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Don't Give an Inch
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19937 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1992 |
1,915 Words |
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Seaver Leslie
Seaver Leslie, who lives in Maine, is the founder of American
for Customary Weight and Measure, a grass-roots educational
campaign favoring retention of the customary system. |
In a draft of the U.S. Constitution, there was a special clause to allow for the adoption of a new decimal system of measurement being advocated by certain traveled Americans. But Thomas Jefferson, who had considered the metric system carefully, opposed conversion, noting that the system was inferior because it did not coordinate measure of time (built on the 12-hour clock's multiples of three and four) with length, volume, and weight. The clause was struck. The 10-hour clocks promoted by metric enthusiasts trying to compensate for this flaw now gather dust in Paris antique stores.
Although it has been legal in America to use metric, and to manufacture and trade in it, since 1866 Americans steadfastly have preferred the U.S. customary system of weights and measures. Some international businesses and some parts of the scientific community have been using metric for years. Most others have not found conversion to be advantageous. For the common citizen, sacrificing a familiar, convenient, and poetic measurement system simply makes no sense.
Cooking, building, driving, sewing, land dealing--nearly every human activity involves measurement. "Weights and measurements may be ranked among the necessaries of life to every individual of human society," reported John Quincy Adams to Congress in 1821. "The knowledge of them, as in established use, is among the first elements of education, and is often learned by those who learn nothing else, not even to read and write."
Metric Has Never Been Adopted Voluntarily
The metric system was contrived by scientists 200 years ago in France. At the time that it was forced on an unwilling public, the meter was defined as one ten-millionth part of the distance between the North Pole and the equator. The measurement was erroneous; scientists then believed the earth was a perfect sphere. Today the meter is defined, as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of orange-red krypton-86 gas (not exactly a household item).
There are actually several different metric systems in use today. For example, meteorologists in other parts of the world disagree whether atmospheric pressure should be measured in millibars or in kilopascals. The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) report on metrication in 1978 (CED-78-128) notes that because "the International System of Units (SI) is materially different from the metric system of other nations, there is much evidence that these nations intend to protect their interests and
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