Adopting Weighty
Subject May Prove To Be Tall Order
Three Rivers professor campaigns for switch to
the metric system
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Hand
Out |
| Brent Maynard, a Moosup resident and
professor at Three Rivers Community College,
advocates for conversion to the metric system in
the United States while demonstrating in front of
Norwich City Hall on
Tuesday. | | | By PAUL CHOINIERE
Norwich Bureau
Chief
Published on
10/19/2005
Norwich — Brent Maynard wants you to
convert. He wants you to see the light, to head down a path that is
so simple and straight he cannot understand how so many remain
unconvinced.
Maynard wants you to go metric. In fact, he
wants the whole country to make the switch to millimeters and
kilograms.
On Tuesday, under a bright autumn sun, Maynard,
who is 52, stood as a lone demonstrator to the cause in a peaceful
vigil in front of City Hall. There he sat behind a card table, a
cardboard sign hung around his neck reading: 169 centimeters tall,
weight 73 kilograms.
To anyone who was willing to listen, Maynard
made the case that metric should become the official form of weight
and measure for the United States. He handed out temperature and
pressure converters, business card-sized conversion charts and
metric rulers.
“It is the language of science,” said Maynard, a
professor of chemistry and nuclear physics at Three Rivers Community
College. “It is so much easier to work with than the English
system.”
The “English system” refers to measuring in
feet, inches and yards and weighing things in pounds and ounces. Of
course, the system also uses “fluid ounces” to measure volume,
adding to its confusion.
Most of the world has converted to metric.
“Of course there are still places that use
‘English',” Maynard said. “Like Burma. That's a great country to be
lumped in with. A repressive government that is so insulated it
turned down tsunami relief aid.”
Among those wandering by were Norwich Assistant
City Manager Robert Zarnetske and Norwich resident Charlie Barrett.
Zarnetske took a serious look, but Barrett was, at first, skeptical
of Maynard's cause.
“You're kidding, right?” Barrett
asked.
But he left a convert, at least to a degree,
agreeing that it sure would be easier to have all nuts and bolts on
car engines designed in the metric system.
“Now you have to have two sets of tools,” he
said. And Barrett agreed to sign Maynard's petition asking for the
U.S. Postal Service to convert to weighing and measuring packages in
metric.
Maynard is president of the Plainfield Metric
Association, six members strong. The group visits schools to preach
metric and passed out metric paraphernalia at that town's VJ Day
Parade in August. Maynard had planned to demonstrate last Tuesday,
during Metric Awareness Week, but got rained out.
How things are weighed and measured is a serious
matter, Maynard believes. American students are placed at an
educational disadvantage, American companies at a competitive
disadvantage, he said.
There have been past attempts to move the
country toward metric.
The third president, Thomas Jefferson, was an
advocate of the decimal-based system that had only recently been
developed by the French. Another big government pitch took place in
the 1970s, but flopped. And in 1988 Congress passed the Omnibus
Competition and Trade Act, stating metric was the preferred system
of weights and measures.
All efforts have failed.
Maynard said the government needs to get
serious, issuing government contracts and bid specs in metric units
alone.
“It is just so much simpler,” he
said.
To make his case, Maynard offered slices of a
large sheet cake to passersby. Instead of happy birthday or
congratulatory greetings, the cake was decorated with a comparison
of metric and “English” measurements.
The tale of the icing showed one mile equals an
untidy 5,280 feet, while one kilometer equals a nice, round 1,000
meters. One pound equals 16 ounces; in contrast, one kilogram
converts to a simple 1,000 grams.
The country fears change, Maynard said, afraid
it will be too difficult to get adjusted to a new way of figuring
the size and mass of things.
“I think our country has made things needlessly
more complicated in the interest of simplicity,” he said.
Maynard also senses a bit of patriotic pride
behind the resistance to metric.
“But I don't see how it can be considered as
patriotic,” he said, “to keep a system of weights and measures that
was around when King Henry the Eighth was chasing after Anne
Boleyn.” 
© The Day Publishing Co.,
2005
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