The long history to set up an international system of weights and measures - and why the U.S. stubbornly refuses to go along with the rest of the world - is contained within World in the Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement by Robert P. Crease. It’s a short history of a very long subject, so he covers a lot of ground in different chapters. There are much longer books just on the U.S. vs metric, but you really don’t need them. A chapter or two is more than sufficient.
When I first saw this thread I suddenly had the Irish Rovers’ singing The Barley Mow in my head.
For some reason when I was a kid my mom bought me a record of their music and I was listening to that back when all the cool kids were listening to Led Zeppelin.
But when it got past the quart they sang “half gallon”
I’m glad “pottle” was easy enough to locate. Now I want to start saying to the kids “Hey, could you go to the basement fridge and grab a pottle of milk?”
But they will just think I’m saying bottle and all traces of awesomeness of the new word will be lost on them.
I also came in to mention the “pottle”. It was included in the very first Asimov science column I ever read (in F&SF) titled “Forget It!” He devotes a lot of space to the book “A New and Complete System of Arithmetic Composed for the Use of the Citizens of the United States,” by Nicolas Pike, A.M., first edition 1785, 2nd edition 1797 (“enlarged”).
[QUOTE=Isaac Asimov]
Then 2 bushels make a strike, 2 strikes make a coom, 2 cooms make a quarter, 4 quarters make a chaldron (though in the demanding city of London, it takes 4-1/2 quarters to make a chaldron). Finally, 5 quarters make a wey and 2 weys make a last.
[/QUOTE]
Woohoo! Isaac Asimov posted to one of my threads! 
Of course it created a new gap: so what comes between cooms and chaldrons?
Hey, you started it. If you’d just sent over a decent measuring system with the first wave of colonists, we could all be on the same page. 
We’re trying. So far, we’ve managed to base our weird units off of specific numbers of metric units. (i.e. 1 inch = 2.x centimeters, rather than some reference piece).
Also, it’s more about arrogance than anything else. Eventually the rest of the world will see the superiority of our measuring system and switch. :smack: