AHC: Metric United States
- Thread starter LHB
- Start date
Perhaps some people with a lot of money decide this would be a good thing and push for metric system education. Changes like this are relatively easy to achieve in a generation or 2 if you have the resources and commitment.
Actually, your best bet would be for it to happen under e.g. Jefferson's presidency. IMO. By the time the US builds up its own massive industrial base, converting to a whole different system gets very expensive.
Surveying half a continent and building farms and roads and such on a mile based grid means the US (and Canada) can never go completely metric. Back when infrastructure was a lot less regularized and developed, it would be a lot easier.
Surveying half a continent and building farms and roads and such on a mile based grid means the US (and Canada) can never go completely metric. Back when infrastructure was a lot less regularized and developed, it would be a lot easier.
It hasn't worked in the UK! We were supposed to be fully metric by the end of the seventies at the very latest.
If only.... I've used metrics whenever possible, its simply more efficient. These days I carry a metric tape measure when doing trim carpentry. Makes things like spacing stair balusters a lot easier. Unfortunatly the US residential construction industry is heavily invested in laying out its engineering standards in English measurements. Since the use of these stnadards enables the use of low skill labor and allows 'production' style project managment the home construction industry has been extremly reluctant to convert. Efforts to provided standrdized metric measured building materials have a very slow sucess rate.
The US military is largely metric. When on active service I went months without using English measurements.
Conversion during the Jefferson presidency, or in that general era would have been best.
The US military is largely metric. When on active service I went months without using English measurements.
Conversion during the Jefferson presidency, or in that general era would have been best.
How so? I haven't been in the UK in 35 years so I'm curious to find out where the holdovers are (apart from the obvious like pint glasses in the pubs). I would have thought by now road signs, speedometers, etc. would all be in kilometers and related units.
Don't run ads like this...
The Metric Film
Just a few of the problems...
-lumpen-anglophile narrator at the beginning, blatantly appealing to the audience's supposed sense of social superiority.
- in a sequence intended to evoke positive feelings about the French Revolution, a guillotine is shown.
- bizarre appeal to pity. "Scientists around the world work and live in metric, but only the American scientist has to go home to imperial." One would hope that a freaking SCIENTIST would be capable of understanding two systems with little effort.
- outright anti-working class hatemongering in the portrayal of a metric opponent.
Seriously, the whole thing seems like a false-flag concocted by right-wingers to convince the public that metric supporters were all champagne socialists.
It was supposed to be. However milk is still sold in 2pint, 4 pint, 6 pint containers although 1 and 2 litre bottles are much commoner now. Road signs are in miles, speed limits in mph hence so are car instruments but weights are now in kg and g.
However the exam system is fully metric!
With the exception of road distances the UK is metric , even the legacy permissions to sell milk, cider and beer in pints are expressed in terms of a metric volume .
Try buying a carpet with metric room dimensions!
Carpet might be sold by the square metre, but they convert your measurements back into feet and inches, work out the area and then convert that into square metres!! That's despite carpet coming in metric widths nowadays.
Carpet might be sold by the square metre, but they convert your measurements back into feet and inches, work out the area and then convert that into square metres!! That's despite carpet coming in metric widths nowadays.
Mega points if you can pull off the conversion post-WW2!
OTL Remember that the USAAF won the war single-handed ... er .... the official United States Air Force histories say that they won the war with nautical miles and pounds of fuel and feet of altitude. Nautical miles have remained the dominate unit of measure for air traffic controllers because it is easy to do the mental math to convert nautical miles (6040 feet .... er ... around off to 6,000 feet) into 60 seconds to do time and distance calculations in your head.
OTL Remember that the USAAF won the war single-handed ... er .... the official United States Air Force histories say that they won the war with nautical miles and pounds of fuel and feet of altitude. Nautical miles have remained the dominate unit of measure for air traffic controllers because it is easy to do the mental math to convert nautical miles (6040 feet .... er ... around off to 6,000 feet) into 60 seconds to do time and distance calculations in your head.
Lost Freeway
Banned
I'm surprised no one has made a joke about the metric system being too pinko for Americans.
During the period of anti-metric agitation in Canada, late 70s/early 80s, at least one person got up at a town-hall meeting to opine that metrification would make it easier for invading Soviet troops to read the highway signs.
People hired to do political campaigns are typically the ones with the best connections, i.e. not the most qualified. Of course, false flag ads are never out of the realm of possibility for any issue.
Tovarich
Banned
You'd think so, wouldn't you.
Didn't stop me being dragged off my lunch break by a panicking scientist because a -20 freezer room was supposedly nearly at melting point and why hadn't the alarm sounded and what was I going to do about it?
I had to show then that the (admittedly old but clearly marked) temperature dial was in Fahrenheit, so everything inside was still a nice unmelted -20C.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
the U.S. gets credit as a leader in the movement toward the metric system!
instead of as a johnny-come-lately follower
instead of as a johnny-come-lately follower