After reading the article in Metric Today for May-June 2021 I looked up something I’d written up a few years ago after spending a week in the FSM, primarily Pohnpei and Chuuk about 8 or 9 years ago.
Here is what I wrote: The Federated States of Micronesia stretch east-west 2700 km in the Western pacific north of Papua New Guinea and south of Guam. https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFederated_States_of_Micronesia&data=04%7C01%7Cusma%40lists.colostate.edu%7C5307e49d5f2445b5e6b408d90ae0f73f%7Cafb58802ff7a4bb1ab21367ff2ecfc8b%7C0%7C1%7C637552783605402107%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=WD%2FiYFj%2FyZoFv1b7OqwfAHPS26l8tGpxd2mEMmrn4dA%3D&reserved=0 Ruled by the Spanish until sold to Germany in 1899, conquered and ruled by Japan from 1914, then seized by the US during the Second World War. They became independent in 1986 under a Compact of Free Association with the United States. I spent a week on Pohnpei, where the capital of the FSM is located. Nominally an independent country, they don’t seem to have any legislation mandating either metric or US Customary. All speed limits signs are US style White signs with black letter, 25 mph maximum (about 40 km/h). The Micronesians drive on the Right as in the US. However, most vehicles, probably more than 93% from a count in the hotel parking lot were Right Hand Drive (RHD), 26 vehicles were in the parking lot, 2 Left Hand drive, both with km/h speedometers, 24 RHD from Japan with km/h only speedometers. Even in many Left Hand Drive vehicles the speedometers were in km/h primary, mph secondary. One unusual question from our driver was “what are these numbers?” pointing to the odometer. All he saw was numbers, he had no idea it was the total distance in kilometers the vehicle had traveled. Micronesia uses the US Dollar. Some stores had kilogram only scales; others had combined kg and lb scales. The price of bananas was 80 c/kg in one store, some items were priced by the kilogram others by the pound. My driver asked the price of bananas and it was stated in cents per kilogram. The weather at the airport was: Visibility Statute Miles, wind in knots, pressure in inches of Mercury and Temperature in Celsius. They used the Weight of the aircraft in Pounds to calculate fees and sold fuel by the US Gallon. The postal system is run by the US Postal Service but they issue their own Micronesian stamps, I’m not sure how that works, someone brought out a USPS sheet to calculate the postage and all weights were in Ounces. Predominantly imports are from the US, I did see Liter containers of Milk from Australia and One kilogram packs of washing powder from the Philippines. I saw a survey map of Pohnpei on a hotel wall, all heights of the land and depths of the ocean were in meters only. I could not find any legislation mandating any standard units of measure and observation gives the impression there are none. Feel free to include in the next Metric Today. Michael Payne _______________________________________________ USMA mailing list [email protected] https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma
