Category Archives: Metrication

And now for something completely different….

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By Sven

Guest Post

Ok, not completely, as it obviously has to do with the metric system. But we think we have something unique: a detailed—and nearly forgotten—history of one of the world’s most successful national metrications. It will shortly be filed in Metrication Resources, where we hope it will gain recognition as the pride of the collection.

For some years, a couple of fellow metric advocates in Australia had been telling us of a mysterious book. Mike Joy, who had gotten us some excellent measuring tapes and rulers, unlike anything available here, was the first to mention it: If there was any metrication we had to understand, it was Australia’s, and if there was anything about Australia’s we had to read, it was Metrication in Australia, by Kevin Joseph Wilks. His own copy was lost, lent and never returned, but he could put us in touch with the author. Unfortunately, Mr Wilks was down to his last author copy, which he understandably would not part with. He had tried to get the publisher, DITAC, the Department of Industry, Technology and Commerce, to reprint the book, but without success: the copyright was held by the Commonwealth of Australia, so he had no control. We could find only two libraries in the US claiming a copy: one in Los Angeles, unavailable at the time; one closer to home, but after diligent search the librarians had to report the book presumed lost. We were getting the impression—no great surprise—that the one-and-only edition had been very small.

It was another friend from Oz, Peter Goodyear, who finally tracked one down, and scanned the pages for us, giving us our first look. It was instantly clear that everything Mike and Peter were saying was true. (Aside: Peter’s task was much easier than it would have been in the US, because the library copy machine had a USB port. No need to create a huge pile of waste paper, just bring your own flash drive. What a fantastic and blatantly obvious idea. I’m sure this technology is available in the US, but I’ve yet to see it in libraries, or for that matter, aerospace companies. The US may catch up with Oz someday, but until then I am envious.) So, what is all the fuss about?

In 1972, Australia was an imperial nation. In 1982, it was as metric as any on earth. It got from point A to point B, not only in a single decade, but with the support of its citizens, with little trouble, opposition, or resentment—and very few missteps. The monetary cost was small, and recovered instantly. Australians have been enjoying the dividends ever since. This brief book—less than 90 pages in its original form—tells the story. How then did Australia metricate so rapidly, and so painlessly? A number of reasons, but here is one elephant-in-the-room clue, from page one:

It was sometimes asked why the decision to go metric was not reached by referendum. This would have presupposed that people would have had a comparable knowledge of both the imperial and the metric systems and of the impact such a change might have. While metrication has certainly had a massive cultural impact on people in their lives as ordinary citizens it is, nevertheless, a predominantly technical change, affecting commerce, industry, engineering, science and education. For referendum purposes, relatively few people would have had sufficient knowledge of both systems to make an informed decision.

The decision to go metric was achieved through an open committee of inquiry, appointed by the Government, which collected evidence from any person who felt interested or competent enough to give it.

In other words, it was recognized from the beginning that there was more than one way to frame the debate. The magnitude of the cultural change wasn’t ignored, but it wasn’t allowed to dominate the discussion to the exclusion of all else.

Metrication began with an Act of Parliament: the Metric Conversion Act 1970. This was binding legislation that committed the nation to an active program of metrication. Curiously, once this commitment was made at the national level, very little other legislation was needed:

The change was largely voluntary and no new legislation, other than the Metric Conversion Act, was introduced by State or Federal Governments to enforce metrication. In some cases where compulsion was necessary, metric units were substituted for imperial units in existing Acts and Regulations.

A Metrication Conversion Board was formed to conduct conversion at the national level. Although established in law, the Board sought to act as a coordinating service within and between industries and constituencies. What will be astonishing to US metric advocates is that the kind of inertia and obstructionism we’ve become inured to, apparently never developed:

At no stage did the Board seek to force a decision of its own on an industry committee. Instead, each industry, within the requirements of the Metric Conversion Act, decided, by consensus, when and in what way it would be practicable to metricate its industry. To that extent, conversion to metric must be seen as one of the most democratically executed government projects in Australia’s history.

What about the costs of metrication: weren’t they significant, even if only one-time? Here the problem was that Australian metrication was so highly coordinated and well-planned that, ironically, it was very difficult to say. One figure given at the time by metrication opponents was $2,500,000,000:

Even assuming, for a moment, this cost to be accurate, it represented $179 per person or $18 per person per year for ten years which was a small enough cost compared with the benefits which resulted from metric conversion.

One problem with such figures was that they probably included all sorts of things that weren’t really costs of metrication. Petrol pumps (gas pumps to us Yanks), may have been an example: prices were rapidly approaching $1.00 per gallon, at which point the mechanical counting mechanisms then in use would have overflowed. Their replacement was imminent, metrication or not. (With modern electronic pumps, the cost of switching to liters might be near zero.)

