Whatever Happened to the Metric System?: How America Kept Its Feet

by John Bemelmans Marciano

The system of measurement for most of the world is the metric system, and for a time in the 1970s the United States appeared ready to switch from American standard measurement. The reasons it never happened get to the root of who we think we are, just as American measurements are woven into the ways we think. John Marciano chronicles the origins of measurement systems, the kaleidoscopic array of standards throughout Europe and the thirteen American colonies, the combination of intellect and circumstance that resulted in the metric system's creation in France in the wake of the French Revolution, and America's stubborn adherence to the hybrid United States Customary System ever since. As much as Whatever Happened to the Metric System? is a tale of quarters and tenths, it is a human drama, replete with great inventors, visionary presidents, obsessive activists, and science-loving technocrats.

Anyone who reads this inquisitive, engaging story will never read Robert Frost's line “miles to go before I sleep” or eat a foot-long sub again without wondering, Whatever happened to the metric system?

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Science, Technology, Mathematics, Cultural, American History

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 2013

About the author

John Bemelmans Marciano carries on the legacy begun by his grandfather, Ludwig Bemelmans, author and illustrator of the Madeline books, with stunning watercolor artwork and playful, energetic storytelling.

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never given the metric system much thought. It's something I learned in the 70's, back when we were sure the U.S. was going to convert by the end of the decade. It seemed easier to learn and at that time I probably could have handled the change just fine.

The conversion never really happened, not in my day to day life. I never saw kilometers on the road signs (unless I was close to the border) and gradually the cars stopped listing how many kilometers per hour you were driving and just stuck to miles. I could read the milliliters on the bottles at the grocery store which I assumed was for international trade. I knew you needed a set of metric wrenches to work on cars which might be all or partially metric.

And, of course, I remember the wrecked rocket ship on Mars, which was the result of the space program using both metric and US customary measures. ("Oh, you meant miles! Ooooh. . . .") Yeh, heads had to have rolled because of that.

When I saw this book I thought it would be interesting to find out just why the United States refused to go metric. I'm still not completely sure. It sounds like we resisted. We didn't compromise an inch! Well, we actually did, though not the actual "inch". The United States went metric in some areas and in others, it just didn't matter. We don't mind a 750 ml bottle of wine or whiskey (though I still hear people say "a fifth of whiskey" which is bizarre to me - 757.08 ml or 1/5 of a liquid gallon) but apparently the cost of converting all the gas pumps to metric during the fuel crisis did not go over well. I don't remember the protests. I learned my math at school and when nothing happened - well, I moved on. (Now, if I had to learn my temperature in Celsius or my mileage in kilometers, I would struggle. I'd be forever converting in my head like a foreign language.)

The U.S., being isolated from Europe and not as much involved in most of the foreign wars after the push for decimalization and the metric system in the late 1700's did not have as pressing of a need for the metric system in people's daily lives. (We weren't becoming members of the EU.) The computer age made so much of the math easier, too.

I learned some very interesting things. A mile is 5,280 feet because a mile is not really related to the foot. A mile is 8 furlongs and is related to the acre and the plowing of land. There was a movement to change the calendar so all the months were fairly equal and the same date would fall on the same day of the week in every month and year. That didn't die out until 1955. (That would be horribly hard to learn and adjust to.) Decimalization is fairly new, as far as how we use it and discuss it. I can't imagine a time when people would routinely say "one and half pounds" and not think of it as 1 point 5 pounds. There were lots of other interesting tidbits.

I'm almost embarrassed I had never really thought about most of this! It was a good choice for a non-fiction book.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Danger! Alert! Danger! This book is INSANELY boring in the middle. If you're interested at all in the topic of the metrification of the United States, don't believe all the four and five star reviews here. Trust me, read the first two or three chapters (three if you want to get a small taste of the history that, again, TRUST ME, will just repeat in a hideous cycle of boring dead white guy shit that goes on for 200 years) then skip to the final three for a delightfully snappy recap of modern metric happenings.

