I believe that Watergate had more to do with the turn back on metric conversion than any other factor. Nixon was a major source of support and forcwe behind the conversion that was taking place. But, Watergate which forced Nixon out of office took away the source of drive and interest behind the effort. The entire affair was so disrupting that the focus was destroyed.
Marion Moon ------ Original Message ------ Received: Sat, 06 Aug 2005 07:45:01 AM PDT From: "Daniel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:33844] It's time to reconsider our snub of the metric system Tim Greening TIM GREENING: It's time to reconsider our snub of the metric system August 6, 2005 Who's responsible for screwing up America's transition to the metric system in the 1970s? Was it Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford? If we're going to blame it on who was in charge at the time, I guess that would be Burt Reynolds because he was really running things. Sure, Ford helped the nation heal after the scandal of Watergate and the conflict in Vietnam, and Carter brought Israel and Egypt together for a historic peace accord. But Reynolds put Jerry Reed and Mel Tillis in every other movie he made and still remained the No. 1 box office star in the world. That's REAL power. I was only a kid back then, but I can remember the massive ad campaign and all the catchy jingles that tried to convince us to convert to the metric system. It failed, however, mainly because "he could hit a softball a country kilometer" just didn't have the same ring. Damn you, colloquial sayings! But, no, the only segments of American industry that successfully adapted to the metric system were guns (as in the 9 mm pistol), booze (the 750 ml bottle of wine), sodas (the 2-liter bottle of Coke) and illegal narcotics (the kilo of coke). I bring this up because of today's Gentlemen's Cooking Classic, in which I am participating for either the fourth or fifth time. (If we used the metric system, I bet I could figure it out.) I'll be making the same frozen chocolate and caramel pie I did last year. But since I'm not smart enough to write things down, I had to reconvert the recipe for an eight-serving pie into an amount big enough to make some 500 servings. Which is tough because the recipe measurements are in the old English system, which is needlessly complicated. For example, I had to figure fractions of cups into ounces, multiply by 20 then divide by various multiples of 8 to figure whether I needed gallons or pints of something. If, say, the recipe was in grams, all I would have to do is move decimal points to figure how many kilograms I needed. Instead, I had to grapple with the same old system of tablespoons and teaspoons the cavemen brought over with them on the Mayflower. It's time to reconsider our snub, I think. Really, wouldn't we be better off with the metric system? Wouldn't Sammy Hagar seem even more of a rebel if he sang about his inability to drive 88.5? The song still rhymes even. ("Take my license, all that jive/I can't drive 88.5!") C'mon, society, let's make that bold leap into the 20th century and adopt the metric system as the rest of the world has. I win, Sammy Hagar wins -- everybody wins. Let's get Reynolds on it, right away. The Gentlemen's Cooking Classic, a benefit for the Southern University Shreveport Foundation, starts at 6 p.m. today at Expo Hall in Shreveport. Admission is $20 each for food only, $25 per person for food and cocktail tasting. I can get a FREE $15 Best Buy card, how? Subscribe to The Times! Click here to start your subscription. ©The Shreveport Times August 6, 2005