One extremely effective strategy for metrication was the “M-Day.”  Each industry would prepare for metrication on a given date, quite often within a year or less, while continuing to do business in imperial units. Dates for related industries were coordinated by the government Metrication Conversion Board. On its M-day the entire industry would switch, sometimes within particular states or regions, but the most successful M-Days were nationwide. So-called “transition periods” were reduced to near zero. The greatest success was in changing the road signs of the nation. Technically, it should probably be called an M-Month, but given the magnitude of the task, it was still spectacular:

One of the most important and publicly visible of the metric changes was the change in road speed and distance signs and the accompanying change in road traffic regulations. M-Day for this change was 1 July 1974 and, by virtue of careful planning, practically every road sign in Australia was converted within one month. This involved installation of covered metric signs alongside the imperial sign prior to the change and then removal of the imperial sign and the cover from the metric during the month of conversion.

Except on bridge clearance and flood depth signs, dual marking was avoided. Despite suggestions by people opposed to metrication that ignorance of the meaning of metric speeds would lead to slaughter on the roads, such slaughter did not occur.

The book is a how-to manual for national metrication. Most of it is an industry-by-industry account of the Australian experience. A wide selection of industries, products, and services is represented: agriculture, light and heavy manufacturing, raw materials, finished goods, health care services, sport and recreation. It is here that the value of the book for today may be greatest: it’s hard to imagine anyone reading through the success stories, and the few failures, without being disabused of the notion that metrication just happens. Nor is it possible to maintain that two disjoint systems of measurement can coexist, anymore than it’s possible to jump on a horse and “gallop madly off in all directions.”

The Maven and I were convinced this was something special, but while we might have shared it privately with other metric advocates, we both wanted a wider distribution. The problem was that it was still copyright Commonwealth of Australia. In its dead tree form it was very nearly a lost document, but it dealt with matters that should be of some national pride to Australia. Throwing caution to the winds, we decided to contact Canberra about the possibility of an electronic distribution. DITAC, the original publishing agency, no longer existed, but finding the proper people to speak with was fairly simple, and we were pleased and surprised when our request was not dismissed out of hand. We then learned that, even in a relatively civilized universe like Oz, the mills of government grind slowly—but to our amazement, they do grind. We had several indications that things were, in fact, going on, and probably our anxiety made this period seem longer than it was. Actually, it was quite short: a few months. And just last month, we were informed that Metrication in Australia was now licensed under the Creative Commons. Better still, it was “the most accommodating type” of license, allowing us to create a searchable PDF. This turned out to be essential, as the scan files were huge, and we could never have put them up in that form.

The book was formatted in the A4 (ISO 216) paper size. Our PDF retains this, but we increased the original font size slightly, and renumbered the pages as a result. The file is set up for double-sided printing, suitable for four-hole “888” punching, or comb binding. It should also print well single-sided, or on the bizarre “US Letter” paper size if you “scale to fit” (the margins will just look a bit odd). Not that we expect many Americans to try to find a ream of A4 paper, but if anyone still doubts the existence of the Invisible Metric Embargo, it might be an instructive exercise. Yes, you can find it, but online, not at your local office megamart. And lest our Australian friends are cringing: we were careful to have only the Australian English dictionary loaded in the spelling checker during all proofreading, so we’re pretty sure no American orthography has crept in. We’ve tried to make this book as good looking as our limited desktop publishing experience permitted.

Finally, some acknowledgments. To Mike Joy and Peter Goodyear for the initial heads up, a great deal of detective work, and a list of Australian terms that we used as the basis of a short glossary for non-Australians. To all persons involved in this effort, known and unknown to us, at the National Measurement Institute, Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education. (Whew!) We have no idea what was going on behind the scenes, but we suspect it was significant. And to the author, Kevin Joseph Wilks, for having given us this record of a remarkable cultural transformation. We hope it may now inform metrication efforts for years to come. It’s almost enough to make us believe the Land of Oz really has intersected our own space time continuum.

Here is a link to download Metrication in Australia (built 2013-06-24).

Postscript: We’ve been notified of three minor OCR errors in our original PDF file of Metrication in Australia. Two occurrences of modern were rendered modem, and one occurrence of the word be was rendered he in the final paragraph. The current file corrects these. The glossary has also been slightly augmented. (Thanks again to Peter Goodyear.)

If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page and contribute. Also purchase his books about the metric system:

The first book is titled: Our Crumbling Invisible Infrastructure. It is a succinct set of essays  that explain why the absence of the metric system in the US is detrimental to our personal heath and our economy. These essays are separately available for free on my website,  but the book has them all in one place in print. The book may be purchased from Amazon here.


