Category Archives: Metric Education

The Metric System & Scientific “Communicators”

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Archer-Fanged-Deer-Small

By The Metric Maven

Bulldog Edition

The skeptic does not mean he who doubts, but he who investigates or researches, as opposed to he who asserts and thinks that he has found.

             – Miguel de Unamuno

For many years I had been directly involved in scientific skepticism, which is often found under the rubric of “skeptics” these days. The organization for which I volunteered was disbanded a number of years back. It was this vacuum of spare time which allowed me to return to my interest in the promotion of the metric system. I had not thought about the Skeptics much for a number of years until my friend Kat, and another long-time Skeptics friend Ollie suggested I listen to the Skeptics Guide To The Universe podcast.

I was surprised at how interesting I found the program, and I began to listen to it regularly. Then a few notes of measurement discord surfaced. I used their online form to request they stick with metric and also most definitely stop quoting inches and centimeters and go with millimeters exclusively for a small metric unit. I linked to a number of my essays on the subject of millimeters versus centimeters.

I have emailed other programs, podcasts and such, and generally encounter silence. I was rather surprised when it appeared that someone actually read my online form submission (as I don’t have a copy I can’t review what I actually said).

Their podcast Episode #486 2014-11-08 actually acknowledged my submission. The subject under consideration was the Fanged Deer (25:53), here is my own attempt at a transcription:

Steve: Evan, I’m looking at a very cool picture of a vampire deer. Or something like that—tell me about this.

Evan: Uh Vampire deer, yeah well—well Steve and folks I’m sure you’ve heard of let’s say the white tailed deer. Right? we’ve all heard of that pretty common. We’ve probably heard of the Red Deer maybe, or you’ve even heard of a Reindeer, and you even heard “do” a deer at some point in your life.

Steve: Buck (?)

Evan: But—but I defy the SU listener to have ever heard of a Kashmir Musk Deer at least prior to recent news headlines. Uh and because you have probably never heard of this species of deer before and-there whose official taxonomical designation is Moschus cupreus it’s a one of seven Moschidae species found in Asia. Um, this Kashmir Musk Deer is uh in fact quite an interesting animal in that the males of the species grow tusks and the tusks can grow as long as ten centimeters—or rather what is that a hundred millimeters—because someone told us recently that centimeter measurements is rubbish—who is it who that said that?.

Steve: Yeah, some metric fanatic. [laughing]

Evan: Yeah–that’s right [laughter]

Steve: Yeah, he made a reasonable argument but it was his point was that centimeters are confusing and the only reason people only use them because they’re sort of inches but [laughter] for conversion purposes just sticking with millimeters is less confusion.

Evan: Right—so a hundred millimeters let’s call it.

Steve: Allright.

Evan: And of course what with Halloween just recently cominal(?) they’re being called in the news as vampire deer.

I was chagrined to be called a metric fanatic, which appeared to have been in a rather haughty and dismissive manner. I emailed SGU and also pointed out that I had been involved with scientific skepticism for many years before I began my metric quest.

Australia-Rain
— click to enlarge

The SU group then took a trip to Australia, which I hoped might actually cause them to notice they were in a metric country which speaks English. They also visited New Zealand, and did not seem to find it novel to order steaks in grams and drinks in milliliters. Perhaps they didn’t eat or drink while they were there? It will probably not come as a surprise to my readers that the mention of millimeters on the SU podcast was fleeting, and an examination of clear metric usage by the panel of scientific communicators was apparently of little interest.

The podcast has continued to use centimeters, inches, microns, and whatever units are the path of least intellectual resistance for their segments. I have emailed them about numerical presentation, but now I’m just dismissed as “some metric fanatic”—like a follower of Eric Von Daniken, Charles Berlitz, Uri Geller, Jenny McCarthy. or Charles Piazzi Smyth. I found it strange that the same manner of dismissive attitude which paranormal enthusiasts have used to dismiss scientific skeptics was employed by SGU toward me. It’s strange to see these promoters of science taking the same line toward the metric system as John Bemelmans Marciano does in his recent celebration of failure.

The phrase critical thinking is generally employed by Skeptics to describe what they are promoting and what they do. Skeptics also assert they are promoting science. Critical thinking relies on informing oneself about a subject and evaluating available information. It appears that when it comes to the metric system, the panelists of the Skeptics Guide to The Universe (SGU) apparently have already decided that the matter of a measurement policy for their show is trivial. They’ve already learned all they need to know by osmosis and so it requires no examination, investigation or self-education.

