A couple things showed up on my
database...
Nat
Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania)
March 23, 2005 Wednesday
SEVENTH EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL; WHITE; Pg. B1
LENGTH: 602 words
HEADLINE: Pro-metric column drew mixed response
BYLINE: By Bill White Of The Morning Call
BODY:
I got mixed response to my recent column about the United States' reluctance to convert to metric measurement.
For a sampling, I'll excerpt from two pro and two con:
"It isn't up to Congress, or the American people to change our systems of units," Lehigh University chemical engineering professor Harvey Stenger wrote. "Rather the block is the cost of doing it.
"If you visit just one manufacturing facility and add up the cost of all the equipment, tools, gauges, instruments and scales that use the English system, multiply that by the thousands of factories in the country, you will find that there are tens of billions of dollars invested in the English unit system. To change over would be extraordinarily expensive, with little or no return on investment to most manufacturers. That's the real reason."
As to the suggestion that learning two systems of measurement makes it harder for students to learn math and science, he wrote, "I teach engineering students two systems of units with little difficulty. It requires memorizing three or four conversion factors and doing a little arithmetic in your head."
Paul Trusten of Midland, Texas, after pointing out the United States' deep historical roots of support for a decimal-based system of measurement -- dating back to Thomas Jefferson, a big supporter -- addressed the cost of converting for U.S. industry.
"I feel that metrication is an issue that U.S. industry has wanted to postpone for as long as possible, since it has not been forced by circumstance to face it," Trusten wrote. "But the emergence of a global economy is creating such a circumstance, applying additional pressure on the U.S. to convert. Most significant is the Dec. 31, 2009, deadline set by the European Union for allowing its member countries to import products labeled in non-metric units. They are due to require metric labeling exclusively after that date. If they hold firm, U.S. industry must respond to the challenge.
"We were all set to change over in the early 1970s, but we balked. Had we not balked, the change would be long since accomplished, and accomplished in 1970s dollars."
Jim Mahoney of Allentown wrote, "I find it hard to believe that the average high school student, who is capable of simultaneously listening to music, playing a video game and carrying on five different IM conversations, is incapable of having concepts like liters and kilometers coexist in his brain with quarts and miles."
He wrote that the real reason American students suffer by comparison is that they get less instructional time and have a less positive atmosphere for learning than in European schools.
He concluded, "Let's work on tightening up the education standards in the U.S. If we do, we will soon find that if you give students 2.54 centimeters they'll take 1.609344 kilometers."
Finally, I heard from Pat Naughtin of Geelong, Australia, a writer, speaker, editor, publisher and expert on the modern metric system. His Web site, www.metricationmatters.com, is extremely instructive.
He shared an essay that points out the extent to which we already have converted.
"After all this," he concluded, "you might find it easier to recognize that we all live in a metric world: not because someone arbitrarily decided it; not because it was mandated by governments; but because, over the last two centuries, metric measurements have proved simple in concept and easy to use.
"So far, this simplicity and ease of use have convinced most individuals, groups, companies, organizations, and all the nations of the world except the USA that metric units are the way to go."
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