The second book is titled The Dimensions of the Cosmos. It takes the metric prefixes from yotta to Yocto and uses each metric prefix to describe a metric world. The book has a considerable number of color images to compliment the prose. It has been receiving good reviews. I think would be a great reference for US science teachers. It has a considerable number of scientific factoids and anecdotes that I believe would be of considerable educational use. It is available from Amazon here.


The third book is not of direct importance to metric education. It is called Death By A Thousand Cuts, A Secret History of the Metric System in The United States. This monograph explains how we have been unable to legally deal with weights and measures in the United States from George Washington, to our current day. This book is also available on Amazon here.

An Open Letter Response To: “Supporting American Choices on Measurement”

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Dr. Patrick Gallagher — Director of NIST

Dear Dr. Gallagher:

This open letter is in response to your email/post entitled Supporting American Choices on Measurement which you composed in response to a We The People petition, which calls for making the metric system (that is, SI) the exclusive measurement system of the United States. In brief, what you offer is not a substantive response to a reasonable petition for action on an increasingly urgent issue, but only condescension and airy rationalization for perpetuating our current bureaucratic stasis.

First, the metric system, is a system. The random collection of measures used in the US is not a system. They are neither equivalent nor comparable. I am disturbed that the head of NIST can speak of the metric system, and our potpourri of units, as even remotely comparable in either intellectual stature or technical merit. But far more important, the very thesis of Supporting American Choices on Measurement is false on the face of it, as there is no actual opportunity for a metric option in this nation. In my postings on metric, I have written about The Invisible Metric Embargo in the US, which does not allow me to purchase metric tools—despite my desires as a consumer. One simply cannot readily purchase metric-only, mm-only, tape measures, and other tools in the US. I’ve had to obtain mine from Australia to use in my Engineering Practice. They are the same tools that are used in metric building construction, which the US government has quietly abandoned after the 1990s. Metric construction saves 10-15% when compared with our non-system. The Australians have been reaping these metric rewards for over thirty years. I have detailed this in Building a Metric Shed. Over the counter medicines are allowed by your “freedom of choice” to offer only teaspoons and tablespoons. Feral Units Endanger Our Health details the teaspoon/tablespoon, gram/grain misdosage problem, which has been acknowledged by the medical community since at least 1902. Mandatory dosage cups in milliliters have been eschewed by industry for years, to the detriment of public health and justified, probably for the most part, by the need for “freedom of choice.”

I may have the choice to set my GPS to meters and kilometers, but I don’t have the choice to press a button within my car and change the road signs to meters and kilometers. The choice of only miles and feet (in vulgar fractions no less) on US road signs was decided by filibuster, in 1978, by Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa. The details of how this mandatory requirement for miles and feet on US road signs came about, may be found in A Tale of Two Iowans. What channel do I watch to see a metric only, or even a metric any weather broadcast in the US? Metric measures in weather broadcasts also ended in the late 1970s. I would like to see snow and rain totals in millimeters, but I do not have that choice.

The public teachers of the 1970s began to teach metric, but quickly realized that the US was to be the only country (other than Liberia and Myanmar) which had a government that would not institute a true metric conversion. The teachers were left without a measurement ecosystem outside of their classroom to which they could teach, and so metric instruction was “all dressed up with nowhere to go.” Metric instruction has become perfunctory.

If we actually had the completely open, voluntary system about which you sing peons of praise, then why is there any restriction on manufacturers to include labeling other than metric at this moment? And why do you have to work “to make it possible” for metric only labeling? If it is not allowed right now, then metric only is obviously not a voluntary choice for industry. The non-system of the US is mandatory.  It does not support your thesis that everyone has a choice.

That measurement units need “context” for meaning, and are chosen depending upon the given circumstances is nonsensical. Why not just create a new measurement unit for each circumstance—like medieval cultures did? The non-system we use in the US, measures feet in barleycorns (three barleycorns in an inch you know), to determine shoe size, instead of millimeters. What possible context makes the measurement of human feet require barleycorns as a unit? Perhaps a foot should be measured in feet? That seems like a logical context. My essay Brannock and Barleycorns might help you with context when considering this question.

You cite examples of multiple units which are in use and describe the same quantity as something wondrous which we should lionize. This is not an advantage, it is a problem called unit proliferation. In the US, people who work with tools have to needlessly purchase both metric and inch tools. This doubles the infrastructure cost for working Americans. It is also a large drag on our economy. Weights and measures is The Invisible Infrastructure of a nation. Ours is in complete decay, yet you celebrate this fact.

There is no “seamless transition” between metric and our non-system. Dual units only encourage unnecessary opportunities for mistakes. Metric minimizes them. The DART and Mars Climate Orbiter mission failures which occurred because of the “choice” to use multiple measurement units, are examples which should not be swept under the rug with charming prose, like “seamless transition.”

Incidentally, your statement that the metric system is universal in science and industry is also demonstrably false. I grant you that it should be, but I know from personal experience that the US aerospace industry is currently hamstrung by something called the mil. A mil is one thousandth of an inch. Now, you might suppose that this would be an ideal time for a metric conversion in US aerospace: after all, with the long-overdue retirement of the Space Shuttle, the United States has no astronaut-capable space vehicle. But the contract for Orion, the manned vehicle intended to replace the Shuttle, was awarded to Lockheed Martin, at least in part, on the understanding that all engineering would be submitted in thousandths of an inch.

Dr. Gallagher, your response has shown that, as I predicted, this petition would be a feckless exercise in futility, and of no lobbying value. The public is viewed not as We The People, but They The Powerless. Your response demonstrates an apparent technical ignorance about the metric system. It makes you appear to have not even a basic understanding of how the measurement system that powers engineering and science around the world is used, and it’s massive advantages for society as a whole.  I would think It should be obvious to a Director of NIST, that a measurement system and a spoken language are two completely different intellectual constructs. Especially a Director with a background in physics and philosophy. My essay Orwell and The Metric System might be instructive if you are unclear on this point.

To compare the measurement situation we face in the US to bilingual education is mendacious. Your whitewash of the history of how the current non-system of measurements were finally defined in terms of metric standards, hides the fact there was no other technical choice. There was no alternative. Without using the metric standards supplied from our signing of the Treaty of the Meter, science and industry in this nation could have ground to a halt. T.C. Mendehall had no choice but to announce that metric standards would be used to define our farrago of units. This is because of government inaction on mandating metrication, and the fact that no alternative measurement standards existed for our non-system. The Constitution tasks Congress with fixing the weights and measures of the US, which they have neglected with vigor from the founding of the republic.

As Director of NIST, I cannot comprehend how you could assert there is no weights and measurements problem in the US whatsoever, and everything is just hunky-dory. This is clearly not the case. I have written forty-six essays over the last year or so detailing how our lack of exclusive metrication, costs us money, endangers our health and decreases our industrial competitiveness. The late Pat Naughtin left a classic Google video lecture, and a mountain of information on how damaging it is for the US not to have metric. How can you have apparently not investigated any of it?—and included it in your response? The information is freely available. I can only ask with exasperation why are you not promoting the metric system?—why are you not engaged in the carrying out the task for which the public has employed you?–to promote standards. The metric system is the standard of ninety-five percent of the worlds population. Why are you not promoting this standard with the sense of urgency that it deserves?

Your choice to issue Supporting American Choices on Measurement late on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend is as transparently cynical as is your response. The timing is calculated to minimize or eliminate any press coverage with three days of distraction. In doing this you are blatantly, and apparently willfully, ignoring the 25,000 49,914 American citizens who signed the petition for the US to adopt the metric system. Because of your callous and dismissive treatment of an earnest request made by these citizens for the implementation of the metric system, this only leads to a justified belief that our public servants have no interest in serving the public, or the public interest.

Respectfully,

The Metric Maven
US Citizen and Professional Engineer

P.S. To my (at this point, fairly) long time readers, I would like to state that my next regularly scheduled blog on 2013-05-30, was written, and scheduled, long before Dr. Gallagher issued his response to the metric petition. When you read my upcoming blog, you will see the same manner of argument as Dr Gallagher’s has been offered for almost a century. Dr. Gallagher only parrots the antique prose in a contemporary fashion.

If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page and contribute. Also purchase his books about the metric system:

The first book is titled: Our Crumbling Invisible Infrastructure. It is a succinct set of essays  that explain why the absence of the metric system in the US is detrimental to our personal heath and our economy. These essays are separately available for free on my website,  but the book has them all in one place in print. The book may be purchased from Amazon here.


The second book is titled The Dimensions of the Cosmos. It takes the metric prefixes from yotta to Yocto and uses each metric prefix to describe a metric world. The book has a considerable number of color images to compliment the prose. It has been receiving good reviews. I think would be a great reference for US science teachers. It has a considerable number of scientific factoids and anecdotes that I believe would be of considerable educational use. It is available from Amazon here.


The third book is not of direct importance to metric education. It is called Death By A Thousand Cuts, A Secret History of the Metric System in The United States. This monograph explains how we have been unable to legally deal with weights and measures in the United States from George Washington, to our current day. This book is also available on Amazon here.