Steven Novella (Steve in the dialog above) has produced a video for The Great Courses, which has also been promoted on the SGU program. Its title is Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills. One of the subjects examined in the video (which I don’t have, nor have I seen) according to Steven Novella is innumeracy. A person who claims expertise in numeracy and laughs when questioned about the most intuitive use of the metric system for numerical presentation? Wow, I don’t know what to say. I cannot not even construct a sentence in response.

I would suggest Steve Novella consider looking at some of my essays for some numerical guidance. My essay One Hundred is Everywhere delves into fuel efficiency and how it might best be expressed in liters per 100 Kilometers rather than Kilometers per liter. That seems like a reasonable topic for discussion. I address the poor expression of numerical information in my review of the book The Story of Measurement. Other relevant essays on numerical presentation are: Joule in the Crown, Technical Presentation and Metric, A Kilotonne is How Much in Metric?, American Software vs Metric, Feral Units Endanger Our Health, and Don’t Get  Engaged with Gauge.

In my emails to SGU, I provided a number of links to what I believe to have been important basic metric articles I’ve written and linked to Naughtin’s Laws. I pointed out to SGU that if they did not believe me, they should look at what Pat Naughtin left behind—in his videos and writing. I included links to Pat’s works. Perhaps they might even look at the monograph Metrication in Australia?—to help them with any critical thinking they might like to do with respect to the most effective use of the metric system for technical presentation. Perhaps The Skeptics Guide To The Universe might even question—as I have-–how astronomers present distances.

The catch phrase “science communicator” has commonly been invoked in recent SGU broadcasts. This appears to be an expertise they claim to possess. It appears to me, that to communicate science, one should examine how numerical information is best presented, and what the clearest format one might use to provide intuitive numerical information might be. Have they investigated Pat Naughtin’s whole number rule? Have the SGU members thought about the use of metric prefixes to make astronomical distances more understandable to everyone? Could it be that using the light year is just an obfuscating gee-whiz! unit that does not provide context?—of course not, no critical thinking needed there—case closed. How about examining the history of the metric system for unnecessary 19th century? baggage—for example the demi-dekagram and demi-deciliter. Have they ever wondered why chemists don’t use centiliters, or deciliters, but do use milliliters?

I’ve discovered that numerical values are not used on SGU nearly as often as one might think, but when they are, they are not optimum in my view. Here are some of the numerical presentations I’ve found rather cringe-worthy:

SGU on 2015-02-02

During a discussion of the close approach of asteroid 2004 BL86 it was stated that it was within 745,000 miles or 1.2 million Kilometers. They then state that this is 3.1 times the distance from the Earth to the moon. There is a useful metric prefix Mega,  to describe this nearest asteroid distance; which would make it 1200 Megameters. The distance of the Earth from our moon is 384 Megameters. The relative magnitudes are rather clear when one uses integers and an appropriate metric prefix.

During a discussion of the size of wormholes it was stated that theoretical values range down to 10-33 centimeters. The range of metric prefixes goes down to yocto which is 10-24 meters. The values are clearly outside of the range of metric prefixes. Why on Earth would centimeters be used as a base unit?—particularly in scientific notation. Does it add anything other than a comforting bit of non-information? How about 10-35 meters? How small is this? Well the linear cross-section of lower energy neutrinos is thought to be somewhere around 20 yoctometers which is 20 x 10-24 meters. The smallest wormhole is about 100 000 000 000 or 100 billion times smaller than the realm of a neutrino, or 100 Megatimes smaller. Why the centimeters?—are they being passive aggressive?—or sloppy?

SGU on 2015-03-21

While describing the computer cluster that will be used with the Large Hadron Collider, petabytes, gigabytes and one participants favorite, yottabytes, were used. When metric prefixes are received wisdom, they are employed without critical regard.

SGU on 2015-04-07

It was noted that global warming/climate change had increased the amount of vegetation on Earth such that 4 billion tons of carbon had been sequestered, but 60 billion tons of carbon were released over the same period. [It isn’t clear from the audio if they mean tons or tonnes] These values are about 4 Petagrams and 60 Petagrams respectively. Oil production worldwide each year is on the order of 4 Petagrams, and the total amount of carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere is approximately 720 Petagrams. There was no attempt to use metric in this segment of the show, but as soon as computer storage was broached, Terabytes and such quickly appeared.

Then this strange exchange occurred on 2015-04-18. The “science communicators” discuss the innate fear of spiders that most humans possess. Then the SGU members introduce some “scientific levity.” I have been unable to separate out the voices:

“I believe that we’ve all seen an example of the purple recluse spider.”

“Ah yes, It has a bow tie shape on it’s neck region.”

