On 2008/06/10, at 1:02 AM, Stan Jakuba wrote:
A sentence in a one-room schoolhouse, a section of the 1800s village
museum in Fairplay CO.
Then down with every "metric" scheme
Taught by the foreign school.
We’ll worship still our Father’s God!
And keep our Father’s "rule"!
Dear Stan,
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington would have
rolled over in their graves when they heard this 'poetry' since they
had all worked so hard to get the metric system, and especially its
decimal character, adopted worldwide in the 1780s and 1790s.
Search for Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington
in the Metrication timeline that you will find at: http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/MetricationTimeline.pdf
to see where their efforts fitted into the international development
of the metric system.
I think that from the standpoint of the USA it would be hard to
describe the metric system as foreign. I doubt that without the
decimal influences from the USA (especially from the three men
mentioned above) the metric system might not have got off the ground
in France at all. I should also mention that the international system
of units — that preceded the metric system by about 120 years — was an
English development in 1668 (See: http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/CommentaryOnWilkinsOfMeasure.pdf
).
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com/
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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