Because, yeah, the US apparently had had metric fanboys going back hundreds of years, but it wasn't until it got a Sputnik in the pants in the late 1950s that certain people began to think the US should go all metric all the time. Alas, in what I'm going to call an NPR-assisted move (yes, THAT NPR, hahaha!), Ronald Reagan basically pulled the plug in the early 1980s. But that's ok, the US, as always, does what it wants and uses metric when it wants and not when it doesn't. Yeah. Read the book (selectively) for the delightful details.

[Lorie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was better than I expected! The author provides a detailed modern history of systems of measurement, and he includes what I found to be interesting facts that dispel some common myths about measurement and money. As a middle school math teacher, I think this book is perhaps too detailed for my students to enjoy as a class read, but, on a personal level, I really enjoyed it.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of the book is a little misleading as the USA's failure to fully adopt the metric system is only a small part in a wide-ranging story about the desire for some to come up with one unifying standard for everything in the world, including money and language.

The metric system was born out of the Enlightment and put into place during the French Revolution. France's new government loved a standard and rational way of measuring things. And they loved the decimal system. Everything for a while was decimalized, even a calendar that featured 10 day weeks.

Eventually, the system changed into what is used today. It took a while for it to catch on as even France went away from it during Napoleon's time. But, it eventually caught on again, except in two notable places: the United States and Great Britain.

The British weren't about to have a the French tell them just how to measure things. The UK didn't go fully metric until the 1990s when the European Union forced them to. (And they still don't like it.)

Americans never have embraced the metric system. As far back as 1817, John Quincy Adams wrote a report stating that the metric system was more or less a passing fad. There was a push to adopt in the 1970s, but it fell prey to the problem that most changes have in America, i.e., people just don't want to change and learn new things.

Marciano points out that not all parts of customary measures (as the system in the U.S. is referred to) are illogical. Having measurements that can be divided by 2 or 4 or 8 or 3 are very handy.

The idea of a 60-second minute, 60-minute hour, and 24-hour day has probably been the one measurement that the entire world has agreed upon. Even the U.S. and North Korea agree on that.

Will America ever go metric? It sort of already has, even though we still use miles and feet and pounds. Our aircraft use metric measurements. We got to the moon on the metric system. We like buying soda in 2 liter bottles. We read nutrition information to see how many grams of fat are in it.

Technology has made all types of measurement universal. It's all just a matter of doing the math.

[William Schram · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was a child, my teachers taught me about the metric system. I don’t remember exactly what they said about it, but I always got the impression that it made more sense than our American System. Everything was divided by tens, it didn’t require conversions to different systems, it didn’t have arbitrary units and it was based on science. For example, take the horsepower unit for work. What is it based on? The amount of work some random animal can do in a day. Or we have the foot. What is that based on? The length of a king’s foot. Nowadays measures are based on sensible things like the speed of light in vacuum.

Of course, the question then arose, why didn’t the United States convert to the metric system? That is where this book comes in. In the book Whatever Happened to the Metric System John Bemelmans Marciano explores the history of the Metric System and the United States.

Apparently, it became a question of practicality. There is a long history of measurement itself contained within the pages of this book. I mean, one instance of metric that the US has always followed was with their money system. When I think of weird money systems that don’t make sense I always jump to the Harry Potter Universe. Knuts, Sickels, and Galleons; 17 to one unit, and all kinds of other weird bits in it. The monetary system of the United States has always been decimal, except very early in its inception.

So the book is really interesting. It answers a lot of questions I always had when I was a child.

[Cameron Yonan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was fun! Love love learning and prepping for my inevitable Jeopardy appearance! Would have rated higher but boo American hegemony

[W. Derek Atkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is far more about the history of the metric system, and why America ultimately chose to reject this system. This book is in fact a surprisingly detailed history of the Progressive Movement, beginning with the French Revolution and going all the way up to the Cold War era. I found this history of Progressivism a surprising tangent for a book that is billed as a history of the metric system, but after reading this book, I now understand why Marciano went off on this tangent, for what he shows very clearly is how the metric system is part of a much larger movement to create universal measures for time, money, and the decimalization of mathematics. These movements, in turn, was part of the even larger Progressivist dream of creating a one world government, complete with a common currency for money, a common language, and a common calendar that regularized all the months. And in case you doubt this description of the book, I challenge you to read the book for yourself. It really is a very fascinating history of Progressivism.

