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New push for metricGive 'em on inch and they'll take a kilometer„ . . longstanding supporter of the metricEven some scientists argue that the metric system, with origins in 17th-century France, is badly outdated and that if the United States is to change its customary system of measurement, the change should be to an entirely new system more compatible with the workings of modern computers.By MALCOLM W. BROWNEN.Y. Times News ServiceTo some it has seemed as insidious as the supposed dangers of creeping communism or water fluoridation. To others it is the future cornerstone of America’s competitive edge as an industrial power. It’s the metric system, and even after more than a century of debate, Americans cannot make up their minds what to do about it.Moribund for several years, the federal government’s efforts to sell Americans on metrication are undergoing a mild revival, and opponents are organizing a response. But whichever turn the debate may take, no one expects major changes in the way people measure things any time soon.The pace of change is illustrated by an extract from a report by the Massachusetts Board of Education discovered and published by Chemical Engineering News:“By admission of its few opponents. even, the complete adoption of the metric system is at least assured. The pressure of public opinion has now made it necessary for every teacher to teach the system.”That report was written in 1879, and every dozen or so years since then, metric system supporters have made similarly unrealized predictions.The government agency chiefly responsible today for promoting acceptance of the metric system is the National Institute of Standards and Technology, formerly the National Bureau of Standards. The institute is conducting a modest publicity campaign, with a series of “town meetings” held under the rubrie1 Toward a Metric America” to explain the merits of metrication to civic leaders, teachers and manufacturers. In the past two months, meetings were held in Atlanta and Cambridge, Mass., and meetings are scheduled in Seattle, Chicago, Dallas and San Jose, Calif.Ralph Richter, an official of the institute, said in an interview that no new money had been appropriated for the campaign, and the agency was avoiding the hard-sell approach sometimes taken by the federal government in the past.But gentle though the institute’s effort may be, it is seen as a red flag by opponents of the metric system.in Wiscasset, Me., and who heads a loosely knit organization called Americans for Customary Weight and Measure, plans to revive the publication of the group’s anti-metric newsletter, called The Footprint.“Our newsletter hasn’t come out in a year or so because we felt that most Americans had come to realize the folly of adopting faddish European units of measure, Leslie said. “But we’ll have to respond to the government’s new propaganda campaign.”The anti-metric group has the support of the writer Tom Wolfe and several other prominent writers and artists. Leslie argues that customary measures are native to America, saying that even pre-Columbian Anasazi architects recognized the foot as a fundamental unit of length and the cup — the amount of blood in a human heart — as a convenient unit of volume.Most scientists and engineers argue strongly for metrication, however, contending that the United States, alone among other industrial nations, is isolated and handicapped by its continued use of customary measures. (Liberia and Myanmar, formerly Burma, are the other holdouts against metrication.)Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-R.I., asystem, has frequently tried to enlist all federal agencies in a drive to achieve metrication. In a letter to President Clinton three years ago, he wrote: “I am sure that you will agree that in order for this nation’s businesses to be truly competitive with the rest of the world, we must play by the same rules.”But ordinary Americans have resisted change, and they are not alone in continuing to use inches, pounds, quarts and degrees Fahrenheit. Even some scientists argue that the metric system, with origins in 17th-century France, is badly outdated and that if the United States is to change its customary system of measurement, the change should be to an entirely new system more compatible with the workings of modern computers.The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which presides over some of the most advanced technoiogy in the world, is still far from embracing the metric system wholeheartedly.The space station NASA plans to begin building next, year (at a cost of about $13.8 billion) will contain some metric fasteners and other odds and ends, but, for the most part, majorcomponents made by commercial manufacturers in the United States will be based on old-fashioned customary measures.“We got pretty well into the space station design using Inches and. pounds,” said Richard Weinstein, NASA’s manager of engineering studies. “We’ll accommodate the metric system where we can, but we simply cannot start over. The expense would be prohibitive.”Seaver W. Leslie, an artist who livesRainy spring hatches bumper crop of skeeters
Newspaper Details
Indiana Gazette
Indiana, Pennsylvania, US
Thu, Jun 06, 1996
Page 18
Full Page
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Anonymous
USA 29 Jan 2019
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