One of the comments made on our mailing list rang particularly true with
me: that US adoption of the metric system will not occur, save as a
last-ditch action to improve our economic competitiveness in case of
economic emergency. As long as we can afford the luxury of being the
world's metrological sore thumb, we shall continue with the "system"
that we have.
As concerned citizens with a scientific bend, I fear that, for these
many years on the internet, we have been doing the Springsteen thing:
dancing in the dark. Our periodic inventories of new pro-metric products
such as the Listerine line are but wishful thinking, especially when we
see US healthcare professionals unable to stick to SI when it really
matters, i.e., for doing healthcare things like dosing medication, or
highway engineers trying to work through a patchwork system of metric
and non-metric states of the Union once the Congress decided to abdicate
its Constitutional responsibility (via TEA-21) to "fix the standard of
weights and measures", and the beverage industry, which makes hard
conversions on some products (one, two liter and three liter bottles)
but adheres to old standards (355 ml cans) on others. Myself, I don't
think any nation can get away with a "preferred" system of measurement
for trade. It has to be the legal standard. Heck, there has to BE a
standard!!
I guess I'll say all this again, now that I don't have to dodge any
e-mail bullets since I will read the results only in digest form: I
believe that true US metrication will take 50 years to complete from
start to finish; to re-engineer the measurement practices of the most
technologically complex nation on earth has got to take half a century.
Maybe South Africa or Australia can do it in a few years, but they
didn't have 50 state governments and 280 million citizens.
US metrication will be a four-part event. It will require:
1.INSPIRATION Maybe that inspiration will be a recession or a
depression, but the American people have to understand the problems we
will have as an island in a metric sea of nations, and will, at last,
see the benefits of using a system of measurement which is decimal and
which is a true standard.
2. EDUCATION Once inspired, we will be willing and able to teach our
children SI as our standard of measurement. As our Canadian friends
know, once a person has studied SI and been intellectually "raised" with
it from an early age, she/he knows no other system, and old WOMBAT will
more quickly rot on the vine.
3. RATIONAL APPLICATION We ought to give it 50 years before we find it
as the final standard of mind and heart. We have so many things built to
non-SI specifications that it will take this long to sow the seeds and
reap the standard. Also, in a free society, we ought not force it where
it just may not be needed, i.e., leave football fans alone and let them
have their 0.9144 m unit. The Charge Of The Light Brigade will always be
announced as "...half a league onward". Let none of those atrocious
metric jokes ("give him a centimeter, he'll take a kilometer) come to
pass.
4. NATIONAL APPLICATION Application as national as the US dollar. The
Congress has power to fix the standard of measurement for the States
United. We need to put in place an effective version of what we have
had on paper since 1975---a strong US Metric Board, consisting of
representatives of all walks of American life (public members, private
enterprise, academia), to coordinate the establishment of a measurement
standard. Such a board would gather the facts for implementing SI, and
hash out, on a multidisciplinary conference table, the significance of
those facts (such as the implications for construction, for
manufacturing, for fasteners, for retail sales). Then, the board would
make recommendations to the Congress on how to fix the standard.
I feel as if I am writing a message in a bottle, so I'll stop here, and
see whether or not it surfaces anywhere.
Happy new century, and happy new millennium, to my fellow SI supporters!
--
Paul Trusten, R.Ph.
3609 Caldera Boulevard, Apt. 122
Midland TX 79707-2872 USA
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
