Metric System in US - comments

[Askance]

@Derleth

@Askance

Which if so is fairly small minded of them.

Not small-minded but practical. You’d do well to learn the difference.

I wasn’t saying the refusal to change to metric was small-minded, but that if that refusal was due to simple resentment of the way the change was presented rather than practical considerations it was small-minded:

@Askance

But the metric system wasn’t forced on them - if it was they’d have it today. So you’re really saying they were resentful for the change being even suggested, or contemplated, or urged on them. Which if so is fairly small minded of them.

[Defective_Detective]

I agree about small-minded. It’s sheer obstinacy not to want to change. People say it can’t be done, but how did other countries do it? Fellow dopers, please provide anecdotes if you’ve seen this take place before in your part of the world!

[Askance]

Here it was largely mandated in selected areas. No-one got fined for putting imperial measures on their products, they just have to put metric as well - PC monitors are still referred to in inches diagonal, whereas TVs use centimetres diagonal.

According to this site “the only other countries [than the USA] that have not officially adopted the metric system are Liberia (in western Africa) and Burma (also known as Myanmar, in Southeast Asia)”. There’s quite a history of the process further down the same page:

Early all-pervasive changes helped greatly to expose the public to metric units. Such changes included tariffs (July 1972), horse racing (August 1972), and air temperature (September 1972). Metric description of athletics, soccer, golf, and cricket on television and radio, and in newspapers, served a useful educational purpose. Even the most dramatic changes such as speed limits to km/h only proved to be “non-events”. It was agreed that dual-marked signs would be potentially dangerous.

The conversion of retail food scales took place in 1974-75. It was found necessary to impose fines on retailers who did not convert.

A public opinion survey in December 1976 indicated that many still knew little of the metric system, and often less of the imperial system. They managed well, as always without needing to involve themselves with quantities, whether metric or imperial. This led the Board to conclude that any attempt to further “educate” the public would probably be ineffective and unnecessary.

A conference of Commonwealth and State Ministers in October 1977 agreed to withdraw the legality of non-metric units used in contractual agreements.

Adult education classes on the metric system failed to attract interest, which confirmed the Board’s belief that such courses were unnecessary. It also confirmed the Board’s belief that people do not perceive metric in systematic form but learn each unit and its application as an independent and unrelated piece of information. As a consequence the highly logical nature of the metric system or the unsystematic nature of the imperial system had very little meaning for the ordinary citizen. Re-education of ordinary people should therefore concentrate on providing a new set of metric benchmarks and avoid irrelevant references to the elegance of the metric system.

At the outset, wide-spread public resistance seemed possible, but it did not occur, despite the efforts of a small band of dedicated anti-metricationists. Even major changes, such as speed limits and metric shopping, were not traumatic. Metrication was never a political issue, and it was actively supported by the trade unions.

By May 1979 the following programs were completed:

* Education at all levels
* Gasoline sales
* Weather forecasts
* Building and construction
* About 30 of the 50 sporting codes
* Retail sales in most States 

Some fields were static or slow moving, including:

* international aviation
* precision engineering
* real estate advertising
* advertising of goods described, but not sold, by measurement e.g. furniture, kitchen utensils. 

The Metric Conversion Board spent a total of $5 955 000 (Australian) during its 11 years of operation, and the Commonwealth Government distributed a total of $10 000 000 to the States to assist them in the conversion process. No accounting has been made of the cost to the private sector. The Prices Justification Tribunal reported that metrication was not used to justify price increases.

You’ll note the costs were trivial, and there was very little opposition while it was taking place even though it was acknowledged the benefits were largely for government and industry, not individuals.

[Askance]

And here is is an interesting comparison of the successful Australian conversion process - essentially complete after 11 years - with the much less successful British attempt, still going after 40 years.

The UK has suffered from extraordinarily insular thinking on metrication. Successive governments have systematically refused to learn from successes in other countries. British politicians who are too timid to deal with the metric conversion challenge in the UK would do well to read the following quote from Australia.

‘Resistance to the metric change is mostly due to fear of the unknown. Few realised it could be a simple, non-traumatic experience so that, with the general public, support for the change can only be expected after it.’

Just as many British politicians faced an anxious and sceptical public before adopting decimal currency in 1971, then were surprised at the smoothness of the transition, Britain could happily complete metrication if a better approach were adopted. If an imperial-schooled Australian public could adopt the metric system there is no reason why the British public cannot.

[JimOfAllTrades]

@Defective Detective

I agree about small-minded. It’s sheer obstinacy not to want to change. People say it can’t be done, but how did other countries do it? Fellow dopers, please provide anecdotes if you’ve seen this take place before in your part of the world!

