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White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care
Earlier this year we discussed a petition on the White House's 'We The People' site asking the administration to adopt the metric system as the standard system of measurement in the U.S. Today, the administration issued a disappointing response. Simply put: they're not going to do anything about it. They frame their response as a matter of preserving a citizen's choice to adopt whatever measurement system he wants. Quoting Patrick D. Gallagher of the National Institute of Standards and Technology:
"... contrary to what many people may think, the U.S. uses the metric system now to define all basic units used in commerce and trade. At the same time, if the metric system and U.S. customary system are languages of measurement, then the United States is truly a bilingual nation. ... Ultimately, the use of metric in this country is a choice and we would encourage Americans to continue to make the best choice for themselves and for the purpose at hand and to continue to learn how to move seamlessly between both systems. In our voluntary system, it is the consumers who have the power to make this choice. So if you like, "speak" metric at home by setting your digital scales to kilograms and your thermometers to Celsius. Cook in metric with liters and grams and set your GPS to kilometers. ... So choose to live your life in metric if you want, and thank you for signing on."
They did that once, ISTR the mileage (kilometerage?) sign on I-15 between Blackfoot and Pocatello, Idaho being in both Miles and Kilometers in about '75-'77ish (I was a bit young at the time), but since it was during the Carter administration, of course it HAD to be undone because fuck Democrats. I can't remember exactly when I-15 signs were changed over to strictly miles, but I think it was the late eighties. So until we get over this two-party backbiting festival in DC, it does us no good to even try to do good things.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
When Canada was switching to metric, dual signage was common. The km/h value was shown first, and the mph was shown in a smaller (but still quite readable) font below it. Usage of "km/h" or "mph" was explicit, to ensure there was no ambiguity.
This transition period lasted for quite some time, and after a while, the signs were ultimately replaced with speed limits listing strictly in km/h (and often the "km/h" was no longer present as well).
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I agree that no laws should be passed that force e.g. a supermarket to use specific weights or measures. If people are annoyed by the choice of a supermarket they can bring their business elsewhere.
However, the "free choice" argument does not work for monopoly players, especially the government itself. The last time I was in the US, miles were used in the interstate system to indicate both distances/exit numbers and maximum speeds. You can't choose to pick the other road that goes the same place but uses metric, because there is no real competition in the road network.
I don't know whether other official communication of the state(s) uses metric or not, I could imagine many laws and forms that refer to land area, volumes of water, weight (e.g. of cars) that could use either non-metric or metric. They can't hide behind a "free choice" argument there, and a real "bimetric" system requires the government to provide information, like speed limits, in both systems, just like a blingual government publishes laws etc. in two languages.
The US is converting gradually to the metric system, and NIST towards that for decades. The definitions of official US units in metric terms was one of those steps.
A lot of things sold in the US are sold in metric containers, for example 2L soft drink containers, many food packages and so on.
The US has also been signatory to every metric measurement treaty.
The petition is really rather silly. Changing the measurement system of a nation is a long and slow process. Even the French had to put it aside for a while (Napolean discontinued the process for a while).
The real shame is the US didn't start this process sooner. Thomas Jefferson actually advocated a decimal system of measures well before the French adopted the metric system but Congress (setting an alarming precedent) failed to act on the proposal. Later Jefferson was successful in getting the US to use a decimal currency, which was the first of it's type in the world.
Is it in contemplation with the House of Representatives to arrange our measures and weights [the same as the coinage] in a decimal ratio? The facility which this would introduce into the vulgar arithmetic would, unquestionably, be soon and sensibly felt by the whole mass of the people, who would thereby be enabled to compute for themselves whatever they should have occasion to buy, to sell, or to measure, which the present complicated and difficult ratios place beyond their computation for the most part
--Thomas Jefferson
Kilometer means 1000 meters. Milli-, nano-, kilo-, terra- are ways to conveniently denote powers of ten. It's a system of prefixes, and yes, it is defined in the metric system.
Si is a system of units. Abbreviation from SystÃme international des unités (I may be missing an 'e' or an accent, somewhere)
The two are systems, both are quite French, but their origins are about a century apart, if I am not mistaken.
No good deed goes unpunished...
When you see 1 1/4 cups, or 55 mph, or 3 1/2 miles to the exit - there's a good chance that the measurement is inexact or unnecessary. Nobody actually paced out exactly 18,480 feet and placed the "3.5 mile" sign at exactly that spot. They placed the sign and filled in the best available number in the most convenient unit.
As someone who's done roadway surveying... yeah, um, that's a horribly ignorant statement. Maybe you live in CA or something, where that approach seems acceptable, but throughout most of the US, there is consistency in things like: distance between a stop sign and an intersection, roadway mile markers (some places it's a quarter mile, some places it's a mile, etc.). Believe it or not, a roadway where the speed limit is 55mph WILL be surveyed its full distance to within an inch of accuracy for elevation, the roadway bedding, incline, and curve - there's a lot of math that goes into it, and it's all thoroughly planned out.
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I lived in Canada before, during and after the transition.
Over 30 years later we're all wondering why you're all still whining like little bitches. We'd tell you but you might decide to invade our socialist paradise.
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This. I think most folks have the wrong idea about how a society actually changes. The people themselves don't change. Once someone is about in their mid-20s or 30s, their habits and preferences become ingrained and are highly unlikely to ever change for the rest of their lives. You're not going to be able to convince them to use metric, so don't even bother trying. Instead, you take advantage of the fact that people grow old and die, and are constantly replaced by younger people.
You introduce a new system in a way that it doesn't upset the older generation while giving the younger generation a chance to get used to it. Then you wait for the older generation to die off. Then you abandon the old system. So introduce signage in both metric and English. Wait a generation or two until the bulk of the population is used to both systems. Then you phase out the English system.
They didn't wait a generation.... the conversion started in Canada, in earnest, in about 1971, and was completed over the course of about 10 years.
Oddly enough, about 5 years after the decade-long process of Canada's conversion to Metric was completed, our then-prime minister ended up abolishing the regulations that really enabled the conversion to happen in the first place. Switching back, since it was not actually legislated any more, was simply too inconvenient, and Canada remained on the metric system ever since.
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Here in metric-using Australia, I'm 178 cm, spoken "one seventy-eight". Barely any longer to say than the approximate equivalent "five eleven". Noone says "one point blah blah metres" - height is in centimetres (specifically to avoid using decimal points and/or mixing units).
Also, as a Celsius-user, I think of each 5-degree increment as a "different sort of clothing" marker (or at least a "different type of weather feel"). Centered on 20 C (comfortable room temperature), which is no more difficult than thinking about departure from comfortable room temperature in F (i.e. ~70 F).
The second worst thing about non-metric systems is that the measure for a pound, a gallon, a foot, etc is not actually standardized between countries. Calling the US measurements "english" is a bit wrong, as an imperial gallon and a US gallon are two different amounts.
The worst thing obviously being insane conversions between different units of distance, volume, weight, etc.
We count/do maths in base 10. We have 10 digits. Our measurement system should reflect that. The rest of the world, and the scientific community get it.
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