“They live in dark tunnels, they do, and uh they’re bottom feeders essentially [laughter]…..and, and,  and they absolutely adore the metric system, from what I hear.

“They only move in millimeters. It’s weird.”

I have no idea if this statement is aimed at your friendly neighborhood Metric Maven and his purple masthead, but I find the shot at the metric system by “science communicators” sad, and if its aim was wider than that, then I suggest these “science communicators” read up on the definition of ad hominem attack.  It may be my sensitivity, but there were then a number of centimeters thrown in, seemingly with emphasis, for “good measure.” Well, correlation does not necessarily imply causality. I could be experiencing confirmation bias. It is a strange set of “science communicators” who take the metric system as a source of amusement. Apparently they cannot be bothered to investigate the metric system, or at a minimum watch Pat Naughtin’s Google video.

SGU on 2015-04-25

During a discussion of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this exchange occurred:

Brian Wecht: “I wrote this down let me check yeah—was up to 4 Tev—Teraelectron-volts ok, which is just some unit of energy that’s a lot it, it was a record setting beam, when they turned it on, and some of that energy in the beam right the protons collide and annihilate…..”

Steve Novella: “Let’s put this into a frame that people  understand—how quickly would that pop a jiffy pop popcorn?

Brian Wecht: Super fast dude!—crazy fast

Person 1: “Mega” [talking over one another] “in an attosecond.”

[talking over one another]

Later in the conversation:

Brian Wecht: “…..”They got up to 6.5 Tev”

And Later, after a discussion of the possibility of the LHC creating a black hole was discussed, this was said:

Person 2: “We could go now two years, three years of these 14 Terawatt beams smashing into each other and we could see nothing…”

An electron-volt (ev) is equivalent to 1.6×10−19 joules (160 zJ). A Teraelectron-volt is therefore 160 nanojoules. How much energy is in a joule? If one has a small apple, which is about 100 grams and it is dropped from the height of a doorknob (about 1 meter), the energy it has when it strikes the floor is approximately a joule.  A Teraelectron-volt is 6 125 000 times smaller than the amount of energy the apple possesses when it hits the floor after dropping from the height of a door handle. This is a tiny amount of energy, and a Tera-ble use of the prefix Tera.

The answer as to how long it would take to pop a jiffy pop popcorn is—-infinity. I suspect a Teraelectron-volt is more akin to the energy of a metaphorical butterfly sneeze. It could not pop a single kernel of popcorn—nor could 6.5 Tev—which is 1040 nanojoules. Wikipedia states that the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito is about 160 nanojoules. Not a single kernel of popcorn will be exploded when absorbing a Teraelectron-volt of energy, nor would  a flying mosquito probably possess the energy to produce a black-hole I suspect. A Tev may be a large amount of energy for a subatomic particle, and its interactions, but on the macroscopic level, it’s infinitesimal.

A garden variety micrometeorite has a mass of about 50 micrograms, and travels at a velocity of about 10 Kilometers per second. The kinetic energy of this example micrometeor is 15.63×1018  electron-volts or 15.63 Exaelectron-volts or 15.63 Eev. This kinetic energy value is two metric prefixes larger in magnitude (1 000 000) than the 6.5 Tev quoted in SGU for subatomic particles—this garden variety micrometorite has far more energy than the LHC imparts to subatomic particles. In everyday terms the energy in the example micrometeor  is 2.5 joules.

I’m unable to identify Person 2. I have no idea where the 14 Terawatt value originated, but watts are units of power. Power, for us “metric fanatics,” is a joule per second. In one second this would be 14 000 000 000 000 joules of energy or 14 Terajoules. For reference the atomic bomb which exploded over Hiroshima released about 63 Terajoules of energy. It is probable that this was just a quick mistake during the rapid fire exchanges, but it is a big one.  The other “Science Communicators” should have possibly taken note, but did not. They were too busy making science “fun.”

SGU on 2015-05-23

The SGU members describe a new beam splitter for light which is much smaller than previous designs, and assert that it’s a great breakthrough for photonic computing (later in their farrago of talk they seem to question this assertion). SGU’s discussion of photonic computing is so muddled and painful to listen to, that I have not attempted to make a transcript and my comments would constitute another essay entirely. Jay states: “…photonic computing: it uses photons in the visible or infrared light spectrum….” Perhaps at this point they might have pointed out that light waves in the visible spectrum have wavelengths in the nanometer range, say about 500 nanometers or so (or 500 millimicrons to stay SGU-inconsistent). The SGU interlocutors quote current beam splitters as being about 100 by 100 microns, and the new beam splitter is about 2.4 by 2.4 microns. They use the non-descriptive term micron for micrometers. The use of microns only serves to obfuscate and does not provide magnitude context or information.

