric?"

When you're such a large country, you can afford to do things your own way -
others will accommodate you.

~~~
knieveltech
That line of reasoning is rapidly reaching it's expiration date.

------
ozh
I stumbled upon a very interesting short documentary about the metric system
and the world's roundest object. Well worth 10 minutes of your break today.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMByI4s-D-Y](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMByI4s-D-Y)

------
theVirginian
I like the american system. It's based on 12 which is easily divisible by
2,4,3,(and 6 obviously) making it practical and easy to use for handy jobs.
Having fractions of an inch divisible by factors of 2 is also far more
convenient than using a decimal system imho. Why not just use a system that
lists both units?

~~~
D_Alex
>I like the american system. It's based on 12 ...

Are you sure?? I thought it is based on 2 (pints in a quart), 3 (feet in a
yard), 4, 12, 16 etc and there is no rhyme or reason for which is which...

~~~
lkbm
There definitely is some major messiness with the system, but: 4 fluid drams
in a Tablespoon (No 0.5Tbps unit?) 2 Tablespoons in a fluid ounce 4 fluid
ounces in a gill (No 0.5 gill unit?) 2 gills in a cup 2 cups in a pint 2 pints
in a quart 2 quarts in a half gallon 2 half gallons in a gallon 63 gallons in
a hogshead

Okay, yeah, there's a lot of messy units outside of this series, and some
holes. We have the apothecaries' system, the avoirdupois system, the customary
system. A hundredweight is 112 LBs because a Stone is 14 rather than 10. A
mile is some number of feet I always have to look up.

------
colindean
One reason: Who is going to pay for it?

~~~
Aloha
I think this is the most undervalued comment on this thread, and is the real
answer - plus the normal human resistance to change.

------
Mikhail_Edoshin
Metric is overrated. It's both too recent an invention and a part of the long
gone movement that thought everything is to be rebuilt, you know,
"rationally." It didn't turn out more rational as a result, at least not the
kind of rationality that we really need.

[Edit] Disclaimer: I am from a country that went metric a century ago.

