The Wentworth letter was great, the only comment I would make being that it will suffice if we can simply increase use of the "big three", being the liter, the kilogram, and the kilometer (and their subdivisions). I think that we can leave hectares, newtons, and the like for some other time. Almost all the text in the press involves capacity, weight, and distance, and if we can just get newsprint to use SI terms at least some of the time, especially in international topics, we will be making some progress.
I personally like to casually use SI terms, such as describing the capacity of a gasoline tank on a car as, e.g., 55 L. It helps to get the nomenclature out there. On another note, we live in an area where we rely on well water, which means dealing with water softener people. Has anyone noticed that the water conditioning industry seems to still deal with "grains of hardness"? I once mentioned that they were using rather archaic terms, and from the response realized that no one even knew what a grain was, and they were simply going by some old formula that had been passed down from the old days. Sort of like the science fiction short story (Asimov?) about the civilization that relied on computers, and when they failed, no one remembered how to do addition and subtraction. HARRY WYETH
