University of Virginia Library

The METRIC SYSTEM: The Increasing Prospect of its Adoption in the United States. Judson C. Welliver.
MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE, Volume LVII April, 1916, Number 3, pp. 490-493

POUNDS and ounces, gallons and quarts, tons and hundredweight, miles and yards, feet and inches, acres and square feet, are making ready for their exit from the stage of American business affairs.

Truth to say, they have had no good excuse for lingering with us so long. They ought to have been lifted out on the toe of the legislative boot long ago. They are confusing, obsolete, unscientific, and calculated to demoralize all commercial transactions measured in their terms. Their continued existence as the standards of weight and measurement in American business is a testimony to our national conservatism, and to the overpowering inertia that so often prevents the accomplishment of things which everybody knows ought to be done.

It is more than a century and a quarter since Thomas Jefferson came home from France, where he had been helping the French radicals to conduct their Revolution, and incidentally serving as American minister, to tell the Washington administration that pounds and ounces, feet and inches, gallons and quarts, were no longer to be good form in the commercial world. Those wonderful French had devised a new and strictly scientific system of weights and measures, based throughout on the decimal scale, so simple that it well-nigh removed the necessity of learning mathematics.

Jefferson assured his colleagues that the new system was certain to become universal, and that even if the United States didn't join forces with the French in spreading to all the world the glories of freedom, equality, and fraternity, it ought at least to adopt the metric system and emancipate the race from arithmetic.

The reign of terror in the intellectual life of the average American is probably represented by that period in his scholastic career when he is struggling with the intricacies of applied arithmetic. Did it ever occur to you that going to school might have been one sweet dream of happiness if the so-called practical problems in Ray's "New Higher Arithmetic" had never been invented?

Most of these problems would scarcely exist, or would be ridiculously easy of solution, if Jefferson could have had his way and secured the adoption of the metric system. The boasted intellectual development that we are presumed to get from our struggles with the impossible problems over in the "Third Part" might have been denied to the race.

Perhaps we should have paid a penalty in loss of mental vigor and intellectual fiber, but there would have been compensations. Everybody vaguely knows that the rich man's children are doomed to be demoralized by the ease and luxury of their upholstered station in life; but none the less almost everybody entertains a cheerful feeling that it must be nice to be spoiled that way.

So, too, with the intellectual discipline consequent upon our adolescent wrestles with the tribulations of applied arithmetic. Perhaps they are good for us, but how much happier we might be without them!

A very wise man once said that the invention of the Arabic system of decimal numeration was the greatest single intellectual achievement of the human mind. If the statement seems somewhat exaggerated,

try for a moment to imagine the chaos which would ensue in this world if to-morrow morning all knowledge of the decimal system, with its nine digits and a cipher, were blotted out. If it never occurred to you to realize what a time-saving and labor-saving contrivance it is, you have a real treat in store.

Just get down and dust off the volume of your encyclopedia which contains the article on the decimal system, and read it. Probably it never occurred to you that the established method of numeration was anything less obvious and eternal than a force of nature, like the attraction of gravitation. Yet it is nothing of the kind. It was the product of a slow and difficult evolution which required many centuries.

Then, after it had struggled along for an eon or two without a decimal point, some particularly gifted Arab conceived the idea of that potent fly-speck, and adopted it into the system. At another stage of its development some other wily Oriental bethought him of pointing off the figures in groups of three. The greatest contribution of all was that of the aboriginal philosopher who got the notion into his noddle that a cipher, inserted at the right place as the concrete representative of nothingness, would be the finishing touch to the system.

But get down your encyclopedia and read about it. The story is a fascinating one. After you have read it, and precipitated some little realization of what it meant to bring the decimal system into a world that previously had conducted all its mathematical operations with groups of pebbles or strings of beads, you will begin to understand what Tom Jefferson had in mind when he assured Washington and Hamilton that this French contrivance of a new and sane system of weights and measures was one of the distinguished contributions of the intellectual ferment in France.

