In America, metric doesn't measure up

18 August 2004

The temperature outside is 20 degrees centigrade. "Oh," I think, "I better put on a coat."

That's the problem with the metric system. None of it makes any sense. A gallon of gas is a good amount, but sell it by the liter and I think I'm shortchanged. Tell me my waist measures 90 centimeters and I'll go on a diet. If my scale says I weigh 100 kilograms, I'm back to eating whatever I want. I enjoy a cup of coffee in the United States, but what do I drink out of in Europe?

For almost 30 years, government officials, insisting it was good for us, have been trying to shove the metric medicine down our throats. In all that time, seemingly against all rationality, we've resisted, obstinately refusing to do as we're told.

And, I'm pleased to report, we're winning.

The latest victory comes in Maine. For the last decade, the state has mandated that transportation projects had to use metric: speed limits posted in kilometers per hour, square kilometers when surveying land, centimeters when specifying the dimensions of screws and bolts.

And now it's retreating.

Two years ago, Maine officials quietly decided to switch back to good old English measurements; the move caught the public eye just this summer. It turns out that, all the promises of the metric aficionados notwithstanding, metric was confusing and expensive.

True enough. Five years ago, NASA lost the $125 million Mars orbiter because some poor souls used metric instead of English units.

Ever since Frenchman Gabriel Mouton invented it in 1670, busybodies have been trying to push the ever-so-scientific metric system on everyone else. They've had much success. Even the Brits caved in 1965. The lone holdouts are three: the United States, Myanmar and Liberia.

This is not good company to keep.

And for a while, it seemed we too were going to join the fold. Thomas Jefferson was advocating metric back in 1790. The first international treaty adopting the system was signed in 1875 - the United States was even one of the signatories. By 1975, the metric lobby (amazingly enough, there really is one) got Congress to pass the Metric Conversion Act. That law was supposed to force the United States to switch within 10 years. Mysteriously, however, the 10- year deadline somehow was left out of the final version of the bill. Metricians got upset and managed to get the normally skeptical President Reagan to sign an amendment to the law proclaiming metric the "preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce." That was followed by various executive orders mandating government agencies adopt the system. Some did so enthusiastically - that's why Maine went metric - while others passively did nothing.

Aside from misguided Francophilia, why the big push for metric? Some argue it's better because it's a lot easier to multiply and divide by 10. I suppose that made sense back in the days when we all calculated using pencil and paper. But computers have made most of this irrelevant, a point Maine actually noted when it decided to revert back.

Moreover, a decimal system isn't as easy as it sounds. One can easily divide a foot into thirds - 4 inches. But what's a third of a meter? 0.33333 - an infinitely repeating decimal. Try measuring that when you're about to saw wood.

When you get down to it, the real reason for the United States to go metric seems to be that everyone else does it. Advocates for decades have been relentless in arguing that we had to adopt the metric system to keep our economy efficient and competitive in international markets.

That kind of threat is probably why we resist. Much of America's success lies in its own exceptionalism, its refusal to take orders from the rest of the world and its determination to set its own course. Rather than mere inertia, I think our collective refusal to go metric - despite the prodding of our political elite - has more to do with our basic orneriness.

So far, it's served us well. We're the world's richest country and its only superpower. I suppose some metric advocates think we could have done better had we gone along with their schemes, but it's hard to imagine how.

Indeed, I wonder if metric might be a bit like Esperanto, the "world language" created back in 1887. Americans stubbornly stuck with English - heck, most of us refused to learn anyone else's language - and, lo and behold, English has now emerged as the de facto international language for business and science.

Who knows? Maybe the rest of the world will eventually abandon centimeters and kilograms in favor of inches and pounds. It should.

A pint of beer has more character than half a liter. And crossing the Maine border, it's good to learn that rather than 100 kilometers to L.L. Bean's, it's just a short 65 miles away.