I am particularly glad to note that Don Hillger, our new USMA President,
spoke of "completing" conversion to metric. I have spoken to several
people since Chafee's announcement, and I was quite surprised to see how
ignorant people are about metric, much worse than in the 1970, when they
were educated in it.
Oddly, it seems that people don't equate milligrams of aspirin and liters
of soda with the metric system. More than that, they don't equate the
kilowatts on their electric bill, the lumens on their light bulbs, and the
kelvins in their photography with the metric system. This was a
revelation to me. We at USMA have to educate the public as to the extent
to which they are already metric without knowing it. Don covers this in
his interview with The Washington Times. Keep it up, Don, we need more of
it!
I have noticed another interesting fact. Most of the news feeds that I
have monitored seem to show a much higher level of interest in metric
conversion among Republicans, even though Chafee is a Democrat. On the
Republican side, there are candidates for whom the metric issue should
particularly resonate. Former Texas governor Rich Perry, who announced
yesterday, is familiar with commerce across the southern border. Marco
Rubio, the Florida senator, is familiar with extensive metric usage in
Florida. Carly Fiorina in California is familiar with the extent of
metric usage across the Mexican border and across the entire Pacific Rim.
It would be wonderful if we could get more candidates who have real-world
experience in commerce to address the issue seriously as an economic one.
I suggest a motto for the campaign: "Metric Means Jobs and Money for the
U.S."
Martin Morrison, "USMA Today" Training & Education Columnist
============
By Nate Madden - The Washington Times - Thursday, June 4, 2015
For a movement whose forward progress seems to be measured in centimeters
these days, Donald Hillger is happy to welcome any champion he can get.
The Colorado State University meteorologist and newly-elected president of
the United States Metric Association said Thursday he was surprised and
very pleased by the full-throated endorsement of the metric measuring
system by former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee as he announced
Wednesday he was entering the 2016 race for the Democratic presidential
nomination.
Mr. Chafee remains a very distinct underdog to Hillary Rodham Clinton in
the race, and his call for Americans to drop feet, pounds and gallons in
favor of grams, meters and liters got at least as much media attention as
some of his more serious policy critiques.
Despite the long national resistance to changing over, Mr. Chafee said it
was time to be bold.
Believe me, its easy, he said. It doesnt take long before 34 degrees is
hot. Only Myanmar, Liberia and the United States arent metric, and it will
help our economy.
Mr. Hillger said he was surprised by Mr. Chafees stance, and acknowledged
its been a long and arduous struggle trying to get Americans to, in his
words, complete the switch to the metric system.
I say completing because it is happening behind the scenes and a lot of
things are now in metric, even if many people arent aware of that, he
said.
Mr. Chafees endorsement is one more small step in the right direction, he
said.
Right now we dont have the government support to do this. Its up to
Congress to set the weights and measures of the United States, he
explained. Other countries that have switched to metric had a coordinated
plan and deadlines and followed through with them. We dont have that.
Previous congressional attempts to integrate the metric system include the
Metric Conversion Act of 1975 and the 1988 Omnibus Trade and
Competitiveness Act, both of which were met by resistance by American
consumers. According to Mr. Hillger, the changes didnt take root because
they were optional, which he called unfortunate.
Metric advocates repeatedly note there are real economic costs to the U.S.
from being an outlier.
In 1999, NASA infamously lost a Mars climate orbiter due to a failure to
coordinate on units. While the agencys engineers used metric, according to
protocol, the contractor worked in the imperial system. The resulting
failure of the probe cost taxpayers over $655 million. U.S. shippers and
packagers face extra costs when preparing one set of products measured in
metric for export and a second in Imperial for domestic consumption.
In response to a 2013 We the People petition to the White House to replace
the Imperial system with the metric system, Patrick D. Gallagher, director
of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, argued there are
benefits to being a bilingual nation and that the metric system has
already made major inroads without being mandated.
We measure distance in miles, but fiber-optic cable diameter in
millimeters, he wrote. We weigh deli products in pounds, but medicine in
milligrams. We buy gasoline by the gallon, but soda comes in liter-size
bottles. We parcel property in acres, but remote sensing satellites map
the Earth in square meters.
Ultimately, he added, the use of metric in this country is a choice and we
would encourage Americans to continue to make the best choice for
themselves and for the purpose at hand and to continue to learn how to
move seamlessly between both systems.
But Mr. Hillger said his groups biggest enemy is inertia and the fact that
people dont like to change, even if they dont realize how much simpler the
metric system is.
Theyve learned a system over time that is complex, far more complex, and
theyre willing to continue that for lack of adopting something thats even
similar.
One of the earliest proponents of employing a decimal-based measuring
system in the United States was none other than the third president of the
United States, Thomas Jefferson. While serving as the nations first
secretary of state in the 1790, Jefferson submitted a report proposing a
decimal-based system with a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar names for
the units, according to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Unfortunately for Jefferson, the system was never adopted.