Adopting the metric system for computation of distances, weights, and quantities would simplify affairs for us just about as much as the invention of the Arabic system of numeration facilitated the business of making computations for the Assyrians and Babylonians.

The first point about the metric system is that it is the system generally prevalent throughout the world. We have adopted it only in our coinage, which runs in multiplying units of ten; but most countries have applied the same simple system to their measures of dimensions, of contents, and of weight.

If calculations of money had to be made under a method as clumsy as is our fashion of dealing with weights, we should have to pass a universal conscription act to get enough bank clerks, cashiers, and bookkeepers to record the business of the country.

From the beginnings of barter among savages, the problem of establishing and standardizing units of measurement has constituted one of the greatest difficulties incident to doing business. Yet it was not until a century and a quarter ago that any government laid serious hold upon the problem and set about the effort to force a universal system.

The inspired enthusiasts of revolutionary France hesitated at nothing, once convinced that they had discovered a realm in which they could serve mankind. So a commission of mathematicians, which included Laplace, Lagrange, and Condorcet, among others, was created by the Convention to devise a scientific scheme that should be so much better than anything the world had ever known that its adoption by all countries would be the only logical and sensible conclusion.

Just exactly this was actually accomplished. The metric system, first adopted by France, is now the legal system of all continental Europe except Russia and Turkey, of all the Latin-American countries, and, in fact, of substantially the entire Occidental world aside from the United States, Great Britain, and most of the British Empire.

It is legalized but not compulsory in Russia, Turkey, Japan, Egypt, the United States, and Great Britain. The Japanese system is substantially similar to the metric, while nearly all technical and scientific authorities use it in preference to any other.

For example, the Bureau of Standards of the United States government at Washington conducts all calculations and computations in metric units, for reasons of convenience and accuracy. After the results have been obtained, it translates them into the terms of our accepted system -- inches and feet, ounces and pounds, and so forth.

It is commonly supposed that the American and British units of weight and measure

are identical. As a matter of fact, several of them differ. They are so nearly alike, however, that more errors are caused by their similarity than would occur if they were utterly unrelated. This is one of the strong arguments for introducing the metric system as the sole legal standard in both countries.

Our own liquid quart and dry quart are not identical. In Great Britain and Canada, the liquid quart is twenty per cent larger than our own, while the British standard bushel is three per cent smaller than ours.

When the Frenchmen started out to create their ideal system of weights and measures, they determined to take as its basis some value adopted from nature, perpetual and unchanging. One proposal was to use the length of a pendulum ticking seconds. This was conceived to be about as nearly a fixed quantity as anything susceptible of accurate measurement. It meant basing the system on the revolutions of the planets, the length of the celestial year, and the constancy of the force of gravitation.

The commission finally decided that the basis of its system should be the earth's polar quadrant -- that is, the precise distance on the earth's surface from the equator to the pole. At that time it was commonly assumed that this distance was absolute and unchanging, but geology and geophysics have since taught men that the world is not by any means constant in its circumference.

However, the French scientists decided on this value as the base of their system, and spent several years making computations to determine the precise distance from the equator to the pole. Then they divided this distance by ten million, and the resultant unit of space was made the basis of the new system.

This is the meter, approximately equivalent to 39.37 inches. Ten meters make one decameter; ten decameters make one hectometer; ten hectometers make one kilometer, and ten kilometers make one myriameter. In the descending scale, the meter is divided into ten decimeters, the decimeter into ten centimeters, and the centimeter into ten millimeters. The first set of terms is derived from the Greek numbers, the second from the Latin.

The ratio between the successive denominations in linear measurements, in capacity, in money, and in weight, is ten; the ratio between the successive denominations in surface measure is one hundred, and in cubic measure one thousand.

In determining the unit of weight, it was particularly desired to have some absolutely fixed and unchangeable standard. The standard adopted is the weight of a cubic centimeter of pure water, at the freezing-point and at sea-level. As nearly as possible, every element in this statement of conditions is invariable.

