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Why the U.S. Just Doesn’t “Measure” Up
Written by-Zach-
When America won the revolutionary war we forgot one thing. We took our freedom, we developed an unprecedented constitutional document all our own, and we transferred our loyalties from the Motherland to the new America, but some things didn’t change. The Imperial system of measure was kept to haunt us for the next 233 years and counting.
The Imperial system of measure is the one we Americans use: gallons, pints, quarts, miles, feet, pounds, etc. (fathoms, pecks, grains???)
The Metric system is what everyone else uses: liters, meters, kilometers, grams, kilograms, etc. It’s a base 10 system just like we use to…count.
Smart…Very smart.
There are only three countries not using the Metric system today. United States of America, and two other countries that I just found out exist.
There’s no need of this. We had our chance 200 years ago and missed it. Our own Ben Franklin brought the Metric system to France but was unable to convince the American people that the base 10 metric system was in fact superior to our modified Imperial system. Which is sad since Americans bought the absurdity of Daylight Savings Time (also Franklin’s contribution), but decided against the simplicity of the Metric system.
Just think, we would no longer have to use Google conversion to find out how many inches are in 13 miles. (Not that too many people actually want to know that…I think it’s just the idea.) We could just move the decimal point to find kilometers! Brilliant!
And if finding an easy way to calculate how many inches you get per tank of gas is not convincing enough…
How many women would love to have a weight of only two digits? 100% you say? Well let’s do it. Let’s go on the Metric diet.
200 Imperial weight = 90 Metric weight
The only thing we’re measuring with the Imperial system is our own stubbornness. As if the world doesn’t think we are stubborn enough. But let’s not just switch because “everybody’s doing it” because that’s just giving in to peer pressure, let’s switch because there are 63,360 inches in a mile. And because “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” But later said he had no idea how much that was. Everyone else confessed the same.
I totally agree!!!!
It’s because people oppose change because it makes our lives difficult. The trick is to teach the next generation as soon as they are born, (which actually happens). Somewhere around that generations age of 10 or so, we switch so that we use the metric system.
Or we bomb England.
While I think it would be so awesome if all of my frequent flyer miles got converted into frequent flyer kilometers (I would be able to fly to the moon!), why run with the herd? Maybe we should change to something even less logical than our modified imperial system. And, to cement the deal, we could switch from our base 10 system to something like hexadecimal. If you insist that we we change our standard of measure to something that makes sense, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to change it to something really easy to remember. Like, Starbucks has Tall, Grande, and whatever that other size is. That’s easy to remember. We could just say, “I weigh 3 grandes” or “I am six talls tall” or “please put ten whatever-that-other-size-is’s of gas in the tank for me.” That’s precise enough for me and easier than switching.
Ha ha … Stoogie.. I think you’re right. I was a little too narrow minded on what units I thought were available…
If we bombed England the Irish would be sure to see that as an opportunity to expand regional influence and would almost certainly wreak both on whatever is left of England as well any American occupying forces if there was a ground invasion to follow.
I just have this foreboding feeling that what starts out as a well-intentioned idea to rid the world of the metric system could balloon into an all-out quagmire before we’d even know what happened.
Despite all that, it is an option that cannot be ruled out entirely. Hopefully, the British will peacefully surrender their Metric program, and all this speculation will be rendered null-and-void.
It’s quite ridiculous that we don’t use the metric system I realized today before I read this. It’s really just stubborn American habits of being too lazy to repaint a sign and speedometer. I really think the start should come in science class rooms and pretty much ban the American system of measurement in science classes. I don’t care about the road signs or speedometers or maps, but it’s quite stupid to have kids weigh things in ounces and measure in inches for the sake of science experiments. What’s 1lb 4oz -12 oz? What’s 1.4 kg - 800 grams?
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