Cecil’s article mentioned that America is currently trying to adopt the metric system. I did not know this, but I personally have felt for many years that we should update. I mean why not join the rest of the world? I feel America would witness a remotion of its current system within fifty years or less if our public schools required children to learn both systems at an early age, because metric’s simplicity would easily win the popularity contest.
I was in elementary school in the 1970s and we were required to learn the metric system in 3rd grade. Then we learned it again in 4th grade, then again in 5th grade, and IIRC again in 6th. While I certainly know how to use it today because of this it obviously didn’t help convert the country as a whole.
I know a lot of other people of my generation had similar experiences. There was a huge push in the mid 1970s to teach it to kids, but by the time my brother who is seven years younger than me was in elementary school he said they weren’t taught it.
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That would be because Cecil wrote That column in 1995. I don’t believe there is much of a push currently.
Welcome to the boards. Providing a link to the column in question is always a good thing as it helps readers to follow along.
One thing I don’t get is the excuse “We will have to teach everyone how it works”
Well, we all got that lesson, every one of us under retirement age. So some people didn’t get the hang of it? Well those same people couldn’t deal with decimal fractions either, so if we just ignore them they will be no worse off than before.
I have seen a “half gallon” of milk at usual half gallon price…but look close and you see it’s really a liter…which means slightly less milk. Sneaky way of actually raising the price.
You posted this nonsense in the other metric thread too. If it’s actually a liter there is no way it’ll be mistaken for a half gallon. A liter is just over a (US) quart. (0.26 gallons to be more presise.) And two liters would also be slightly more than a half gallon.
They might have made it work if they tried using “avoirdupois-friendly” units of measure. For instance, why couldn’t they have come up with a “metric gallon” of four liters? And they could have sold things in stores by metric pounds, or half-kilos. They did this when I was in Europe, and presumably still do. You could go into a German grocery store and buy a pound of meat or bread, only you were actually getting 1.1 pounds avoirdupois, or a half kilo.
The avoirdupois ounce (mass) and fluid ounce (volume) are almost exactly the same when measuring water. Define the ounce as being exactly the same and call the resulting quart a liter if you want to be different. Use it to define the length of the decimeter and the mass of a kilogram from the new liter, instead of the other way around, and an entire metric system falls into place, except people could also use their old names, too. The late 18th and early 19th centuries, when all the systems were being codified, would’ve been the perfect time, except the French were too crazy back then to go along with it.
Of course, my system falls apart when I try to include the inch, but working out details like that is why the original committee hired Lavoisier.
On the other hand it does raise the Fear Of Getting Ripped Off, which I think may underlie a great deal of our inability to move to new ways of doing things. For the same reason we can’t get rid of the penny, which is such an absurdly low denomination that, having long since lost any relevance to everyday purchases, is on the verge of losing its remaining relevance even as change.
In the same way I’m sure a substantial portion of the U.S. population believes that a government mandated switch to metric would result in a few cents’ price gouging per liter of gas as a result of the changeover.
An inch is about 25 millimeters - and 25 is not a horribly difficult number to work with - granting that it’s not completely intuitive either. But if anyone still wants to use easily divided numbers, they can figure that an inch is close enough to 24 millimeters (probably, for most uses) and they can keep on using mulitples of 12 for other project layouts.
Another slight problem with switching to metric will be, for some time to come, the hassle of going to the hardware store to buy some 1,219 by 2,438 by 19 mm sheets of plywood. They’re probably going to be that size for a while, no? Or 122 by 244 by 1.9 cm? Or what?
Well, thank you Dr Lavoisier! It still doesn’t develop out of the New Liter like the New Kilogram, but it’s nothing to lose your head over. 
As for lumber sizes, the metric folks try to deal:
Their 2x4 is 50 × 100 mm, which is larger than the 2x4’s actual size (1-1/2" x 3-1/2" or 38 x 89 mm) but is closer to its nominal size.
Your 4’ x 8’ x 3/4" plywood is rounded off to 1220 x 2440 x 90mm. It not only lacks the verbal flair, and dare I say, simplicity, of a “four by eight,” but I also believe all those additional digits lend an artificial accuracy to the size that is not borne out in reality. That, and since the metric sizes do not match their Imperial predecessors, rebuilding an old structure becomes more awkward, with more adjustments to get it to match.
The old Norwegian inch was 26.1 mm, the Swedish inch was 24.74mm, …
A Norwegian pound was 498 grams, a Swedish pound was 425, …
Starting from scratch seems like a well thought out idea to me.
Still, it’s fairly common in Norway to speak of nail and timber dimensions in inches and a folding rule is often called an “inch rod”, sometimes even when it only shows metric length.
And of course the Norwegian and Swedish miles were simple to redefine to exactly 10km, so they’re still in use.
An inch is exactly 25.4 millimeters. It’s the actual legal definition of an inch.
I knew that, I think.
[wild tangent] Appropriate of nothing, there’s also something called a Survey Foot that differs from an ordinary Foot by some small amount (but technically significant, given enough foots, er, feet) - ain’t our current measurement system simply wunnerful? [/wild tangent]
Well, as naita points out, before the international system of units was designed, every country used its own, slightly different, system. So had the French designed the metric system taking customary units as their base, they would have used their customary units, which are different from yours. So you’d still be complaining that a metric gallon (i.e. former French gallon) isn’t the same as the gallon you’re used to. 
Actually, searching a bit on Wikipedia to find what those customary French units were, I found out that Napoléon actually applied Spectre’s suggestion when France switched to the metric system. See this article. (And here I found the old French customary units. Interestingly, there doesn’t appear to be any French unit called the gallon.)
You ain’t seen nothing yet. See how many pounds there are! (scroll down to the table) Apparently the troy units are still used with precious metals. Note that there are 12 troy ounces in a troy pound.
In 1959, when the legal definition of the US inch was changed to exactly 2.54cm, (the Imperial inch was so redefined at the same time; before then they had been different by about 2 parts in a million), US surveyors decided that they didn’t want to change all their numbers, and kept the previoius definition of exactly 1/39.37m.
Which means that a mile actually isn’t exactly 5280 feet, but approximately 5280.01056 feet.
Coming from Australia and living in the US (Australia converted to metric in 1967) I have thought quite a bit about this subject - although interestingly, even though I wasn’t around during the imperial system - I still can only think of a person’s height in terms of feet and inches. I think that the use of decimal currency is likely the main reason that there has been no strong push from the public to change systems. If you think about it, money is the area in which measurement is used most regularly by most people - you can go a number of days without measuring the length or weight or volume of something - but you are likely to at least think about prices etc. every day.
Could be.
Um, wasn’t it only pretty recently that Wall Street converted to decimal stock prices? Who says we’re not making progress? 
10 km? Whatever those things were before Metrification, they weren’t miles. The Roman mile, from which all of the modern “mile” units are decended, was 1000 full paces (i.e., the distance when you set down your left foot 1000 times). 10 meters isn’t a pace for much of anyone, except maybe the Aesir.
Of course they were miles. 
One additional ‘step’ further removed from the origin, but us Germanic people all have our ‘big’ miles. Have a look at the list of different ‘miles’ at the end of the wikipedia entry: Mile - Wikipedia
Oh, and I dare you to pace out a nautical mile, on water.