At 7 December 2002, 02:46 PM, kilopascal wrote:
John, you have got to be the most pessimistic person I have ever encountered! You admit that the 3 L container was overpriced, in spite of which you then extrapolate that failure to all efforts to metricate consumer products in the U.S.!BTW, I was in the neighbourhood Super K-mart today. They were the one's selling the 3 L milk. Not any more. ... They now sell only gallons and half-gallons. ... The failure of the 3 L milk carton to catch on was it was used by only one supplier and was over priced. This goes to show you that the slow approach really does not work. Those few that become trend-setters often find themselves alone and eventually back-off or disappear.In the long term, progress is non-existent. The drips and drops evaporate and the status-quo remains. What will it take for us to understand that only a planned metrication will work?
It's unfortunate that one company screws up introducing a metric product by overpricing it, but that hardly dooms American metrication.
For anyone else on the list who thinks there is any merit to John's view that "progress is non-existent," just go visit Don Hillger's long list of metric products in the USA (http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/products.htm). Contrary to John's belief, the drips and drops are exactly what is helping metricate America.
I'd go on, but I need to go buy some metric dog food and metric tooth paste and metric fabric softener and metric shampoo and metric window cleaner and metric relish and metric tuna fish and metric cookies. None of which were metric 10 years ago.
drip, drop .... drip, drop .... drip, drop ...
Jim Elwell, CAMS
Electrical Engineer
Industrial manufacturing manager
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
www.qsicorp.com