Marciano has written a book that is very readable, as well as a book that has opened up a whole area of history that I had little knowledge of. Both are impressive achievements.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the title of the book makes it seem like it primarily deals with the U.S. and the Metric system, it really covers quite a bit of the history of global weights and measures, but it does so essentially from the start of the U.S. as a nation and uses the U.S. as the central framing device. The majority of the book deals with the history before the turn of the last century, and does so very well, which leaves me wanting a little more when Marciano gets in and through the 20th and start of the 21st century so quickly. Still, this is an interesting read and one that is written in a way that keeps the reader engaged. It has further stoked my interest in the subject and in some of the key figures involved in the various histories, which is about all one can ask of such a book. If you are into this kind of history, this is a solid book that is worth your time, regardless of how you measure that time.

[Dr. T Loves Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big trivia fan, a lover of science, and I like to dip into unusual aspects of modern history every so often. This book provides all of these in spades. It is an entertaining and thorough look at how measurement, in its many guises, affects the world in real and powerful ways that we may not even consider. Along the way, it gives some interesting European and American history lessons.

Now, I am the first to admit that my grasp of the chronology of history is weak, but this book really helped to line up a lot of events I hadn't realized were so closely related in time. It also provided a fascinating look at the French Revolution, from both insider and outsider perspectives. As my greatest interaction with that historical event had been watching the movie adaptation of Le Miserable, I found these insights fascinating.

Definitely worth reading!

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dull writing doesn’t exactly help sell a pretty dull topic, and a meandering sprawl of a narrative really salts the sundae. I slogged my way through this thing while waiting for another book to come over the wire but can’t say I enjoyed it.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in the aftermath of World War II, George Orwell's 1984 imagined that the metric system had been imposed on America and Britain by the totalitarian regime of Big Brother.

The U.S. Metric Study was the largest research project ever undertaken by the National Bureau of Standards, employing a forty-man team who for three years worked to assemble a report that sought to cover the impact if the metric system on every sector of the American economy.

The final report was over two thousand pages and presented a plethora of reasons why the United States should and must go metric. Present day costs were beside the point in a switch deemed inevitable, while economic benefits would accrue from all sides once metrication was achieved, with increased competitiveness in the global marketplace for American exports and savings at home. the report stated that the United States stood to save as much as a half a billion dollars annually from school budgets alone, on the premise that students wasted a full quarter of their time in math class to the eighth grade studying customary measures"

In 1971, Nixon closed the gold window. He pulled America and therefore the world off the gold standard."

The first mainstream American product to be hard metric arrived in 1975 when 7 Up switched its pints and quarts to half liter and liter containers.

Federal education law passed in 1974 making the teaching of the metric system a national policy.

American journalists delighted in pointing out that ten gallon hats would soon measure 37.85 meters. McDonald's would need to replace its Quarter Pounder with a Hundred and Thirteen Grammar. Expressions such as touching someone with a ten foot pole and give a inch and take a yard would need to be reworded. Pound cake, foot long hot dog and inch worm would also need to be redone.

Gerald Ford signed the Metric system into history. A Metric Board was to be appointed by the president to coordinate various aspects of conversion, form education to assisting commerce and industry with the challenges that lay ahead.

The metric system became one more corpse in the graveyard of Reagan budget cuts.

The metric system is most prevalent in the supermarket, yet most shoppers could care less. The most important measure is always in dollars and cents.

America thinks of itself as not having to play by the same rules as the rest of the world.

America has never gone metric because it never had to, and every other country did.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I was interested in the topic, I put off reading this book at first because I thought it would be about political grandstanding and fighting over measurement system in the 1970s. This is NOT that at all.

In cleverly numbered chapters (I won't spoil it), Marciano delves into the whole history of measurement standardization efforts over the last two centuries. I had never really realized that the US customary measures and the French metric system both developed out of their respective revolutions around the same time. Just about all the Founding Fathers had their say about standardization, including Thomas Jefferson, who seems to be making an appearance in every history book I've read over the past year or so.

