While most nations use the metric system -those units of decimals that are universally employed in science-the U.S. still clings to pounds, inches, and feet. Despite several high-profile attempts to change that, Americans refuse to convert. Thomas Jefferson first tried to move the nation toward a decimal-based system in 1789. But without support from scientists, his idea flopped. More than a century later, in 1906, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell told Congress that "few people have any adequate conception of the amount of unnecessary labor involved in the use of our present weights and measures."
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机译：尽管大多数国家/地区使用公制-科学界普遍采用的小数位制-美国仍然坚持使用磅，英寸和英尺。尽管有几场引人注目的尝试改变了这一状况，但美国人拒绝convert依。托马斯·杰斐逊（Thomas Jefferson）于1789年首次尝试将国家转变为基于十进制的系统。但是，在没有科学家支持的情况下，他的想法失败了。一个多世纪之后的1906年，电话发明家亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔（Alexander Graham Bell）对国会说：“很少有人对使用我们现有的重量和量度所涉及的不必要的劳动量有足够的了解。”
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