Here's the transcript.... Nat
----------------- Burrelle's Information Services CBS News Transcripts SHOW: Sunday Morning (9:00 AM ET) - CBS April 7, 2002 Sunday TYPE: Commentary LENGTH: 398 words HEADLINE: The Osgood file; trying to bring the metric system to America permanently ANCHORS: CHARLES OSGOOD BODY: THE OSGOOD FILE CHARLES OSGOOD, host: It was 207 years ago today that the leaders of the French Revolution decided to go whole hog in their campaign to reform the world and adopted the metric system of weights and measures. In the years that followed, country after country followed the French example, until even England largely stopped using English measures. Now the United States is among the few holdouts, along with Liberia and Myanmar. And the reformers are still hard at work, trying to get America to put our best foot forward and to go metric, too. Unidentified Man: Let's start our lesson today, and we're going to talk metric today, OK? (Footage of children learning metric system; metric posters; road signs; various food and beverage packages with metric systems measurements; beef) OSGOOD: (Voiceover) We've been talking metric and seeing pictures like this for years now. Earnest school children learning meters and kilograms, helpful posters explaining metric's many merits. Erratic efforts to rewrite road signs, so that you no longer know how far you're going. Foods and beverages relabeled to the point where it seems like we must do most of our wining and dining in liters and grams, rather than in quarts and ounces. Unidentified Woman: What is a liter, and what does that amount to in the metric system? (Footage of people pumping gas; conversion chart; road sign) OSGOOD: (Voiceover) The import of all these metric messages is all too clear: Metric is the wave of the future. Stay with the old, and you'll be left many kilometers behind. Or so they tell us anyway. What strikes us about the metric images we found is how many of them date back to the 1970s. They are as much artifacts of that time as sideburns and leisure suits. The drive to metrify America strikes us not so much as a bright new vision of the future, but the same old one we never took to, just as we never took to speaking Esperanto, which was supposed to be the common tongue by now. Of course, no country speaks Esperanto, but almost everybody uses the metric system. Maybe America will end up being all metric someday, but it could take another 207 years before that happens. Which, of course, is the same length of time in either system. Ahead now on SUNDAY MORNING, Bill Geist. BILL GEIST: You've parked your car. Now read the book. (Announcements) LOAD-DATE: April 8, 2002 >>> -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Carter, Baron Sent: Monday, 2002 April 08 8:29 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:19330] CBS - SUNDAY Anybody see the CBS 'Sunday' program where Charles Osgood reported on the metric system that wasn t? Baron Carter Compute Against Cancer http://www.parabon.com <http://www.parabon.com/>
