If you are of a certain age, you were taught both the United States Customary System (USCS) for weights and measures (inches, pounds, and gallons) and the International System of Units (SI) or the Metric System (meters, grams, and liters) in elementary school.  Much of this was focused not on using the metric units but converting from one system to the other.  While America continues to use the USCS, all but most of the world has shifted to the metric system. Currently, only three independent countries use the USCS: the United States, Liberia, and Myanmar.  The reason for this is obvious, the metric system, with base 10 units structure has more utility and is fundamentally easier to understand than the USCS with some units based on units of 12 and others based on units of 16 (and to muddy the water further, USCS does not always use the same definition as the old British Imperial System so a gallon is not a gallon everywhere).  If the International System of Units (SI) or the Metric System is the preferred system for weights and measures across the globe, and the US economy is drives global commerce, why do we stick to vestiges of the old British Imperial System?  Why does America stand alone?  Start by blaming the renowned Francophile Thomas Jefferson, and his boss President George Washington.

The French are widely credited with originating the metric system of measurement and the revolutionary French government officially adopted the system in 1795, but the system actually originated in England.  John Wilkins, an English clergyman, and brother-in-law to Oliver Cromwell, first proposed a decimal system of measurements in 1668.  This proposal was followed two years later by a recommendation Gabriel Mouton that distances be measured using a decimal system of measurement based on a fraction of the Earth’s circumference (nautical miles are based on degrees of latitude along a meridian of longitude so this is not a radical idea).  These ideas, generally considered unworkable, will be debated for about a century before the national assembly of France called for an invariable standard of weights and measurements in 1790.  They further ordered, in the spirit of Enlightenment Thinking, that this new system would be decimal-based, with larger and smaller multiples of each unit arrived at by dividing and multiplying by 10 and its powers.

By contrast the British Imperial System evolved from the thousands of Roman, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and customary local units employed in the Middle Ages. Traditional names such as pound, foot, and gallon were widely used, but the values varied with time, place, trade, product specifications.  Early attempts were made to create royal standards and enforce uniformity but these were almost universally based on arbitrary, sometimes arcane standards.  For example, King Edgar the Peaceable kept a royal bushel measure and a rod the designated a standard yard.  Attempts were made to create standards that were more transportable such as a foot containing 12 inches with each inch equaling the length of three barleycorns but these standards were ultimately subject to all sorts of time and place variances.

Now to be totally fair, the British Imperial System does have certain advantages, particularly in semiliterate societies.  Most of the units are easily and infinitely divisible by two so simple halving and doubling is pretty straightforward.  The overall system does, however, have one serious drawback.  Units are typically not translatable across dimensions.  This means that units of volume and units of mass don’t work well together and in an age of scientific inquiry this gave a huge advantage to Metric System.  The Metric System abandoned the old royal standards.  Its developers sought to express everything in terms of logic and nature: one meter is one ten-millionth of the distance between the North Pole and the Equator; a milliliter was the volume of one cubic centimeter of water; a milliliter of water weighs one gram; etc. This adaptability to scientific and engineering work, allowed the system to flourish with the rapid expansion of the industrialized world. Ultimately, however, the flaw with the Metric System is that it is FRENCH; and this is our story for today.

As early as the 1770s, Thomas Jefferson expressed the need for coinage based on the decimal system.  The British currency of the 18^th Century was 20 shillings to the pound and 12 pennies to the shilling.  Jefferson, like most people with ten fingers, thought the systems should be based on powers of ten so that accounts could be more easily calculated.  This rational system was part of his overall belief in the importance of a uniform system of weights and measures. Jefferson even developed his own decimal system of measurement, echoing the efforts of men John Wilkins in 1668.

When Jefferson was in France during the 1780s, he had long conversations about such standardized systems, notably exchanging ideas with statesman and cleric Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. Talleyrand was, the French bishop would go on to be the force behind the adoption of a standardized system of measurement by the French Assembly in 1790.

