Americans in Great Measure

摘要

For decades, I have watched and read as the American people have expected the arrival of the metric system to be the arrival of a permanent second system of measurement in the country. How could I blame them for thinking so? The half-hearted Congress of 1975 gave us an uncooked law, the Metric Conversion (sic) Act. There were these pesky charts for changing units back and forth, and signage bearing values of units in both systems. As far as they were concerned, then, the long-standing jokes about the metrological bureaucrats WERE true: give them an inch (25.4 mm) and they'll take a mile (1.61 km), and so would be written our humorless lives on penalty of being sentenced to a prison for manufacturing dual legacy/metric rulers. THAT is NOT metrication!