But Marciano doesn't just cover feet, meters, ounces and liters. He also explores efforts to standardize time, calendars, languages, spelling and monetary systems. In fact, I had never been aware just how closely currency was related to weights and measures. The author outlines this nicely. A cast of characters from history make appearances throughout the book, from John Quincy Adams to Napoleon, from George Eastman and Andrew Carnegie to my personal favorite, Melville Dewey. It's a pretty wild ride and Marciano keeps it interesting the whole way.

In the end, he seems content to admire the efforts on all sides of these issues, and points out that our two systems -- he describes the US as effectively being bimensural -- are now tightly intertwined, saying that "...the metric system can be our operating system without being our interface."

This paragraph from the last chapter sums things up nicely:

In the Babylonian sixtieths, Roman twelfths, and medieval halves, quarters and eighths there is the logic and genius of countless generations of people coming to grasp with the world around them, the same way there is a logic and genius in the Enlightenment tenths, hundredths and thousandths of the metric system. What is good about the latter does not negate what is good about the former.

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

This really was not the book I though it would be. It's a history of the metric system in america, don't get me wrong, but I thought it would be much more on the cultural reasons Americans choose to reject it. The book was more about the history of the metric system as a whole and I didn't personally find the writing engaging or interesting.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Give Marciano some credit: Most people attempting to write a book on this subject would probably end up boring you to tears. Students are taught how to use the metric system in their science classes, but how the systems of standardization were developed and rolled out around the world is still a mystery to most. Things like time zones, trucking and shipping container sizes, and daylight saving time are all things people just take at face value and can't imagine a world without them.

Sure, some other reviews are critical about a few nuanced details that may have been described differently if they were authoring this book, but that does not take away from the fascinating tale of how various types of standardization and improvements to that standardization has shaped cultures and countries over time. This book is worth your time.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little hard to follow in places. A very interesting explanation of how many historical factors shaped the development of the metric system as we currently know it--as well as standard time, the prime meridian, and decimalized money, and how they're all related--and of how long the U.S. has been going back and forth on the topic.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had no idea how important French history, and colonial history in general, had to do with the metric system. Also, the overwhelming reasons why the US is not metric surprised me. Not that much when I thought about it, but I had never thought about it before, and it makes sense. Really good book.

[Rabbit · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dropped at 120 pages. The book is more concerned with the minutiae of early American & French politics than why we in the modern day haven't adopted the metric system - which is what I was under the impression it would be about based on the blurb & first chapter. It's so different from what the description made it sound like that it straight up feels dishonest, which is why I'm giving it 2 stars instead of not rating it at all.

While the events it describes is important groundwork, I was hoping for a book along the lines of "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" that focuses primarily on modern arguments (with history interwoven for context) and is aimed at people with little to no prior knowledge of the topic. Instead, it felt like trying to read a Wikipedia article on a very specific thing, only to fall down the rabbit hole of the French Revolution and never return. Or maybe a better description would be signing up for a 101 science class and accidentally walking into a graduate level 18th to 19th Century American & French History course.

It felt like a series of tangents. Some of the tangents were fun - even a hater like me can enjoy The Reign Of Terror - but mostly I was left asking when we're going to move on. Surely you are just about to connect these events to why in the current year we are using pounds and fahrenheit, yes? Surely we are not just going to talk about yet another guy taking a boat ride and then getting sick in congress? Please?

That's not to say it's poorly written. It's not. It's a bit dry, but I'm sure this book would hit for someone with an interest in 18th century American & French history. But for someone looking for a straightforward book about why multiple pushes for the metric system have failed, this isn't it. I'm not the target demographic and I'm bothered by the description that makes it sound like I might be.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was fascinating, and moreover, provided me as an American living abroad with finally a sensible response when people ask me why we don't use meters. The history of weights and measures turned out to be unexpectedly intriguing, with a lot of name-dropping of famous people throughout history. Not only does this book discuss the surprising history of the metric system (and why the imperial system is far more rational than it seems at first glance), but also delves into how we came to our present versions of measuring everything from time, to the calendar, to money. I loved this book and I'm buying a copy for my personal library.

