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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."
Actually, there are limited places in the US that do this: Metric Road Signs in the US I think this is something that could be voted on at the municipality/state level and could eventually work its way nationally.
The discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed. A meeting of trajectory software engineers, trajectory software operators (navigators), propulsion engineers, and managers, was convened to consider the possibility of executing Trajectory Correction Maneuver-5, which was in the schedule. Attendees of the meeting recall an agreement to conduct TCM-5, but it was ultimately not done.
But "We mixed up feet and meters! Whoopsie!" while embarrassing, is not quite so embarrassing as "We canceled the scheduled maneuver that would have saved the ship, even though we knew something was very wrong." Plus, it was an easy headline for the media. There were a legion of problems with the Mars Climate Orbiter that had nothing to do with unit systems. NASA was just in full-on derp mode at that time. Likewise, the Mars Polar Lander, which did not have a similar unit-conversion error, also crashed a few months later.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Every time a state starts printing metric speed limits, it inevitably ends up rounding the limit DOWN.
I remember one failed experiment where FDOT (Florida) tried to be cute and put up signs declaring "44kph" to be the metric equivalent of 30mph (it's only 27mph). The signs were SO hated, most of them got vandalized beyond recognition within a month, and pretty much ALL of them had the "44" spray painted, X'ed (with black markers), or shot out (with BBs, paintball pellets, or real honest-to-god bullets) by the time FDOT took them down and replaced them with 30mph signs. FDOT later admitted that it was a mistake.
If you want the public to accept metric speed limits, roll them out with a big public campaign that emphasizes that the limits are being RAISED everywhere by up to 5mph. Instantly, metric speed limits will become popular and cool among drivers. Declare 115kph (71.45mph) to be the equivalent of 70mph, and drivers will like them. Round it up to 120kph (74.56mph), and drivers will LOVE them. Try pulling another FDOT stunt by putting up signs saying "70mph/111kph", and they'll get vandalized beyond recognition within days.
That would be the last place to start, as it would cost a fortune to replace all of the highway signs. Not only that, but also all of the mile markers, for which most states have every 1/10 of a mile. Moreover, contrary to what some people have implied, the numbers are generally not painted on, they're fabricated from other materials and overlaid. And for what? So we can convert the length of our commute into a multiple of our height, or something else of the sort? Yes, it's absolutely absurd that there are 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, and I-don't-even-know-how-many yards in a mile (and yes, I've heard of Google/Wikipedia; but I just don't care). The truth is, I never need to convert inches into miles. You measure human-scale things in feet and inches, travelling distances in miles.
On the other hand, you know where we should start: volumetric measurements. I have frequently had a recipe that takes some number of teaspoons of a liquid, while having measuring cups measured in (naturally) cups, and nutritional information in ounces. Oh, and keep in mind that most tea spoons are significantly larger than a teaspoon. And then there's tablespoons, pints, quarts, gallons, barrels, and who knows what else. This is a lot harder to keep straight, and unlike miles to inches, sometimes you actually need to convert between these.
Add into the mix the problem that pints differ from place to place (either 16 or 20 oz), and "ounce" is both a volumetric measure and a weight measure. Obviously, if you have something that's clearly a solid or a liquid, it's clear which is which. But what about, say, frozen yogurt. When the self-serve froyo place sells by the ounce, and posts calories by the ounce, it would only be reasonable to think that these are the same ounces. It would also be wrong.
Moreover, in the case of volumetric measures, not only do you have a real problem, but an easier solution: most of the containers that hold liquids are disposable anyways, and constantly manufactured (i.e. food). All that would need to be done is to make containers that are metric-sized, and printed with metric labels, rather than Imperial. In fact, we're closer to that already. By law, all wine and distilled alcohol must be sold in one of several metric sizes (for distilled, it is 375 mL, 750 mL, 1L, 1.75 L, if I recall correctly). Soda is frequently sold in 2 L bottles.
Do that, let people see that metric actually saves time and hassle, and then go about changing other measurements. Weight would probably be the easiest to transition next, followed by lengths for things other than highway signs. (No one will care that they can't easily convert meters into miles, just as they don't care that they can't convert feet into miles). But please don't try to start with highway signs. Or bother with highway signs at all, for that matter. They are the death of metricfication in the US, and insistence on them is only counterproductive to the rest of your goals.
" It's like if my toddler invented a system of weights and measures." Unlike today, where many units are defined by fundamental physical properties which can be duplicated (to a high accuracy) anywhere, Imperial measurements came from the need to be able to specify units which would be suitably accurate across geographies.
So, we ended up with a foot being, well, the length of a foot. A mile ("mille passus") being 1000 paces, etc. The needs were to measure small units (foot), or large distances (mile), so the conversion wasn't often needed (who builds a mile long building, or steps toe-to-heal across Europe?)
Then you get a pound being equivalent to so many grains of wheat (or a different number of grains of barley), etc.
It made sense at the time, and worked well enough.
BTW, 16 oz in a lb is from binary powers, easily divisible. The history of temperature units is interesting and convoluted, but 32 for freezing is based on binary divisions (64 units) between that and human body temperature (96). 0 was ice+salt. So again, it was an attempt at units which could be duplicated independently.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I have a machine shop in my garage, which includes a large mill and a lathe. Both have lead screws set to work in thousands of an inch, so one revolution of a handle is a certain subset of inches (.05) with individual tick marks at .001. It is essentially baked into the hardware, and you have to replace the feed wheel dials and lead screws to change it, among other things.
I purchase metal stock that comes in US units as well (1/2" bar stock for example) which corresponds to stock needed for drawings that give all their dimensions in inches. There is a cascading chain of things, all of which need to change.
You will not see me switching my shop to metric in my lifetime most likely.
Converting a large industrial economy over to metric has a lot of hidden costs that make it very difficult to do, because all valves, pipes, fittings, metal stock, screws etc. offerings have to be changed, and imperial parts need to be offered for many decades to come to service older equipment.
The idea itself is a good one as ultimately metric is a more scientifically advanced and clear set of standards than imperial. It's nice to work in a consistently matched base-10 for all scales.
In the case of smaller economies, it is easier to support the change due to much smaller scale and very small industrial base. New Zealand as a country switched over to metric in a single day, after much preparation.
Although the US auto industry has largely gone over to metric, I do not think that the rest of the US is currently in a position to swallow that pill easily. I believe that no matter how much ideologically it makes sense, that it is still political dynamite.
It would be nice if everyone taking up this topic had machine shop and fabrication experience so they would understand just how much it impacts the pipeline from raw stock to finished product. Politicians tend to think in abstracts and statistics and do not always consider all of the consequences. Most of the rest of the population is so far removed from it that they A. don't understand the entirety of the impact and B. as others have said would not benefit significantly from the change.
-PH