Whatever Happened to the Metric System? by John Bemelmans Marciano

Source of book: I own this.

After waiting for our library system to get this book - they never did - I went ahead and bought it. I probably shouldn’t complain, because our library system (which includes several counties) is pretty extensive. (Although, our own county is one of the worst funded in the state, which sucks.) Still, this would seem to be a worthy book, and better than yet another copy of the latest bestseller. 

But back to the book. 

The United States is a global outlier in that we have steadfastly refused to adopt the Systeme International units of measurements (commonly known here as the Metric System.) Well, that isn’t completely true. We have adopted some metric units, and use metric measurements exclusively in some cases. But we have also retained our own peculiar “traditional” units - kind of sort of related to the old British units, except where they aren’t - alongside the metric units. 

Just to give an interesting example: if you go to the store, you will find soft drinks sold in a variety of sizes. Two-liter bottles. And twelve-ounce cans. Or, for a more adult experience, you can find beer in twelve-ounce cans, or pints. But wine and hard liquor are sold in 750 milliliter and other metric sizes. 

Whatever Happened to the Metric System takes a look at why the United States is an outlier - but it does a lot more than that. 

The book starts with an overview of measurements in the not-that-distant past. Not only did every country have its own system, but individual towns and cities had their own regional variations. Thus, a pound might weigh a bit more or less the next town over. In France, the result was a complete mess. Since taxation was based on all of these measurements, a merchant would need to carry a giant book of the measurements and taxes - this literally happened. And this problem was a contributing factor to the French Revolution. 

With that revolution came new ideas for universal, logical systems. Systems that would unify currency, measurement, and the calendar worldwide. It was in this period of instability that the Metric System got its start. 

One of the key elements of the movement was a belief that decimals were the way of the future. Which did indeed prove to be correct. But even this part isn’t as intuitive or as inevitable as it seems now. Our whole human idea of numbers are weird anyway. We have settled on a base-10 system because of the number of fingers we have. But not all counting systems use this. The base-12 we use for feet and inches, or dozens, is pretty useful if you think about it. It is easily divided into halves, thirds, and quarters, which is why it has been used extensively in measurements around the world. Ten is less useful for this kind of mental math, but, because it has been taught for a couple centuries, we now naturally think in tens. (Even more recent is the way we think in decimals, not fractions. That’s a generational shift that occurred somewhere between my grandparents’ generation and my own.) But we could easily have had a base-12 system that worked like our own - just add two more numbers. I guess if Count Rugen had been the norm, we would have. 

This is the sort of fun history that fills the book. After all, looking at just how and why the US failed in its attempt to adopt the metric system (both Carter and Reagan played a role - how’s that for bipartisanship?) wouldn’t give a complete and nuanced picture of the SI and its opponents throughout history and around the world. Rather, the book takes a tour of the world and an overview of history and the geopolitical events that shaped our increasingly global world. 

There are too many cool facts and incidents for this post, but I did want to mention a few. 

One of the central characters in the book is one Charles Piazzi Smyth, who combined some legitimate astronomical work with quintessentially 19th Century nuttiness. Generally, those who opposed the meter fell into two categories. In the first were those pragmatists who considered the old ways more intuitive and natural. (The foot comes from a human foot, etc.) These folks believed that the meter was artificial, and harder for the average person to use in everyday life. It’s not a terrible argument, actually. 

Smyth was in the second group, those who considered measurements not as a natural and intuitive human invention, but as standards literally dictated by God himself. And to this end, they were determined to prove that the cubit (as found in the Bible and other ancient near eastern literature) was exactly one-half of the British yard. (Or some other correlation to British units - there were about as many theories as theorists…) And so they made measurements of the Giza pyramids, and attempted to show that these were exactly based on the yard as well. (With better measurements, it became clear that this wasn’t the case, but at the time…) Smyth wrote a monumental work on the subject, which was well received by many scientists of the time.

But where it really struck a chord was with a group called the British Israelites, who claimed that the British were a lost tribe of Israel. Hey, wait? Wasn’t there a guy named Joseph Smith who came up with something similar? The 19th Century was an interesting time…

There is a whole chapter in the book devoted to the issue of the standardization of time. In our own day, it is hard to imagine that every town might have its own clock set to local solar time, and that traveling 20 miles meant changing one’s watch. Or that Boston was 12 minutes ahead of New York. With faster transportation and frequent travel, this system became untenable. And the brouhaha over how to establish a standard time was insane. In the end, it was the railroads that forced the issue, because they agreed to their own standard so that trains could run on a predictable schedule (and you wouldn’t need yet another giant book to calculate each town’s time on a route.) 

