Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee) September 6, 2003 Saturday
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A1 LENGTH: 1022 words HEADLINE: Slow conversion Nation inches toward use of metric system BYLINE: Jan Galletta Staff Writer BODY: Editor's Note: This is the first in a periodic series of stories about how taxpayer dollars are spent. When Earl Marler helped start the Chattanooga Track Club in 1968, road races were measured in miles instead of kilometers. The shift to metric measurements was "very gradual," according to the retired banker and Ringgold, Ga., resident. "It wasn't until the mid-'70s that runners started using terms like '10K' and '5K,' Mr. Marler said. "And by the mid-'80s, they were common for us." For much of the nation, however, the path to the metric system has been a bumpier road than the ones Mr. Marler traveled. Today, 15 years after Congress passed sweeping legislation to make the United States go metric, some say there has been little measurable progress toward that goal. The "Omnibus Trade and Competitive Act of 1988" designated the 300-year-old, decimal-based metric system as the preferred measurement system for the nation. The law set 1992 as the deadline for federal agencies to use metric values such as meters and grams instead of yards and pounds -- a ruling with implications for everything from weather reports to highway funding. Even before the federal mandate, a handful of highway signs displaying distances in kilometers and miles had been erected in Tennessee. Two such signs in the Chattanooga area, one on Interstate 24 near Haletown, were "put up in the early '80s for public information" purposes, according to Bob Brown, Region 2 director for the Tennessee Department of Transportation. He said the action resulted from "a little push to convert to the metric system" in the 1970s. Some federal agencies such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms started major metric conversion efforts before Congress passed the 1988 law. Eight years earlier, the bureau required wine and distilled spirits to be in standard liter and milliliter sizes. But the 1988 mandate caused other entities that did business with the federal government, such as Tennessee's transportation department, to get on the metric bandwagon in a more extensive way than putting up an occasional road sign, according to TDOT public information officer Kim Keelor. "TDOT was, in fact, a leader nationwide in developing an implementation plan," Ms. Keelor said. "Elements included contract usage, project measurements and descriptions, signage." But the effort presented problems, such as converting roadwork contracts from English to metric equivalents, Ms. Keelor said. In a neighboring state, a crash victim at a kilometer signpost died when emergency responders instead went to a milepost marker, she said. State departments of transportation spent roughly $73 million -- an $1.6 million each -- on metric conversion projects from 1992 to 1997, according to the Federal Highway Administration. Tennessee had not gone to metric road signs by June 1998, when the 1988 law was changed to make conversion voluntary for nonfederal entities. The change removed the big impetus to make the switch-over, officials said. "We abandoned the metric system completely," Ms. Keelor said. "We no longer use the metric system in any way, with the exception of a couple of long-range proposals written in that language years ago." While laws such as the Education Amendments Act of 1974 have encouraged teaching the metric system, the movement hasn't gained much momentum in the state's public schools, according to Iris Hubbard, the Tennessee Department of Education's math coordinator. Ms. Hubbard said state curriculum standards adopted in 1996 call for textbooks to include both metric and English units of weight, distance and length, but "it's never been federally mandated." "We think students should know benchmarks, such as 'a centimeter is 10 millimeters,'" she said. "We think it's important to be familiar with both systems." The Hamilton County Schools system takes a similar approach, according to Ava Warren of the school's central office staff. "We teach the standard system of measurement because students use it every day," she said. "We teach the metric system because the rest of the world uses it." Some 95 percent of the world's people use the metric system, according to Lorelle Young. Ms. Young is president of the 87-year-old U.S. Metric Association, a nonprofit group that promotes a national shift to the metric system. Metric equivalents long have been used in automobile manufacturing and in other industries that compete globally, according to the association. The association predicts other industries will follow suit before 2010, when nations in the European Union plan to close their ports to goods that aren't produced according to EU metric specifications. The U.S. Metric Association also contends the time is coming when the use of metric equivalents won't be voluntary in this country. That notion may be behind the association's term for the conversion process -- not "metrification" but "metrication." "There is no 'if' in metrication," the association's literature states. E-mail Jan Galletta at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Metric milestones 1670: Metric system originated by French vicar Gabriel Mouton 1866: Metric system made legal, but not mandatory, in United States 1971: Three-year U.S. Metric Study concludes nation should go metric 1975: U.S. Metric Board is established to plan nation's metric conversion 1988: Omnibus Trade Act requires federal agencies be metric by 1992 1994:FDA requires dual measurement units on all consumer goods 1996: National Weather Service reports transmitted in degrees Celsius 1998: Congress amends 1988 act to make metric compliance voluntary 1999: Mixup in English and metric units leads to loss of Mars Orbiter 2000: Tennessee adopts Uniform Packaging and Labeling Regulation 2001: U.S. stock exchanges switch to deci mal trading 2002: In U.N. speech, President Bush refers to "liters of anthrax," "metric tons" and "150-kilometer range missiles." 2010: European Union will refuse goods not made by metric standards Source: U.S. Metric Association GRAPHIC: Staff Photo by Steve Davis A highway sign along Interstate 24 eastbound displays the equivalent mileage to Chattanooga in metric units.
