[USMA:32414] Re: USMA announcement

[David King]

This just reminds us all of the need for a universal standard of 
measurement. This is not about culture, language, or who rules who. It 
is about working together to make a better world by moving forward and 
using the best measurement system available to us, and having everyone 
using the same system. Just imagine the chaos if we all used different 
ways of measuring time, so that some countries had 20 hours in the day, 
some 24 hours, some 30 hours, some 15 hours, etc. Or maybe some might 
have 100 minutes in one hour or they might not use hours at all. By 
continuing to avoid going fully metric, countries like the UK, Canada 
and the USA are all making the world harder to live in, as so much time 
is wasted on conversions of measurements to one's preferred system.

Of course the USA chose to go metric back in the 19th century, and 
officially made it legal for use back then.

So if the EU is requesting that all US imports into the EU are labelled 
metric only, then the US only has itself to blame for not keeping its 
word and using metric which it promised to do over 100 years ago.

And I think having metric only labelling on all products makes things 
easier to compare, I hate seeing products from America that have both US 
units and metric units on, as the US units just take up unnecessary 
space and are confusing. Metric units are consistent and should be the 
only internationally legal units for trade.

David King
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Paul Trusten wrote:
Some critics of U.S. metrication might frame the EU/NIST conference as
"European interference with U.S. commerce." At such a juncture, NIST, and
the rest of us, need to stand firm and quote the 1988 amendment to the
Metric Conversion Act, which designates metric as the preferred U.S. system
for trade and commerce. Congress said it, and that settles it!
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Frysinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 11:43
Subject: [USMA:32408] Re: USMA announcement

 

I'm hoping that the EU stands firm. Even without that, many US companies
   

want
 

the ammendment, as noted in the two recent NIST conferences on the matter.
Jim
On Wednesday 09 March 2005 12:11, Hillger, Don wrote:
   

From USMA President, Lorelle Young:
______________________

Last week, officials from the NIST Laws and Metric Group met with EU
officials in Brussels to discuss their Metric Directive and learned that
they intend to proceed with the implementation of the metric only
directive in 2010 unless the EU industry requests a delay.  They also
told us they want to see the U.S. adopt the FPLA amendment to
demonstrate that we are making progress.  More details will follow when
the official report of the meeting is released.

______________________
     

--
James R. Frysinger
Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist
Senior Member, IEEE
http://www.cofc.edu/~frysingj
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