Probably, each of you was surprised more than once by the fact that the screen size of digital devices is indicated in unusual units. It has even become a tradition and it never occurs to anyone to ask why not use ordinary centimeters instead of inches, which, it would seem, have long and firmly taken their place in the history textbook?
The thing is that the United States and several other countries (unlike the rest of the world) have not switched to the metric system, preferring their traditional units of measurement to international meters and kilograms. And since many of the largest technology corporations are located in the United States, the inches familiar to this country have spread throughout the planet in products. After all, everyone knows in which country the city of Cupertino is located, where the head office of Apple is located - the company that created the first mass smartphone on Earth. There are other corporations in the United States that advance high technology. And along with high technology, they are advancing into the broad masses and ancient inches.
At the very beginning of our story, some clarity should be made. It is believed that the SI system was never approved in the United States. She is so invisible in this country that a person who does not go into details too much may get such an impression. But it is absolutely not true! A number of acts have been passed establishing it as the official system of weights and measures of the United States. How then did it happen that Americans still use the old units of measurement? The fact is that all adopted acts are advisory (not mandatory) for private business and ordinary residents of the country. This means that every American has the right to measure with the usual inches and weigh in pounds familiar from childhood. And this right is enjoyed not only by people, but also by giant corporations.
USA, Liberia and Myanmar. Three strongholds of ancient units
There are only three countries in the world that have not yet switched to the SI system. These are the USA, Liberia and Myanmar (until 1989 - Burma). The rest of the peoples of the world either switched to the metric system completely, or at least officially adopted it as a standard. Another thing is how things are among the people. In Russia, even now, in conversation, they can call a kilometer a "verst", but at the same time everyone clearly understands that we are talking about the most ordinary metric kilometer, and not about the old Russian verst.
But in the United States, the old folk system of measures and weights is used not only in everyday life. Football fields are measured in yards. The work done by car engines is in outlandish foot-pounds. Atmospheric pressure is in pounds per square inch.
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The United States uses the US Customary System instead of the SI International System. It includes more than three hundred units of measurement of various physical quantities. The difficulty lies in the fact that many of these units of measurement are called the same, but mean completely different things.
Here is the simplest and most understandable for everyone, even those who are very far from engineering wisdom. It would seem, what can be difficult in a ton? This is a thousand kilograms and nothing else! But in the US, there are at least nine definitions of the concept of ton: short ton, displacement ton, refrigeration ton, nuclear ton, freight ton, register ton, metric ton, assay ton, fuel ton or ton of coal equivalent.
And despite all these obvious difficulties, no simple, clear and unambiguous metric system is used either in business or in everyday life in the United States. The reasons for this lie, as is often the case, in the history of this country.
The attitude of the United States to the metric system at first was determined by relations with France
The colonies of Britain used the British Imperial System (British Imperial System). In the late 18th century, the metric system was developed in France. Which, of course, was not accepted by either Britain itself or its colonies.
When the United States gained independence, attempts were made in the country to streamline the measurement system. But, as is often the case, they ran into a financial issue. Thomas Jefferson, who served as US Secretary of State under George Washington, favored the decimal system. But it turned out that it would be impossible to determine the metric units of length without sending a delegation to France. And that was a costly affair.
Relations with France, which had supported the United States in its struggle for independence, entered a cooling stage after 1795. When in 1798 France invited representatives of various countries to familiarize themselves with the metric system, Americans were faced with disdain for themselves.
And, nevertheless, representatives of the United States visited Paris and were delighted with the metric system. But the likelihood of convincing the country's leaders of the need to switch to a new system of measures and weights coming from France was very weak. In 1821, US Secretary of State John Quincy studied the units of measurement of 22 states in the country and concluded that the US Customary System was sufficiently unified and did not need to be changed.
Napoleon reigned in France, and the Americans had doubts that the French themselves would remain faithful to the system of measures and weights they had created. As a result, consideration of the metric system in the United States stopped at this historical stage. But this does not mean that they did not return to it again and again as the SI system gained more and more recognition in various parts of our vast world.
USA decides to adopt the metric system
In 1865, the American Civil War ended. The Americans looked around and found that most European countries had switched to the decimal metric system. And this obvious fact in the United States could no longer be ignored. In 1866, the country's Congress passed an act according to which the metric system became official for use in all contracts, transactions and legal proceedings.
Nine years later, France brought together representatives of the world's leading countries to discuss the details of a new international version of the metric system. The United States received an invitation and sent a delegation. The representatives of these countries signed an international convention, founding the International Bureau of Weights and Measures and the International Committee for Weights and Measures, whose tasks were to consider and adopt changes.