What France implemented during the 1790s was based on natural phenomena instead of the traditional seconds pendulum technique. For the French, the fundamental measure – or metre (from the Greek word “metron,” for measure) – was set at 1/10,000,000 the length of a meridian line from the equator to the North Pole — using the line that went through Paris.  The system of measurement was decidedly French. Jefferson took issue with the system that seemed to apply only to France so he petitioned Congress NOT to adopt the system.

In 1790, President George Washington told Congress, “Uniformity in the currency, weights, and measures of the United States, is an object of great importance, and will, I am persuaded, be duly attended to.”   The task ultimately fell into the hands of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Already actively working on a solution, Jefferson submitted a report to Congress during the summer of 1790. The report included two potential plans, neither of which received consideration by the legislative body.

In December 1790 and again in October 1791, Washington reemphasized the importance of the uniformity of weights and measures in a statement to Congress, prompting the Senate to consider Jefferson’s report.   Debates and discussions about establishing a uniform system slogged on through mid-1796, at which point a designated committee attempted to address concerns about how to take appropriate measurements. It recommended, “The President of the United States… employ such persons of sufficient mathematic skill” to carry out Jefferson’s plan.  After multiple readings of the report, however, any move toward establishing an official system was again deferred.  And so, with the traditional “Act of Congress” (ie no action taken) we are stuck with the British Imperial System.

Meanwhile, on the Continent, several countries enthusiastically accepted the metric system. Countries throughout Western Europe began to follow the metric system, with Portugal, Belgium, and the Netherlands serving as the earliest adopters. By switching to the metric system, individual nations found themselves on common ground with political counterparts and potential economic partners. As a means of opening up financial opportunities.  Metrication also accompanied decolonization as many newly independent nations sought to break with all things related to their former imperial overlords. 

Rarely was this switch to metric standards popular.  In fact, in France, the metric system was not an immediate success. It was even abolished by Napoleon in 1812 and only reinstated in 1840.  Switching from medieval units of measure to the “modern” metric system was often done at the expense of popular opinion.  Generally, the conversion was dictated by democratically deficient governments bucking the will of the people in favor of increased trade.  But the United States continues to buck this trend…, sort of.

While France adopted the metric system in 1795, the French government would not require all Frenchmen to convert to the metric system until 1840.  In the United States Congress legalized the use of the metric system in the United States but it has never been officially required for all commerce as it is in France.  In 1975, Congress ordered that federal agencies “use the metric system of measurement in its procurements, grants, and other business-related activities,” but it also allowed for “the continued use of traditional systems of weights and measures in non-business activities.”  Again, in Federal Legislation in 1988, Congress designated the Metric System as the preferred system for trade but did not make its use mandatory for private companies.  To this day using the metric system remains completely voluntary.

The United States is often at a competitive disadvantage when dealing in international markets because of its nonstandard measurement system, and is sometimes excluded when it is unable to deliver goods which are measured in metric terms.  This is best exemplified by the loss of a $125 million Mars orbiter because engineers, working with partners in Europe, failed to convert the critical thrust information from pounds to newtons, resulting in the orbiter smashing into the red planet rather than being captured in a synchronous orbit. 

Much of the American distain for the metric system is due to the way the US education system attempted to promote the use of the system in our country.   As said above, in most countries, the conversion to metric units was dictated by the governments despite objections of the people.  In our country we spent a hug amount of energy teaching people to CONVERT from the units they favored to metric equivalents. Most people are never taught where pounds and feet come from.  It’s as if God handed Moses a pint on Mount Sinai (actually this might explain that whole “slow of speech” thing…).  Imperial units are assumed and metric units had to be justified.  Focusing on conversions make the metric system seem complicated.  Simply using the system as a stand alone proves it is not.

So, there you have it.  Popular opinion would rather us trade in long tons (20 long hundredweight of 112 pounds each with each pound weighing 16 ounces) rather than metric tons (1000 kilograms each with each kilogram weighing 1000 grams).  Then those same people complain that they are “bad at math” when the bill comes…..  Hum. If only “Florida Man” would drink his beer in half litres…

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