I don’t think most people (and certainly not most of the people in this thread) say it can’t be done.

No matter how you do it, it will take some amount of money, time, and trouble to changeover to metric. Whether this is a small amount or large may be open to debate, but it will take some.

At the same time, there will be some advantages to converting. And again, whether this is a small advantage or large depends on who you are and other factors.

At the moment, rightly or wrongly, the US as a whole doesn’t see enough advantage to make spending the money, time, and trouble worthwhile. So it isn’t a matter of can’t do it, but that in the opinion of most the US it doesn’t make sense to do it right now.

[naita]

@DSYoungEsq

This is patently untrue. Many people still cook, using recipes that measure in English units, for example. Said people would be forced into either converting all recipes (meaning all recipe books would become essentially useless), or converting units (a pain in the butt when talking about oz. v. ml, for example.

Do you somehow imagine English unit measuring devices will be forbidden? My kitchen scales have a button for switching to ounces, some of my measuring cups have scales for ounces. I’ve never used this for anything, but I’d have no problems following recipies with English units.

[MarcusF]

*Originally posted by * Askance:
And here is is an interesting comparison of the successful Australian conversion process - essentially complete after 11 years - with the much less successful British attempt, still going after 40 years.

Quote:
The UK has suffered from extraordinarily insular thinking on metrication. Successive governments have systematically refused to learn from successes in other countries. British politicians who are too timid to deal with the metric conversion challenge in the UK would do well to read the following quote from Australia.

‘Resistance to the metric change is mostly due to fear of the unknown. Few realised it could be a simple, non-traumatic experience so that, with the general public, support for the change can only be expected after it.’

Just as many British politicians faced an anxious and sceptical public before adopting decimal currency in 1971, then were surprised at the smoothness of the transition, Britain could happily complete metrication if a better approach were adopted. If an imperial-schooled Australian public could adopt the metric system there is no reason why the British public cannot.

These days the difference in the UK is that metrification has got mixed up with unease about the power of the European Union. As I understand the Australian situation this was an Australian decision made to suit Australia’s needs.

Any attempt to move swiftly to full metrification in Britain would be jumped on by anybody with a dislike of the EU as “Unelected Eurocrats forcing plucky Britain to give up thousands of years of tradition” :smack: As the group who dislike the EU include most of the popular press it is just not worth any politician’s time. Just search for “Metric Martyrs” in Google and see what I mean!

In practice, for most purposes, we have already gone metric. Kids in school learn in kg and metres, engineers and scientists wouldn’t think of using feet and pounds, and practically all purchases are metric - even if, as noted, you buy a 454g jar of marmalade or 551ml of milk. About the last remaining holdouts are long distances/speeds where miles still rule and an individual’s own height and weight where feet and inches and stones and pounds are still the norm. Having said that I noticed that Miss Marcus (17) set the scales to Kg when weighing herself.

On the cooking front ovens went over to Celcius/Centigrade years ago and most recipes give both imperial and metric quantities. All measuring jugs and scales can cope with both. The difficulty comes when cooking with the kids and I’m using oz and they’re using grams On the other hand I find American recipes with cups for both fluids and dry measures very strange.

[Colophon]

@naita

Do you somehow imagine English unit measuring devices will be forbidden? My kitchen scales have a button for switching to ounces, some of my measuring cups have scales for ounces. I’ve never used this for anything, but I’d have no problems following recipies with English units.

I agree, it’s a total non-issue. I know that 1oz = 25g, more or less (actually 28.35g, but who’s counting), 1lb is a little under 500g and one pint is a little over 500ml, but I rarely even have to use that knowledge since in practice any recipe I follow will be written entirely in one system or another (or more often both, if it’s in a recipe book). I can happily follow my grandmother’s recipes from the 1940s, and the most mental arithmetic I need to do is to consider how many grams I need to buy if the recipe calls for 6oz of something, which is trivial.

Trying to follow American recipes off the internet, where everything is given in cups, is hardly difficult but is rather more odd. Who the hell measures butter in a cup? And the whole “stick of butter” thing puzzled me, too. (For the uninitiated, a cup of butter is half a pound, and a stick is half a cup. A standard pack of butter is 250g, which is generally close enough to a “cup” to make no odds.)

[Gymnopithys]

** Civil Guy**: "I think that metric will continue to make slow in-roads. "

You mean the US will inch forward to the metric system ?
Oh! and going metric would be a boon to obese people: imagine weighing only 90 kg instead of a horrendous 198 pounds.

[John_W.Kennedy]

Part of the problem, of course, is that, here in the US, metrification is opposed by many on the grounds that it’s a godless-Jewish-Darwinian-commie plot.

