Title: Message
I found the following paragraph of the entire article the most interesting, but also strange that no further comment was made on it. 
 
If for the past two years, two businesses per week have inquired to the NIST concerning their desire to metricate, that totals 208 companies.  This does not include those that go it alone and don't inquire.  208 companies may not seem like much, but if they did in fact go metric that is 208 companies putting their money into metric resources at the expense of English system resources.  They help create a demand for metric goods and services at the expense of English system resources. 
 
With big dollar companies like GM, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, John Deere, Caterpillar, just to name a few already metric, there is considerable amount of American money supporting metric industries and their products.  That seems to me to be a victory for metric over the past 30 years, not a defeat like the author is trying to imply.
 
Back to Ken Butcher's comment, one has to ask why 2 businesses a week feel there is a need for them to metricate.  Who is motivating them?  Who is prodding them?  Is it vendors?  Is it customers?  For a system that the opponents claim nobody wants there is just too much activity in favor of metric that some people just are blind too.
 
Dan
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, 2005-05-03 09:41
Subject: [USMA:32756] Boston Globe

 
 

 

 

So will the United States ever go metric?

''My point of view is a little different from most people's," says Ken Butcher, director of the US Metric Program, which is part of the federal government's National Institute of Standards and Technology. ''I routinely get calls here from people saying, 'Our company's going metric.' In the last two years, that's happened once or twice a week. It's growing. I don't hear the same reluctance I heard 10 or 15 years ago."

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