The issue of time was also a microcosm of the general issue with standardized measurement. Plenty of people then (as now) were freaked out about globalism. And about people not exactly like them. 

Then there were those philosophically opposed to the new, more artificial time. Claiming it went against divine instructions, one individual deemed the meridian congress as yet another example of “the dread international conference which transcends all mere radical politicians in seeking ever by blood and fire to destroy most completely the ancient and necessary barriers between the nations, and to form all mankind into one vast, headless society.” 

That could have been written in our own time by the conspiracy theorists of today. 

Speaking of old issues that have come back again, how about tariffs? In the chapter on the challenges of the 1930s, the book notes the role that tariffs played in the two catastrophic events of that decade. The Hawley-Smoot tariffs were a giant factor in creating and prolonging the Great Depression. But more than that, they undermined international relationships, and led Japan to cut most ties with the US...and then invade Manchuria. So yes, tariffs were one of the factors that led to World War Two. 

In the aftermath of the war, though, metrication accelerated dramatically. But the fears of metrification also continued. The book cites George Orwell’s 1984 as an example:

“‘E could ‘a drawed me off a pint,” grumbled the old man as he settled down behind a glass. “A ‘alf litre ain’t enough. It don’t satisfy. And a ‘ole litre’s too much. It starts my bladder running.” 

The irony, of course, is that a half liter is just a bit more than a pint. But, both in Britain and the US, the pint remains a standard for beer. Well, over here, at least since craft beer became a thing. Before that (and still in many cases), a beer is 12 ounces. Orwell’s old man would be horrified. 

There is another example in this book of how history gets skewed in our minds, just like tariffs have been largely forgotten in the general population as a factor in the Depression and in causing a world war. While the US was off the gold standard for the most part - ordinary people couldn’t trade their cash for gold since FDR let currency float in the 1930s - but foreign governments could - it was Nixon who dealt the final blow in 1971. Jimmy Carter gets blamed for the rampant inflation during his presidency. But he didn’t create the issue - Nixon did. Once the dollar was no longer pegged to gold, its artificially high value readjusted over the course of a decade. Combined with the oil embargo (again, first happened under Nixon) led to a series of economic shocks. One can argue about whether Carter had options that he failed to use, but he took the fall for policies that he had no part in. 

The 1970s were also the time of an interesting partial conversion to metric. While it was never completed (as the book details), much of our lives are indeed metric here in the US. The Ford Pinto was the first domestic vehicle to use metric engine sizes. Many of us who are into cars, classic and otherwise, can remember the use of standard measures, of course. The first car I remember well in our family was a mid-70s Dodge Dart with the 318. As in, 318 cubic inches. My kids don’t think that way. The last of the 318s was the Magnum 5.2 liter. My first car was a 1984 Camaro, with the 305 - a legacy engine which would become the Vortec 5000 (5 liters) in a few years. But even that Camaro had metric bolts - I know, because I wrenched on that thing. Times change, and we don’t even notice all the metric measurements we use. 

It could have been even more, though. President Gerald Ford signed the metrification act, which was supposed to make the US all metric. It never happened, and quietly went away. Ford, with his characteristic ability to put his foot in his mouth, may have accidentally said why, in his statement on the law, where he pointed out that manufacturers were already using metrics:

“U.S. industry in this regard is miles ahead of official policy.”

Just as in the 1800s, in the early 1980s, there was opposition to metrification, and for the usual reasons. (Although there were fewer claiming divine sanction for traditional measures this time around.) And, as before, it was a colorful character who ended up front and center: in this case hippy conspiracy theorist Stewart Brand. I mention him primarily because of his slogan for how to fight the metric system: “Bitch, boycott, and foment.” 

In the end, the United States ended up essentially isolated, with the rest of the world adopting the metric system. The book ends with an interesting thought. The US is often castigated by other countries for pushing a crap global culture (see: McDonalds and Coca-Cola) that destroys differences. Yet at the same time, we are laughed at for refusing a global measuring system. As the author points out:

How can Americans be stupid, ignorant, and lazy for knowing only one language, and also be those same things for having two systems of measurement? It is because not being metric plays into the idea that America thinks of itself as not having to play by the same rules as the rest of the world.

Certainly, this is a fair point. But not exactly the whole story on the metric system. As the book shows as it examines history, the US was in a unique position in that it never experienced its revolution or industrialization at the right time, when the metric system was developed or standardized. So, we just never did, and at this point, probably never will. After all, conversions are so easy with our computers, and most of the behind-the-scenes stuff is either metric already, or based (like container shipping) on other standards altogether. 

This was a fascinating book, and I highly recommend it. The history alone is worth reading, and the personalities and arguments for and against make for a delightfully messy and human drama.