Metric System: We’re One of Three Countries Not Adopting It
Americans are outliers when it comes to measurements, clinging to the old Imperial system rather than the metric system. At one time in the 1970s, the American government experimented with the metric system, but it never caught on. Americans prefer miles (not kilometers), gallons (not liters), and Fahrenheit (not Celsius). In 1975, Congress enacted the Metric Conversion Act, which declared that the metric system was “the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce.” The law did not mandate conversion, noting that it was “completely voluntary.” It also developed a US Metric Board to help educate the American public and to implement a conversion.
Nearly every other country in the world has adopted the metric system. In fact, just three countries in the world—Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States—officially cling to the Imperial system. Not even the country most associated historically with the Imperial system—the United Kingdom—has stayed with it, although there are plenty of informal uses.
Ironically, the America system of money is based on 100s, a metric measurement. Thomas Jefferson proposed that American money be based on divisions of 100; thus, the United States became the first country in the world to “metrify” its coinage. Today, the euro, adopted nearly everywhere in Europe, is based on the metric system; even the British pound sterling is based on its own metric system, with 100 pence (pennies) per pound.
Why, in today’s nearly global acceptance of the metric system, would anyone object to the US joining the rest of the world? Historian Stephen Mihm argued that national pride is at stake. “The adoption of another country's weights and measures—or in the case of the metric system, the rest of the world's weights and measures—seems an infringement on national sovereignty. That the system in question has a long and distinguished history as a pet project of Francophile, cosmopolitan liberals probably doesn't help make it appealing to American conservatives.”
Source: Mihm quoted in Yoni Appelbaum, “Who’s Afraid of the Metric System?” The Atlantic, June 6, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/06/whos-afraid-of-the-metric-system/395057/.