The agreement provided for the creation of a special hall in the French city of Servay near Paris, where the standards of metric standards, in particular the standard of the meter, should be placed. This made it possible to avoid difficulties in understanding by different peoples what exactly is meant by a particular unit of measurement.
In 1890, the United States received copies of the international standard for the meter and the international standard for the kilogram. By the Mendenhall Ordinance (named for the Superintendent of Weights and Measures), metric units were adopted as the fundamental standard for length and mass in the United States. The yard was defined as 3600/3937 meters, and the pound as 0.4535924277 kilograms.
In 1959, English-speaking countries made some adjustments: 1 yard equated to 0.9144 meters, and 1 pound to 0.4535923. That is, formally, the United States has already adopted the metric system for 145 years as the standard of measures and weights, and for about 120 years in this country everything should be measured in meters and kilograms. But, as practice shows, making a decision does not mean its implementation in real life.
Metric system in the USA today
Many prominent scientists and politicians in the United States were supporters of the mandatory metric system for the entire country. In 1971, it began to look like the United States would finally be among the countries to adopt the metric system. The National Bureau of Standards released the Metric America report, which recommended that the country switch to metric within ten years.
In 1975, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act, the essence of which was the same as the recommendations of the standards experts, but with only two important differences. There was no strict time frame and the very transition to the metric system assumed voluntariness. As a result, the country's schoolchildren began to go through the SI system, and some companies made an attempt at "metrification", which turned out to be ineffectual propaganda, since there was no real action to switch to metric units.
It turned out that the United States uses units of measurement that are already forgotten in the rest of the world. An increasing number of consumers of American products began to demand that the supplied goods be accompanied by the indication of characteristics in the metric system. As American companies opened more and more manufacturing facilities in Europe and Asia, it became necessary to decide which units to use: metric or traditional American.
Recognizing these complexities, in 1988 Congress amended the Metric Conversion Act to make the metric system "the preferred system of measures and weights in the United States for trade and commerce." At the end of 1992, federal agencies were required to use metric units when measuring quantities related to procurement, grants, and other matters pertaining to business activity. But these prescriptions concerned only state structures. Private business remained free to use the familiar measurement system. Attempts have been made to interest small businesses in the metric system, but there has been little progress.
As of today, only about 30% of the products manufactured in the USA are “metrified”. The pharmaceutical industry in the United States is referred to as “strictly metric” because all characteristics of a country's pharmaceutical products are reported in metric units only. Beverages have designations in both metric and traditional US systems of values. This industry is considered "mildly metric". The metric system is also used in the United States by film, tool and bicycle manufacturers. Otherwise, in the US, they prefer to measure in the old fashioned way. In ancient inches and pounds. And this applies even to such a young industry as high technology.
What prevents a highly developed industrial country from switching to the system of measures and weights generally accepted on our planet? There are a number of reasons for this.
Conservatism and cost hinder metric conversion
One of the reasons is the costs that would have to be borne by the country's economy in the event of the transition to the SI system. After all, technical drawings and instructions for the most complex equipment would have to be revised. This would require a lot of work of highly paid specialists. And, therefore, money. For example, NASA engineers reported that converting space shuttle drawings, software and documentation to metric units would cost US $ 370 million, about half the cost of a conventional space shuttle launch.
But the high costs of the transition alone will not explain the cool attitude of Americans to the metric system. Psychological factors play their own, and far from the least, role in restraining the country's transition to an international system of measures and weights. The stubborn conservatism of Americans makes them resist any innovation, especially those that come from foreigners.
Americans always love to do things their own way. Individualism is the main feature of the representatives of this people. The descendants of the conquerors of the vast expanses of the Wild West stubbornly reject attempts to force them to abandon their usual childhood inches and pounds.
No high technology can force a person to reconsider their conservative views. For example, commercial mobile communications have been around since 1947. But it only really became interesting in the early 1980s. Events happen only when the consciousness of the average person is ready to accept them. And this, in turn, is possible only if a person sees the meaning in it. And the average American simply does not see much sense for himself personally in the metric system.
Therefore, all efforts to introduce the metric system in the United States run up against the impregnable stronghold of the everyday life of ordinary citizens of the country who do not want to let the meters and kilograms go there. There is another important reason that we talked about a little earlier. A significant part of the largest corporations in the world are located in the United States. Their products are competitive in the global market, even with the unusual inches and pounds. What's unusual there! The whole world will be very surprised if one day the diagonal of the screen of the next smartphone will be indicated in centimeters familiar from the school bench, and not in inches, seemingly descended from the pages of a history textbook. This means that there is no reason for Americans to abandon their traditional system of weights and measures.
Oleg Dovbnya