Anti-metrication

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The introduction of the metric system has faced popular opposition in a number of countries over the past two hundred years. Opponents generally cite apparent flaws in the metric system itself and cultural reasons for resisting change. Today, only the United States of America, Liberia and Myanmar[1] continue to use their traditional measurement systems to any great extent, although many countries still retain non-metric units: in Britain, for example, road signs are all in miles and yards and the media and public talk mainly in traditional units, although the metric system is legally required in many areas of life.

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[edit] Some arguments of the anti-metrication movement

[edit] Natural evolution and human scale

One argument used by opponents of the metric system is that traditional systems of measurement were developed organically from actual use. Early measures were human in scale. In English, traditional expressions such as a stone's throw, within earshot, a cartload or a handful disclose the internal logic of traditional measurements. These measures were often relational and commensurable: a request for a judgment of measure allowed for a variety of answers, depending on the context of the request. In parts of Malaysia, villagers asked the distance to the next village were likely to respond with "three rice cookings"; an approximation of the time it would take to travel there on foot. Everyone is assumed to know how long to cook rice. Named units referring to seeming standards also were contextualized. The aune, a French ell used for measuring cloth, depended on the sort of cloth you were measuring, taking price and scarcity into account; an aune of silk was shorter than an aune of linen.[1]

The traditional English units of measure, though standardized in themselves, at least reflect these original and organic methods of measuring. A number of these units, such as the foot, share their name with physical objects indicating that they were based on these objects. Folklore relates the yard to the length between the nose and thumb of several kings of England. Tradition also relates the fathom to the distance between a man's outstretched arms: an estimate reflected in its names in other languages, such as French brasse and Italian braccio. Human-scale units used or formerly used in English include the digit, finger, palm, hand, span, and the Biblical cubit, traditionally defined as the length of the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the oustretched hand. The virtue of these units was not scientific precision, but rather that they allowed people to easily learn them and make estimates and judgments of size: in other words, each one was a handy "rule of thumb".

The metric system, on the other hand, employs only a small number of base units (7), none of which are based on the human body. As such, their selection was made without regard to human scale. Other metric units are derived from these base units in a systematic way. For any particular quantity, larger metric units are always powers of ten multiplied by smaller metric units. Units for other quantities are formed by multiplying base units.

Members of the anti-metrication movement say that as traditional measurements have evolved over time, naturally picking up improvements to make them more useful to more people. Thus, it is claimed, they have grown in a way that the metric system, with its rigid systematicism, could not. This process could be likened to Darwinian evolution by natural selection with the most useful units standing the test of time. Proponents of metrication will, of course, point out the advantages of a systematic approach such as that of the metric system's, arguing that it is worth forgoing these claimed naturally-evolved units. Also, it is worth pointing out that pre-metrification there was significant variation between units.

[edit] High modernism and "legibility"

The metric system originated in the ideology of "Pure Reason" that was a feature of the more radical element of the French Revolution.[2] The metric system was devised in France as part of a proposal that attempted to make France "revenue-rich, militarily potent, and easily administered."[3] It was intended as part of a consicous plan to transform French culture. "As mathematics was the language of science, so would the metric system be the language of commerce and industry," meant to unify and transform French society.[4]

The imposition of the metric system, with its basic units originally derived from various scientific calculations removed from daily concerns, can be viewed in terms originated by James C. Scott as a form of high modernism. Local or customary measures do not serve the needs of a central government and its bureaucracy; they pose obstacles to the State's needs for census taking, taxation, and conscription. In forcing information to flow through standardized containers, they tend to obliterate local knowledge shaped by local needs. Scott observes that "Telling a farmer only that he is leasing twenty acres of land is about as helpful as telling a scholar that he has bought six kilograms of books."[5] Traditional measures express common wisdom and utility at the expense of standardization; but standardization is what bureaucracy requires. Scott's critique of the metric system stands in the tradition of E. P. Thompson's critique of the bureaucratic and industrial imposition of time discipline.