This weight unit, called the gram, is equal to 15.43 troy grains under the English system.

The basic unit for length being the meter, that for surface is the square meter. Areas of land are calculated in square decameters, the decameter being approximately twenty-five one-thousandths of an acre. The hectare the next denomination, equals 2.471 acres.

The unit of capacity, the liter, is a cubic decimeter, which is a little larger than the American liquid quart.

It has been almost universally admitted, for many decades, that the French system is the most nearly perfect that has ever been devised. Nobody has ever heard a substantial reason why our own illogical and club-footed system should not be discarded in favor of it. In both the United States and England the use of the metric system is permissive, but not compulsory. In neither country have people in general become familiar with it, and they never will familiarize themselves with it unless it is made the sole and compulsory standard.

Our English cousins are a bit ahead of us with regard to the metric system, because their world-wide trade relations have compelled them to recognize the French standards. Their manufacturers and merchants now very generally base computations on metric units in manufacturing or shipping goods for foreign trade. Since the European war has opened to American manufacturers and workmen many new fields of opportunity, the fact has been impressed as never before that our business must adapt itself to the conditions imposed by customers, or they will take their patronage elsewhere.

At the opening of the present session of Congress, Representative Charles H. Dillon, of South Dakota, introduced a bill making the metric system permissive in this country until July, 1920, after which time it is to be compulsory and exclusive. At first there

was no special interest to indicate that any better fate was in reserve for this bill than for many others of its kind that have been introduced during the past century; but the situation was suddenly changed one day when Secretary of Commerce Redfield took a hand in the matter.

Mr. Redfield, himself a manufacturer of large experience in foreign trade, is a determined believer in the metric system. He called up Dr. S. W. Stratton, director of the Bureau of Standards, and asked him to appear before the House committee considering the Dillon bill. Dr. Stratton complied, and before he had got half-way through his testimony the committee was all attention, eager to know more about the system, and anxious to devise means for its early adoption.

The committeemen seemed to be about equally impressed with the two sets of arguments in favor of the system; one set being concerned with the reasons for adopting in our foreign trade what is rapidly becoming the world's universal standard, and the other based on the fact that the more scientific system would greatly facilitate domestic business. It was made very clear that commerce with Spanish-speaking countries, and, indeed, with practically all parts of the world in which it is hoped to extend American trade would be sensibly promoted if the metric basis were accepted.

There are, however, some difficulties, entirely aside from conservatism and inertia, about making the change. The most serious of these involves the measurement of land. Land titles in our country are based on acres, while the metric system would substitute the hectare. To reorganize the whole system of real-estate records, measurements, and surveys, and reduce acres to hectares with absolute accuracy, would be a terrific task. Conservatism rises to its most insistent climax at the suggestion of any change that might possibly becloud titles to real property.

It has been suggested that the metric scheme might be adopted for all other than land measures; but this would be like taking half a bite of a cherry. Moreover, it is pointed out that this country has once changed its unit of land measurement throughout a large area with very little difficulty or complication.

When Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico were acquired from Mexico, they had already been surveyed under the Spanish system, in which the unit of area is the vara. Values in varas had to be translated into terms of acres, and for a time it was feared considerable difficulty would ensue. However, the thing was done much more easily than had been expected. The precise comparative values of the Spanish and American units were determined, as they have repeatedly been fixed in the relations of our American units to those of the metric system. In a comparatively short time, and with no great confusion, the American units were substituted for the Spanish; and people familiar with the procedure in that case give assurance that the change from our present system to metric measurements would be effected with small embarrassment.

It is now becoming apparent for the first time that the change cannot long be postponed, and that it is going to be highly beneficial to business and science, to technical and popular interests.

It is probable that Great Britain will not be far behind us in adopting the French units. British manufacturers have had to use French measurements in many new operations since the war has drawn the two countries closer together than ever before, and even English conservatism will not stand out forever against a good system that is also a universal system.