[Ralphz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick, fun read about the weirdness of America's weights and measures, and how we kept them in the face of pressure to go metric.

Although it's not entirely about that. It begins with the world's differing measuring systems - weights, lengths, volume, money and time. It's a long buildup explain the histories, twists and turns.

But some interesting factoids: America was the first nation to deploy a truly successful decimal system: money. Almost nothing else the public actively does is decimal, in the base-10 sense. Ultimately, Americans didn't see the need outside of science and other technical types.

But we do run our 10Ks and buy our liters of soda and take our milligrams of aspirin, while buying cloth in yards and a gallon of milk. In an odd way, we've done what we usually do: subsume for our own purposes.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tells a lot of history of measurement beyond the metric system. Full of details you were never taught in school. Some facts seem to be repeated multiple times, often within a few pages.

If you were a student in America in the 70s and have memories of learning the metric system in school and wonder what happened, the details are here. Not many pages on that time period actually - most of the book leads up to that.

And...for a book about measurement and getting things right - an error in Appendix A.

(1) ton <> 1000 lb

It should be 2000 lb

[Kyle Kerns · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gave way more detail than I was expecting or really even needed about the history of the metric movement and the attempts to gain traction in the United States. It was all really interesting, but it was oftentimes a bit much. The book goes into a lot of details about time and calendaring that I didn’t expect and seemed to be rabbit holes that I could have done without. Still, though, I learned a lot, and I am looking forward to pulling out several of the facts I learned to “impress” (read: annoy) my friends.

[Paulfrancis O'sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reforms

This is a history of the metric system in the US, but also of other reforms, from Standard Time, through a common currency, to spelling reform, which became associated with the metric system because of individual, but not necessarily lonely, reformers. Many unexpected items have come together for reforms along the way, from the failed stella gold coin to containers and container ships.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surprisingly interesting read. Picked it up out of the bargain bin and just expected to read about miles and kilograms. I didn't even think the author would include information on everything from currency to calendars and everything in between. Several interesting stories/eras in history that I had no idea about. Who knew we almost added a 13th month to the calendar less than a century ago??

[Karly Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so eye opening! Everything we use to measure time, length, etc has had a lot of change and our lives would be so different if another method prevailed. This book explains why calendars have 12 months, clocks have 2 halves or 24 hours, nickels are bigger than dimes, and meters vs feet. Well written, great book.

[Biggus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having spent the first half of my life under the old money, and the latter half under metrics, I have some grasp of the author's arguments. Thing is, most of them are total nonsense. Only an American could try to justify being the third last country in the world, not to change. I doubt they could change even if they wanted to.

Interesting book, but it wanders around a fair bit ;)

[Mad Hab · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is boring, names,dates, names,dates, no analysis, nothing.
You will learn a lot about American War for independence, French Revolution and a little about the metric system and its counterparts

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess this is more like a 3.5 star book. Maybe I should have rounded up, but I've been giving out a lot of 4s lately.

What I'm trying to say is I basically liked this book. Before I read this I had no idea the Metric System, and efforts to make the U.S. go metric were so old. I remember the metric push in the 1970s and had always assumed that was the one time that this country tried to switch to metric. But that was hardly the first effort, and attempts to switch go back to tbe beginning of the U.S. The first U.S. President to consider the Metric System was Washington.

So while I learned a lot of semi-obscure historical facts and the book was fairly well written, by the end I wanted to just finish so I could start something else. Maybe that says less about the book and more about the fleeting moods. Also my favorite thing about the book is boring my wife to death by springing metric history facts on her. When that schtick got old I was ready for a new book.

[Carlton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating examination of why metric system is not the norm
in the US

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

The portion of the metric system's history here in the U.S. that I was most interested in--the late 1970's until 1982--had, unfortunately, the least amount of information.

[Vivian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a wild ride, clearly written by someone with a passion for history, and not just of the numerical sort. It's a slog to get through, but interesting enough to read through to the end.