In his 1998 monograph Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Scott argues that central governments attempt to impose what he calls "legibility" on their subjects. Local folkways concerning measurements, like local customs concerning patronymics, tend to come under severe pressure from bureaucracies. Scott's thesis is that in order for schemes to improve the human condition to succeed, they must take into account local conditions, and that the high-modernist ideologies of the 20th century have prevented this. Scott cites the Napoleonic enforcement of the metric system as a specific example of this sort of failed and resented "improvement" imposed by centralizing and standardizing authority.[6]

While the metric system was imposed on France by Napoleon Bonaparte in the beginning of the nineteenth century, it failed to pre-empt traditional measurements in the popular mind, and its use was associated with officialdom and elitism. In 1828 Chateaubriand remarked, "Whenever you meet a fellow who, instead of talking arpents, toises, and pieds, refers to hectares, metres, and centimetres, rest assured, the man is a prefect."[7]

See also: mesures usuelles

[edit] Price inflation

The adoption of metric measures in shops, especially in supermarkets, can provide an opportunity for traders to increase prices covertly. Taking the example of a jar of jam or a can of beans, each of these would previously have been sold in a standard 1 lb (one pound, 454 gram) measure. But once the pound is abandoned, such items could be repackaged in smaller metric measures—450 grams for example, but sold at the same package price. To the casual buyer, such goods will often look similar to the one pound jars or cans they used to buy. If such items are sold at the same price as the customary packages they replace, then a price increase can be introduced by stealth. Those educated in the old measures, and able to make conversions, may spot this. But those educated since the abolition of customary measures will not necessarily do so.

An example of this is when liquor started to no longer be sold in fifths of a (U.S. liquid) gallon (exactly 0.2 gallons, approximately 757 ml), but instead in the international standard (750 ml, approximately 0.198 gallons), and the price remained the same. "The Great Metric Rip-Off" from the British Weights and Measures Association, an anti-metrication organization. Another example is when many bottling companies changed their plastic soda bottles in Canada, switching from 600mL to 591mL (20 US fluid ounces) with no change in price.

[edit] Unit confusion

Traditional units are often so dissimilarly named that it is difficult to confuse their unit names. By contrast, the names of related metric units tend to be very similar, and could confuse people unfamiliar with the system (e.g. mm and cm).[citation needed]

However, there are a number of different traditional units which share the same name. A gallon, for example, could be an Imperial gallon, a US dry gallon or a US wet gallon (not to mention any of the great number of obsolete gallons). This is also the case for the ton/tonne and the ounce. People unfamiliar with traditional measures may get confused also.

[edit] Tradition

For some, anti-metrication is a form of traditionalism, looking to a history of usage that stretches back centuries or even millennia. Sometimes it is even considered part of patriotism. For traditional argument, however, the US system and the Imperial system are based upon older English units, which in turn have largely Roman and French (Avoirdupois) roots.[citation needed]

The non-metric units have changed values many times throughout history. At the time of the French revolution there were over 5000 variations on the foot alone. Which one would be traditionally correct? The Imperial system is the result of a clean-up in 1824, some 30 years after the founding of the metric system.

Metric units, however, have not been exempt from redefinitions or refinements. The metre, for instance, was intended to equal 10−7 or one ten-millionth of the length of the meridian through Paris from pole to the equator. However, the first prototype was short by 0.2 millimetres because researchers miscalculated the flattening of the Earth. Now it is the length travelled by light in vacuum during the time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.

It should be noted, though, that these redefinitions of the metre did not change its length, merely the way it was defined, so the redefinitions had no bearing on the everyday usage of the metric system. They merely meant that calculations could be made with extra decimal places of accuracy. This was not the case for imperial measurement changes. For example, the British gallon used to be 3.8 l, but is now about 4.5 l - an 18% change.

[edit] Aesthetics

Another complaint regarding the metric system is the alleged unpleasantness of its terms. Supporters of other systems claim that, being designed for scientific use, most metric terms are “cold”, “harsh” and lack the character of their traditional counterparts.

