Metric or whatever the correct term for it is these days.
In the 70s when I was a kid, the phrase was “it’s coming.” I remember my mother got a car with a speedometer with MPH on the top and KMP on the bottom. The signs were in both metric/American units (is that what it’s called?).
Weather forecasts were in both. Then Reagan was elected and it was all quietly dropped. I reason it failed because they tried to teach conversion instead of just dropping it all together.
Surely other countries have converted and lived. Oh sure we’ve had a few successes like 2 liter bottles of pop and using metric units in drugs and in autos but by enlarge it hasn’t taken in this country. I believe (correct me if I’m wrong) we’re the last hold out.
So why do you think the USA is so resistant to changing to metric? I don’t care really, except the weather it makes more sense. Let’s face it 90 is HOT not 32
My wild ass guess would be that the US is so large and our current system is so entrenched, that it would be near impossible to do a sharp change to metric. Hell, I doubt even a gradual change would ever work. Plus Americans tend to be set in their ways.
And I’m going to go with elfkin477 and say that it’s because we don’t have to. The U.S. is a dominant-enough country that we can keep our own regional measurement system in official contexts without being too inconvenienced, not to mention that the Imperial system was the dominant system of the greatest country in the world, Britain, before they (mostly) gave it up. That wouldn’t work nearly so well in a country surrounded by foreign measurements.
Really? When I was a kid in the 90s the phrase was “The US will never go metric”. It just doesn’t jibe with our fiercely independent way of life to convert over to whatever the rest of the world is doing. Hell, we may still impose our system on the rest of the world yet. You wait and see.
Same for me, but yes, there was apparently rampant optimism in the '70s that it was going to happen, and soon. I know other countries did it successfully but it never happened here - the size of the country may have been an obstacle but I bet there were a lot of federal vs. state issues. The bottom line is that the change isn’t necessary: scientists in the U.S. use the metric system, but nobody else really needs to. “Illogical” as it is supposed to be, everybody seems to get along okay with the imperial measurements.
What I remember from being a kid in the '90s was the older people saying “The US will never go metric” and the younger and middle-aged people (my schoolteachers) saying “it’s only a matter of time.”
The government screwed up the first time. They tried to ease us into it but made the whole thing seem too complicated. It’s not like Americans are completely ignorant about the metric system. I’m sure all of us have purchased a 2 liter bottle of soda at some point in our lives. But the numbers have to make sense. Nobody looks at a gallon of milk and says “Oh, that’s 3.875 liters,” but that’s essentially what the government expected us to do. If dairies had started producing 3.5 or 4 liter jugs of milk it wouldn’t have been a problem. Same thing with speed limits. Every speed limit we’ve ever dealt with has been a multiple of 5. Nobody wants to deal with an “88 kph” limit.
The U.S. hasn’t switched to metric for the same reason that the Brits drive on the left. If we could just snap our fingers and instantaneously change, we would, but it would involve a lengthy and nightmarish transition. It would be so disruptive as to be not worth it.
It’d be a big push for not much benefit. I love metric as much as the next guy, but all one really needs in day to day life is common ground. When I say a mile, my head can picture the distance, and so can everyone else around me for thousands of kilometers (see what I did there?).
Besides, many Americans are familiar enough with a lot of the more common metric measurements. Centigrade to Fahrenheit is always the hardest to feel out, at least for me. I have to anchor it around 0=32º for freezing and 100=212º for boiling, and try to emulate from there.
But a meter is around 3 feet (a yard); a foot is just under 30 centimeters. A Kilometer is just over half a mile, and a liter is about a fourth of a gallon. And everyone who drinks pop/soda knows how much 2 liters is. And a Kilogram is a shitload of cocaine. Okay, it’s just under half a pound.
Although, a decimal system would be fantastic, I do envy that. sigh
1967 in Sweden: they switched from driving on the left to driving on the right. Not only did it go over without a hitch, but the accident rate actually went down. For about a full year. (Vanderbilt, Tom. Traffic pgs. 176-177)
Though I’m not sure Brits really have any desire to start driving on the right.
Then there are parts of the world who still say they weigh (x) stone.
What in the hell is that?
But back to the OP; we oddly have soft drinks in 2 liter bottles - but that is about it. Having lived a long time in Europe, I got used to doing everything in metric and temperatures in Celsius…however, since returning the the US, I have pretty much forgotten it all. Friends call from Germany and tell me the temperature and I have to think about it for a few minutes to kind of get an idea of what they are talking about…whereas back then, I knew exactly what they meant.
In other words, it is not that hard to become accustomed to using metric, but if you don’t use it, you lose it; it might as well be a foreign language.
One kilo is only 2 pounds exactly in European measurements. The US has the odd 2.2 lbs for one kilo. Even our pounds are different here. You learn this quickly when saying your weight in Europe, in pounds, and having people look at you oddly and saying, “No, you are not THAT fat!”