Jay then states:

Jay: And to give you an idea about how small this is, its about one-fiftieth of a human hair—so it’s not even visible.

Bob: An angel can’t even dance on the tip of it.

I very much like comparisons of this type, but a context with light would be useful. A human hair has considerable variation (17-181 μm), but one can say it’s about 100 micrometers in diameter as an overall estimate.  The current beam splitter design has about the same cross-section as a hair. The new beam-splitter is about 3 x 3 micrometers. But what about light?  The size of the baseline beam splitter is originally 100 000 x 100 000 nanometers, it is now 2400 x 2400 nanometers. A representative wavelength of visible light is on the  order of 500 nanometers. This is why one can’t go much smaller and still illuminate the beam splitter, and still have it operate as a beam splitter. The members of the SGU apparently can’t bring themselves to do something other than just parrot back microns, as they probably read in the media, and continue to propagate poor measurement exposition without a second thought. Pun intended.

• • •

This scientific blind-spot, that these “scientific communicators” have for using the metric system carelessly, is not unique to SGU, it exists in all of engineering and science. If you sense my frustration, it is because a tool is being misused, and being subjected to sanctimonious dismissal by “scientific professionals,” “scientific communicators,” and others at SGU. If The Skeptic’s Guide to The Universe were Fate magazine, I would not bother to point out its faults, but I’ve been on the side of scientific skepticism all of my life. Since I began to listen to the SGU podcast, I don’t recall any of the regulars ever expressing remorse or concern that the US does not use the metric system. They managed to visit Australia and not note the use of the metric system in almost every aspect of everyday life. I find it vexing and dispiriting when people that represent a group I once spent so much of my  volunteer time with promoting science, greets the metric system with the same indifference as those who don’t claim to have any expertise in science whatsoever, and then call themselves skeptics. E tu Skepti?

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 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.

The Nylon Curtain (Made Elsewhere)

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By The Metric Maven

Bulldog Edition

My friend Pierre has an uncanny ability to come across unusual measurement use in the US. Apparently he had taken an interest in ballistic nylon and had done some research.  Recently he sent me this bit of prose after asking me rhetorically if I had heard of  a denier:

But I’m right here to help. Denier is an entirely metric measurement that means:
1 |dəˈni(ə)r, ˈdenyər|a unit of weight by which the fineness of silk, rayon, or nylon yarn is measured, equal to the weight in grams of 9,000 meters of the yarn and often used to describe the thickness of hosiery: 840 denier nylon.

Tell me that’s not a random way to measure your pantyhose and backpack fabric. Grams/meter or threads/inch isn’t enough for you? It has to be 9000 meters worth of yarn thickness or weight? Nobody knows which.

So, where’d the 9000 come from? I’m thinking the Euros came up with this when they
ran out of polyester sheep.  Can they really make 9000 meter long yarn? Why not just 1 meter’s worth?

I recalled that a number of times Pat Naughtin mentioned the textile industry as one which seems to be incorrigible when it comes to converting to metric. Naughtin pointed to their attempt to embrace the centimeter as a contributing cause of delay. After I did some reading, I suspected it was centimeters and a desire for the use of archaic insider speak which acts as a barrier to entering the textile trade.

When I looked up denier on Wikipedia I found an amazing entry:

Denier /ˈdɛnjər/ or den is a unit of measure for the linear mass density of fibers. It is defined as the mass in grams per 9000 meters.[1] The denier is based on a natural reference—i.e., a single strand of silk is approximately one denier. A 9000-meter strand of silk weighs about one gram. The term denier comes from the French denier, a coin of small value (worth 1⁄12 of a sou). Applied to yarn, a denier was held to be equal in weight to 1⁄24 of an ounce. The term microdenier is used to describe filaments that weigh less than one gram per 9000 meters.

My mind almost had a momentary black-out when it contemplated the smoothly inserted euphemism: “The denier is based on a natural reference.” Well, so is the foot, it’s very natural, and also ill-purposed for providing a measurement standard. The use of a single strand of silk (apparently from a standard silkworm) which is 9000 meters (9 Km) long, that weighs “nearly” one gram, as an industrial standard is just so 17th century. This is a “standard from nature” which makes about as much sense as using three barleycorns to an inch.