For example, most common traditional measurements (except for 'fluid ounce' and 'half-barrel') are single-syllable (‘inch’, ‘foot’, ‘yard’, ‘mile’, ‘ounce’, ‘pound’, ‘ton’, ‘cup’, ‘pint’, ‘quart’) or two syllables ('gallon', 'bushel', 'barrel', 'hogshead', 'acre', 'pica', 'furlong', 'cubit', 'candle', 'fathom') which would be more “appealing” to the tongue and ear than polysyllabic terms like ‘centimetre’ or ‘millilitre’. In science fiction and some military circles, this is reflected by the use of 'klick' in place of 'kilometre'.

In English, the names of the metric units, it is claimed, with their prefixes of multiple origins, are imperfectly domesticated loanwords. The corresponding traditional units, though not all of Anglo-Saxon etymology, have been in use in English for a very long time. They are monosyllables that conform to the rules for native words in English spelling.[8] The irregular correspondence between spelling and pronunciation of a foreign word like litre, by contrast, marks it as an intruder.[9] Some of the names of metric units in English give rise to variation in pronunciation, kilometre sometimes is rendered with stress on the first syllable but the pronunciation stressing the second is also quite frequent.[10]

While there are those who claim this objection is mere parochialism,[citation needed] its existence can be helpful in understanding how much people “hold dear” the units they grew up with, and the difficulties encountered in the metrication process. In countries that have recently gone metric, the traditional terms continue to be used metaphorically and in fixed expressions, and expressions like “a gram of prevention is worth a kilogram of cure” or “I was a million kilometres away (in my thoughts)” or “Due to the heavy traffic jam, the cars just centimetred their way down the road” have not suddenly become commonplace. However, in countries that metricated a long time ago, expressions involving the metric system are more common: “Don’t feel like you are 2 metres tall” (don't overestimate yourself), “one gram of experience is worth of a kilo of theory”, “millimetric precision”, “the traffic jam slithered ahead cent by cent” and so on.

[edit] Government compulsion

Another basic argument is that the adoption of metric units has almost always been a matter of government compulsion, prohibiting people from using units they were used to, and that such policies are wrong in principle. The idea of compulsory standards is hardly new, however; in the mid-1820s, for example, the Act for ascertaining and establishing Uniformity of Weights and Measures, signed by George IV, consolidated the various gallons in use at the time and established a new Imperial gallon, simultaneously prohibiting the use of the older units. Compulsory reforms, e.g. the introduction of the euro, in general have been proven to be much more efficient (quicker, cheaper) than voluntary ones without lesser satisfaction throughout the population afterwards.

In the UK there is widespread non-compliance by small-scale fruit and vegetable traders with the requirement to price in metric.[citation needed] Display of “supplementary units” (the equivalent Imperial price) is permitted (until 31 December 2009) as long as they are no larger than, nor more prominent than, the legally-binding metric price. In many towns, fruit and vegetable markets display prominent signs in Imperial units, with a very small metric price beside them.[citation needed] There is also some degree of non-compliance by smaller vendors of carpets, despite the great simplification that metrication affords to carpet-buying. Large supermarkets in the UK have also attempted to undermine the metrication process. They place small metric price signs on the edges of shelves and use these to claim they are pricing in metric. However, all around the store are very large signs advertising the products purely in Imperial units.[citation needed] They claim that the law requires them to price in metric but does not require them to advertise in metric.[citation needed] So far, Trading Standards officers have not taken a supermarket to court over this issue and thus its legality remains untested.

Anti-metrication in the UK often manifests itself in conjunction with Euroscepticism because of the belief that the European Union is responsible for compulsory metrication, although metrication had been government policy since 1953 and the process was initiated by the government establishing the Metrication Board in 1969, four years before joining the EC. In more recent times, anti-metrication supporters have asserted that the legal compulsion to adopt the metric system instead of their traditional weights and measures is an infringement of a right to freedom of speech, though this claim has been consistently rejected by the courts. Most recently, on 25 February 2004, the European Court of Human Rights rejected an application from British shopkeepers who said that their human rights had been violated.

