Thanks for the link. I'm aware that the draft left out a lot--I have basically only written what I gleaned from that 1866 Congress report. The link on the laws perhaps can keep me from going in a tangent, as evidently neither of those reports resulted in any legal action. Perhaps I'm better off looking at what laws did pass, then plowing through several hundred pages that didn't generate a law in this country.
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 15:49:16 -0800 From: [email protected] Subject: Re: [USMA:51446] Re: Information on the 1906 House and 1921 Senate committee reports on the metric system To: [email protected] I'm sorry but I'm not really familiar with the 1906 and 1921 reports. Having read your draft, I think some important things are left out. All have an least an introduction on the metric laws page of USMA site. http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/laws/ *The Metric Act of 1866 passed and is the basis of metric law in the US. It certainly should be noted in the report that it passed and was not just a recommendation. *The Upton report of 1878 is an excellent summary of metric adoption around the world and advocates the US adopting it. *The Mendenhall Order of 1893 relegated all Customary standards to be museum pieces and based on Customary measure on declared fractions (legal definitions) of the better quality standards metric standards we received as part of signing the 1875 Treaty of the Meter. We have defined our Customary measures in metric terms ever since. (I argue we are 100% metric but conceal it from the public with declared fractions). *The fact that we were one of the initial signers of the 1875 Treaty of the Meter. While international adoption was well underway, this was a watershed event in which it ceased to be a "French system" and was unreservedly "international" as all countries signing the Treaty were represented in all future development of the metric system. Hope this helps. --- On Fri, 2/3/12, Paul Rittman <[email protected]> wrote: From: Paul Rittman <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:51446] Re: Information on the 1906 House and 1921 Senate committee reports on the metric system To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Date: Friday, February 3, 2012, 4:14 PM Sorry, got the file name backwards. The link should be: paulrittman.com/MetricHistoryUS.doc
