Getting the U.S. to Measure Up

In the drive to adopt metric, Americans are dragging their feet

In a spasm of reforming zeal, the Federal Highway Administration in 1976 announced that it was thinking of changing all signs on the nation's interstates from miles to kilometers. After receiving nearly 5,000 letters of protest, the FHA quickly abandoned the scheme.

Though Congress in 1975 legislated a gradual and voluntary changeover in weights and measures, nothing seems harder to do than to get Americans to adopt metric, the system used by all the world except Brunei, Burma, North and South Yemen--and the U.S. In 1977, a Gallup poll found Americans opposed to metric by better than 2 to 1. As part of their continuing struggle to bring the U.S. in line with the rest of humanity, leading proponents of metric, or, more formally, the International System of Units (known by its French initials SI), gathered in Arlington, Va., last week to assess the state of their cause.

Pessimism abounded. A few years ago, the metric forces thought they could get the U.S. to switch in a decade. Now they do not expect metric to prevail before the year 2000. "It will be a generational change," says David Goldman, head of the National Bureau of Standards' metric office. "Only when youngsters who learned metrics in school reach upper-level management will the change really occur." Nor can the metric campaign expect much help. Though Deputy Secretary of Commerce Guy Fiske warned that American industry faces increasing resistance in trying to sell nonmetric goods abroad, the Administration, to save money and foster voluntary compliance, has sharply cut funds for promoting metric.

A few major manufacturers, including General Motors, John Deere and IBM, are switching rather than fighting. So are several Government agencies, including NASA. Still, major aircraft manufacturers like Boeing continue to measure in feet and inches, though they sell many planes overseas.

Even the metrically untutored do not blink when doctors prescribe 500 mg (milligrams) of antibiotics or electricians recommend 15 A (ampere) fuses. Yet just as they have resisted learning foreign languages, Americans have long balked at changing measures. Says David Gorin, president of the nonprofit American National Metric Council: "The problem has deep roots. It goes back to a time when our economy was dominant and whatever we made was the biggest and best."

Critics like Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth catalogues, object to metric for the very reason that most scholars favor it: the ease of converting one unit to another--say, kilometers to meters--by simply multiplying or dividing by tens. Says Brand: "You can't visualize a tenth very well, but you can imagine a quarter or a half of something." Adds Seaver Leslie, founder of Americans for Customary Weight and Measure: "The metric system is imposed rationality."

Like their colleagues abroad, U.S. scientists have long used metric, and some three dozen states require metric instruction in the schools. Moreover, while football still measures forward progress in yards and Nolan Ryan's fastball blazes at 98 m.p.h., many joggers now speak knowingly of doing their weekend "10 Ks" (for ten kilometers, or 6.2 miles). Lovers of the grape originally suspected a vintners' plot when the industry adopted European measures in 1979, but have since learned that a newfangled liter gives them 1.8 oz. more than an old-fashioned quart. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.