The U.S. Metric Association (USMA), which I represent, is a non-profit, national organization founded in 1916. It is headquartered in Northridge, California, with its Public Relations Office in Midland, Texas. Its goal is to advocate U.S. changeover to the metric system of measurement as the Nation's primary, everyday measurement system. It has among its members mostly people from the U.S. and an interested few from other countries. While a number of our members are practitioners of hard science, many of us are simply interested citizens who believe that the U.S. ought to have the decimal metric system as our primary measurement system. Contrary to widespread popular belief, this does not happen by "converting back and forth," but "changing over," or "thinking metric." But it also does not mean that there are going to be "metric language police" patrolling the country to do such things as change Robert Frost's poem from "miles to go before I sleep" or stop the Light Brigade from marching half a league onward. It does mean that, eventually, one will buy 600 mL bottles of soda along with an occasional 2 L (2000 mL), or three or four liters of milk, drive at 110 km/h on the highway (in some parts of Texas, it's 120!) watch one's weight go down, hopefully, from a hefty 110 kg to a nice 75. We already know the millimeter, from firearms to other dimensions we already measure.
As it was written, a prophet is not popular in his home town, and each generation finds abandoning familiar things unacceptable. But, we have embraced computers, iPhones, and e-mail without excessive nostalgia for paper, telegrams, and letters. We ought to liberate ourselves from non-decimal measurement by making a similar journey. As I said in my previous post, the SI metric system is very American, and the march towards it is one that our Congress will eventually complete, according to power duly granted to it by the Constitution of the United States. Paul Trusten Registered Pharmacist Vice President and Public Relations Director U.S. Metric Association, Inc. www.metric.org [email protected]
