{"id":687,"date":"2010-08-04T02:08:50","date_gmt":"2010-08-04T00:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=687"},"modified":"2015-07-21T15:42:59","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T13:42:59","slug":"the-one-thing-america-cannot-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/the-one-thing-america-cannot-do\/","title":{"rendered":"The one thing America cannot do"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The tiny African country of Sierra Leone recently did something that even the United States hasn&#8217;t been able to do. It stopped using the traditional English system of measurements. While the Leoneans enjoy the <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1da68d\">convenience<\/span> of the metric system, Americans continue to <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1daa97\">toil with<\/span> inches, feet, yards, miles, ounces, pounds, gallons, <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1dae5d\">acres<\/span>, barrels and <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1db1da\">bushels<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been living here for five years, and I still don&#8217;t know how many ounces are in a pound, or how many pints are in a gallon,&#8221; a Russian immigrant once told me at the cheese <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1db67f\">counter<\/span> of an American supermarket.<\/p>\n<p>After Mexico and especially Canada <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1db9af\">went metric<\/span> in the 1960s and &#8217;70s, the US government felt that sooner or later it would have to <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1dbd9a\">follow suit<\/span>. In 1975, it made an attempt to <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1dc178\">familiarize<\/span> Americans with the metric system. <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1dc5bc\">Dual labeling<\/span> was introduced on products: for example, &#8220;8 oz (227 g)&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>However, three big mistakes destroyed any chance of the metric system coming into everyday use.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Instead of changing the size of the <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1dc95c\">containers<\/span> that products came in \u2014 to 200 g, 500 g, and so on \u2014 most companies kept the old sizes, like 8 oz and 1\/4 lb. So by being secondary to traditional units, and being given in <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1dd1be\">uneven<\/span> amounts, metric units still appear exotic. Pepsi- and Coca-Cola were a big exception: they successfully introduced one- and two-liter bottles. They cleverly told consumers, &#8220;A two-liter bottle! That&#8217;s 10 percent more than two quarts!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>The government decided that metrication was to be a <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1dd5b8\">gradual<\/span> process. Imagine if Sweden had had that attitude when it <a title=\"40 years of driving on the right side in Sweden (Volvoclub.org.uk)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.volvoclub.org.uk\/history\/driving_on_right.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">switched<\/a> to right-hand traffic in 1967. People would be driving <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1dd8ea\">every which way<\/span>! Instead, the change was done over 10 minutes, and everyone got used to it.<\/li>\n<li>Metrication was to be <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1ddea7\">voluntary<\/span>. So of course it wouldn&#8217;t work. Americans would panic if they had to buy not 13 gallons, but 50 liters, at the <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1de0b8\">gas pump<\/span>, or if they learned the temperature outside was 10 degrees (C) instead of 50 degrees (F), or if they had to <a title=\"Calculateme.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.calculateme.com\/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\">convert measurements<\/a> between the two systems.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/83e3n83Re5s\" width=\"420\" height=\"236\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-caption\">\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Deirdre Flint: &#8220;Metric Is Coming&#8221; (words <a title=\"Deirdre Flint official site\" href=\"http:\/\/www.deirdreflint.com\/music\/lyrics\/metric.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>So most things remain as they&#8217;ve always been, with heights and <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1de84d\">altitudes<\/span> in feet, weight in pounds, and distances in miles. <a title=\"Unit Mixups (US Metric Association)\" href=\"http:\/\/lamar.colostate.edu\/~hillger\/unit-mixups.html\" target=\"_blank\">Some forget<\/a>, however, that American scientists, like all scientists, use the metric system.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In 1999, NASA lost the $125 million <i>Mars Climate Orbiter<\/i> because a <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1de883\">subcontractor<\/span> had calculated the <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1dec73\">space probe<\/span>&#8216;s <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1df059\">thrust<\/span> in traditional instead of metric units.<\/li>\n<li>In 2001, a 250-kilogram <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1df48e\">tortoise<\/span> escaped from a college facility in California because its <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1df862\">enclosure<\/span> had been built to hold a 250-pound (110 kg) animal instead.<\/li>\n<li>In 2005, a baby in Florida was given four times the <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1dfc74\">dose<\/span> of a drug when a <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1e0047\">pharmacist<\/span> interpreted the doctor&#8217;s order of 0.75 ml as 0.75 teaspoons.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The US government now uses a combination of traditional and metric measures internally, and some industries, like the automobile industry, have changed over completely. This is easier now that the US no longer <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1e03e0\">manufactures<\/span> much of anything. Foreign suppliers have enormous <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1e07ca\">leverage<\/span> in making products in one size for the entire world.<\/p>\n<p>Even the English, who gave us the traditional units, are (mostly) <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1e0bb2\">done<\/span> with them. It&#8217;s a good thing, too, because English gallons aren&#8217;t even the same size as American ones. I say it&#8217;s time to end the confusion. America was the first country to <span id=\"tooltip55207cd1e0f99\">dump<\/span> the king. It shouldn&#8217;t be the last to stop using his arm or foot to measure things.<\/p>\n<p>If Sierra Leone can do it, so can America \u2014 you&#8217;d think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The tiny African country of Sierra Leone recently did something that even the United States hasn&#8217;t been able to do. It stopped using the traditional English system of measurements. While the Leoneans enjoy the convenience of the metric system, Americans continue to toil with inches, feet, yards, miles, ounces, pounds, gallons, acres, barrels and bushels. &#8220;I&#8217;ve been living here for <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/the-one-thing-america-cannot-do\/\">&#8230; >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[10,72,80],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2078,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions\/2078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}