In the US, there is also government compulsion with regard to measurement units. Federal and state laws control the labelling of goods for sale in the supermarket, drugs, wine, liquor etc. For example, US manufacturers are obliged by law to show both metric and non-metric units. It is an offence to have a metric only label, or a non-metric only label. Similarly, a US wine or liquor producer would be committing an offence if the product were delivered in non-metric bottle sizes. Regulation 27 CFR 4.73 requires wine bottled or packed on or after January 1, 1979 to be sold in only the following sizes: 3 litres, 1.5 litres, 1 litre, 750 millilitres, 500 millilitres, 375 millilitres, 187 millilitres, 100 millilitres, or 50 millilitres. Wine may also be bottled or packed in containers of 4 litres or larger if the containers are filled and labelled in quantities of even liters (4 litres, 6 litres, etc.)

[edit] Practicality in the United States

The United States is the world's largest economy, the entire infrastructure of which has been built using traditional units. Other than enforcing the laws about labelling products with metric equivalents (discussed above), there is presently no significant push by the US government to increase the use of the metric system among the American public, nor is there any significant populist movement among the US public to fully adopt the metric system.

One major obstacle to metrication in the United States is its established system of title registration for real property. The metes and bounds descriptions of land in deeds and other title documents typically use English measures such as feet, rods, and furlongs. All of these systems of land measurement were in place well before there was any thought of converting any measurements in the United States to metric measurements.

Nonetheless, since the early 1980s several significant segments of industry have changed to using the metric system in design work, notably, the automotive and electronics industries, in order to be able to compete effectively in a world market and to be able to use materials from global sources. One would be hard-pressed to find a non-metric fastener in any automobile produced by a US manufacturer today.

[edit] Multiplication factors

Dividing by three is simple in a base twelve system but difficult with a base ten system. Dividing by five, on the other hand, is simple in a base ten system but difficult with a base twelve system. If you want to take a quarter in a base ten system, you have to use one hundred to avoid getting a fraction. Twelve, on the other hand, divides by four easily.

However, only few parts of the Imperial or US customary systems actually feature the factor twelve, namely the inch-to-foot ratio and the rarely used troy ounce-to-troy pound ratio. Powers of two are more common, especially in volume measures, along with other factors including five, seven and eleven.

in decimal in decimal in decimal in decimal
8³ = 512 10³ = 1000 12³ = 1728 16³ = 4096
8² = 64 10² = 100 12² = 144 16² = 256
8 10 12 16
8/2 = 4 10/2 = 5 12/2 = 6 16/2 = 8
8/3 = 2.(6) 10/3 = 3.(3) 12/3 = 4 16/3 = 5.(3)
8/4 = 2 10/4 = 2.5 12/4 = 3 16/4 = 4
8/5 = 1.6 10/5 = 2 12/5 = 2.4 16/5 = 3.2
8/6 = 1.(3) 10/6 = 1.(6) 12/6 = 2 16/6 = 2.(6)
8/7 = 1.(142857) 10/7 = 1.(428571) 12/7 = 1.(714285) 16/7 = 2.(285714)
8/8 = 1 10/8 = 1.25 12/8 = 1.5 16/8 = 2
8/9 = 0.(8) 10/9 = 1.(1) 12/9 = 1.(3) 16/9 = 1.(7)
8/10 = 0.8 10/10 = 1 12/10 = 1.2 16/10 = 1.6
8/11 = 0.(72) 10/11 = 0.(90) 12/11 = 1.(09) 16/11 = 1.(45)
8/12 = 0.(6) 10/12 = 0.8(3) 12/12 = 1 16/12 = 1.(3)
8/13 = 0.(615384) 10/13 = 0.(769230) 12/13 = 0.(923076) 16/13 = 1.(230769)
8/14 = 0.(571428) 10/14 = 0.(714285) 12/14 = 0.(857142) 16/14 = 1.(142857)
8/15 = 0.5(3) 10/15 = 0.(6) 12/15 = 0.8 16/15 = 1.0(6)
8/16 = 0.5 10/16 = 0.625 12/16 = 0.75 16/16 = 1
in octal in decimal in dozenal in hexadecimal
10³ = 1000 10³ = 1000 10³ = 1000 10³ = 1000
10² = 100 10² = 100 10² = 100 10² = 100
10 10 10 10
10/2 = 4 10/2 = 5 10/2 = 6 10/2 = 8
10/3 = 2.(52) 10/3 = 3.(3) 10/3 = 4 10/3 = 5.(5)
10/4 = 2 10/4 = 2.5 10/4 = 3 10/4 = 4
10/5 = 1.(4631) 10/5 = 2 10/5 = 2.(4972) 10/5 = 3.(3)
10/6 = 1.(25) 10/6 = 1.(6) 10/6 = 2 10/6 = 2.(A)
10/7 = 1.(1) 10/7 = 1.(428571) 10/7 = 1.(86A351) 10/7 = 2.(492)
10/10 = 1 10/8 = 1.25 10/8 = 1.6 10/8 = 2
10/11 = 0.(70) 10/9 = 1.(1) 10/9 = 1.4 10/9 = 1.(C71)
10/12 = 0.(6314) 10/10 = 1 10/A = 1.(2497) 10/A = 1.(9)
10/13 = 0.(5642721350) 10/11 = 0.(90) 10/B = 1.(1) 10/B = 1.(745D1)
10/14 = 0.(52) 10/12 = 0.8(3) 10/10 = 1 10/C = 1.(5)
10/15 = 0.(4730) 10/13 = 0.(769230) 10/11 = 0.(B0) 10/D = 1.(3B1)
10/16 = 0.(4) 10/14 = 0.(714285) 10/12 = 0.(A35186) 10/E = 1.(249)
10/17 = 0.(4210) 10/15 = 0.(6) 10/13 = 0.(9724) 10/F = 1.(1)
10/20 = 0.4 10/16 = 0.625 10/14 = 0.9 10/10 = 1