[dropzone]

Don’t forget French!

[Civil_Guy]

@dropzone

Don’t forget French!

Darn right. Who’s going to cook up a mess of Freedom Fries using them durned frenchie ‘millilitres’ and ‘keelogrems’, anywho?

[DSYoungEsq]

@Colophon

Trying to follow American recipes off the internet, where everything is given in cups, is hardly difficult but is rather more odd. Who the hell measures butter in a cup? And the whole “stick of butter” thing puzzled me, too. (For the uninitiated, a cup of butter is half a pound, and a stick is half a cup. A standard pack of butter is 250g, which is generally close enough to a “cup” to make no odds.)

It most certainly does when you are baking. The liquid to solid ratios there can be thrown off by something as minor as what size eggs you are using. Best be using them metric eggs.

[Siam_Sam]

@DSYoungEsq

It most certainly does when you are baking. The liquid to solid ratios there can be thrown off by something as minor as what size eggs you are using. Best be using them metric eggs.

It most certainly does, too, when sending spacecraft to Mars, as they found out the hard way.

[Gymnopithys]

The US produces 7.5 million bushels of corn every year. Can anyone visualize that ? Have an idea of the size of a bushel ? And besides, bushels have been in disuse eons ago.

Wikipedia:
1 U.S. bushel* = 35.23907017 litres = 8 corn/dry gallons = 9.309177489 wine/liquid gallons
1 Imperial bushel* = 36.36872 litres = 8 Imperial gallons

And so many barrels of oil. What size barrels? There are many kinds.

Wikipedia, oil barrel:
The standard barrel of crude oil or other petroleum product (abbreviated bbl) is 42 US gallons* (about 35 Imperial gallons* or 159 L). This measurement originated in the early Pennsylvania oil fields, and permitted both British and American merchants to refer to the same unit, which was based on the old English wine measure, the tierce.

*and Ossie gallons, bushels? and Kiwi gallons, bushels? :rolleyes:

[Ignatz]

[QUOTE=Yllaria

<snip>

Now the latest CalTrans specs (May 2006) has gone back to the **English ** system only.

The metric system may be sneaking in slowly, but it isn’t sneaking in on California highways.[/QUOTE]

The U.S. uses the U.S. Standard system, no longer officially called the English system…

[John_W.Kennedy]

“English System” is the genus. “US System” and “Imperial System” are the two chief species.

[Yookeroo]

@Charon Dippity

PPS: <troll> All the greatest English goalkeepers are all American now (Keller/Tottenham; Friedel/Blackburn; Howard)/ManU/Everton) </troll>.

Not Keller. His last team was German and he’s teamless at the moment. Plus, he’s just a shadow of the player he once was. Maybe swap Hahnemann (Reading) for Keller.

[Gorsnak]

@Gymnopithys

The US produces 7.5 million bushels of corn every year. Can anyone visualize that ? Have an idea of the size of a bushel ? And besides, bushels have been in disuse eons ago.

Wikipedia:
1 U.S. bushel* = 35.23907017 litres = 8 corn/dry gallons = 9.309177489 wine/liquid gallons
1 Imperial bushel* = 36.36872 litres = 8 Imperial gallons

Thing is, corn and most other agricultural commodities are sold by weight, not volume. And yet the unit of weight is called a bushel. There are standard weights for each type of grain, standards sanctioned by law. 32 lbs of oats is a bushel, whether it fills a bushel basket or no.

So, here in rural western Canada where metricization is by no means complete, you’ll hear some old farmer talk about how he harvested his 80bu/acre oat crop, but it was heavy oats so it will probably actually come to over 90bu/acre. See, he can keep track of the volume he takes off the field, which is the basis for the first number, but the crop won’t likely be weighed until he sells it. The scale displays in tonnes, and he’ll be paid by the tonne, but he won’t ever mention tonnes when talking about his crop, he’ll tell the other old farmers down at the coffee shop that he sold 6000bu of oats, but the prices this year are very bad.

[LionsRest]

Being all-metric might very well have saved NASA $125M…
In 1999 NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter. It crashed into the red planet because some engineers had calculated thrust in metric units while others had used English units.

I was taught metric in school, and told to expect it to become the standard. When I bought my first motor vehicle, it was all metric. It was a 1971 Suzuki 350cc street bike. I loved working on it, partially because I was able to glance at bolt heads, nuts, allen screws, etc. and usually determine the size exactly. To this day, it’s far easier for me to estimate a metric bolt head size than an English equivalent.

I have, since 1971, hated America’s intransigence regarding the metric system.