There is another document somewhere (no clue where to look) in which NIST admits they don't know the origin of the term and indicate two possibilities: *One is the sense of usual or customary *The second is that originally, weights & measures were part of Customs, which was part of Treasury, collecting tariffs and duties. At least the original assignment of weights and measures to Treasury is documented in NIST SP447. It was moved to Commerce around the time NBS was founded (very early 1900's) and later became NIST. Reading SP447, it is pretty clear we were a "developing nation" (third world nation??) in the early 1800's and records of early weights & measures seems sparse. In essence, Treasury decided on the foot, pound, gallon, and bushel in 1832, not Congress.
________________________________ From: "c...@traditio.com" <c...@traditio.com> To: U.S. Metric Association <usma@colostate.edu> Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 1:51 PM Subject: [USMA:53182] Re: U.S. Customary e.edu> Thank you for that. I didn't realize that NIST used the term officially. I find that in 5.3.2 of NIST Special Publication 811 (Guide): The following statement occurs: "There are many units besides CGS units that are outside the SI and not accepted for use with it, including, of course, all of the U.S. customary (that is, inch-pound) units." Note that the word "customary" is not capitalized, so it appears to be a descriptive term, i.e., the units that are customarily used in the U.S., rather than strictly the proper name of a system (U.S. Customary), although the term is commonly used in this way, as indicated by its common abbreviation, "USC." Martin Morrison
