Most of the rest of the world is on the metric system, and for a time in the 1970s America appeared ready to make the switch. Yet it never happened, and the reasons for that get to the root of who we think we are, just as the measurements are woven into the ways we think. Marcia…
Chronicles the history of measurement systems and discusses why America has never adopted the metric system.
Explains why the United States, the first country to adopt a decimal currency, is the only major nation not to use the metric system, and places the decision in the context of the growth of the metric system and the use of standard time.