Some people mistakenly claim that non-metric units are systematically designed to base twelve, sixteen, etc. This is probably due to a confusion of base with factor. There is no inherent base in English units.

Factors used in non-metric units include:

Metric practitioners counter to such arguments that they have a much better solution. Although, the SI standard itself defines no preferred sizes, there exist several widely used guidelines tailored to the needs of particular fields. For example, in the construction industry, a system known as modular coordination is commonly used.

When using modular coordination major dimensions that are multiples of 300 mm or 600 mm are preferred. This leads to component sizes such as 1200 mm × 2400 mm. Any multiple of 600 mm can be divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, 24, 25, 30 without any need for fractions. A comparable length in English units would be two feet which does not divide easily by multiples of five. Other such guidelines for preferred numbers include the Renard series or the system of metric paper sizes.

Another commonly quoted reason against metrication is the difficulties that conversion to and from old units cause. For everyday usage a 500-gram pound, 4-litre gallon and 25-millimetre inch could suffice, and have been used.

[edit] Anti-metrication groups online

[edit] Pro-metrication groups online

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, p. 25. (Yale University Press, 1998) ISBN 0-300-07016-0
  2. ^ Alder, Ken. "A Revolution to Measure: The Political Economy of the Metric System in France," in The Values of Precision, edited by M. Norton Wise. (Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 39-71. ISBN 0-691-01601-1
  3. ^ Alder, supra, p. 48
  4. ^ Alder, p. 55
  5. ^ Scott, p. 26
  6. ^ Scott, Seeing Like a State, pp. 30-33.
  7. ^ Quoted in Witold Kula, Measures and Men, tr. R. Szreter (Princeton, 1986: ISBN 0-691-05446-0), p. 286
  8. ^ According to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, the word "pound" existed in English before AD 900, and has cognates in Old Norse and Old High German. Likewise, the words "inch" and "ounce" are attested in English before AD 1000.
  9. ^ According to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, "litre" was borrowed directly from French and appears first in English between 1800 and 1810. It is moreover pronounced ['li:t,ɽ] as opposed to the expected pronunciation [['lɘɪt,ɽ]]
  10. ^ Random House Dictionary of the English Language gives both pronunciations, and suggests that the pronunciation stressing the second syllable is the more common of the two.

[edit] References

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