This absurdity caused me to think about Samuel S. Dale, who was Fredrick Halsey’s partner in anti-metric mischief early in the twentieth century. Halsey wrote the “book” The Metric Fallacy in 1904, but it is actually two monographs bound into one. The second monograph is The Metric Failure, written by textile enthusiast Samuel Dale. I had not read Dale’s half of their anti-metric tome, but it now seemed high time to do so.

When reading Dale’s work it reminds one of numerology, where, given enough numbers, one can construct any scenario against the metric system one wants. Dale admits that the US has four different ways that it numbers yarn, and that a single method would be desirable, but he makes clear that replacing them with a metric method would be absurd:

Evidently the fabric to which they referred was spun from such stuff as dreams are made of, woven on the loom of imagination and designed to cover the nakedness of the metric and not of the human system. (pg 146)

Yes, within Dale’s flourish you can clearly hear the echoing of John Quincy Adams’ castigations of “the metric” from some seventy years earlier. The measures of the metric system are inhuman and antiseptic! The statement is almost a vestigial cry against creeping heliocentrism seeping into our culture. Dale sees the icy hand of the government forcing at least 1 000 000 textile workers to attend night school to learn the metric system. He further warns: “…that our textile weights and measures can be eradicated only by exterminating all who use them and by destroying all our textile records.” (pg 165)

Dale finally explains the basis of measurement for textiles: “In manufacturing textiles the ratio between weight and length or area takes the place of cubic measurements.” He goes on to explain:

In textile manufacturing measurements are employed for weight, distance and area only, and those for distance are in turn limited by reason of the elimination of all measurements of thickness. The volume and thickness of textile materials, finished and in process of manufacturing, are indicated by the ratio between weight and length. The bulk of cloth, for example, is expressed, not in cubic inches, but in either the weight per yard of a given width or in the number of yards per pound.

Dale explains that if cotton is spun so that one pound has a length of 840 yards, the count is 1, and if it weights one pound and has a length of 1680 yards it is number 2. This is the English standard for measuring cotton yarn. He explains that if 16 000 yards of silk weigh one ounce (he does not indicate troy or avoirdupois) its length is No. 1. If two threads of silk are side by side and weigh two ounces when 16 000 yards long they are No. 2. I will spare you the explanation of Hanks of different lengths, and the 300 yard system. In my view these examples do not provide evidence for the simplicity of traditional textile “measurements.”

Finally we encounter Dale’s discussion of the deneir:

The modern silk industry was first established in France and Italy, and their various systems of numbering silk yarn were adopted and became so firmly rooted long before the birth of the metric system that they have resisted all attempts to change them and are to-day the world’s standards for what is known as raw silk. These systems of numbering were based upon the weight in deniers of 9,600 aunes of silk, the denier being a coin weighing 24 Paris grains.

Dale explains that 400 aunes is equivalent to 476 meters. A Paris grain is 53.11 mg. So the length of 9600 aunes in metric is 11 424 meters and the mass would be  1.2746 grams. Now if we divide to get the length needed for one gram we have 8962.53 meters. This is a good approximation to 9000 meters for a gram. The exact mass expected  for 9000 meters in this situation is 1.004 180 grams, which is probably close enough to one gram for even the exacting requirements of Mr. Dale. It is an interesting metric coincidence that 9000 meters of a single silk thread is almost exactly 1 gram. This is precisely what Dale would argue could never happen, as metric is not a natural system for textiles—ever.

I had now solved Pierre’s mystery as to why 9000 meters is the length used for a denier, and how it is actually a byproduct of non-metric “standard.” I could end this essay here, but, I just couldn’t. I continued reading The Metric Failure and found that Samuel S. Dale has a section in his millitome where he “compares”  English measures with the Metric ones. Before he gets to his comparison, he cleverly trots out an interesting argument against metric by citing the prefix cluster around unity:

Such is the present condition of our textile weights and measures. The metric proposition means that our fundamental standards, the yard, inch, pound, ounce, grain and dram shall be abolished and their places taken by the metre, decimetre, centimetre, millimetre, gramme, decigramme, centigramme and milligramme.

Throughout my copy of The Metric Failure someone with an India ink pen has corrected the text. That person found many typos or errors between mass and length and diligently corrected them. Here are a couple of examples:

I must admit I laughed out loud when some person (probably in the 1930s) seems to have called out Mr. Dale for using the prefix cluster around unity as an argument against metric (pg 197):

I think he probably should have argued for three: gram, meter and millimeter, but that is in hindsight and before Naughtin’s Laws.

Dale has a metric Goldilocks moment, where, just like in that fairy tale, all the metric measurements he finds on the table are of an appalling magnitude, and only the English measures, with which he is familiar, are “just right.”  Dale points out that John Quincy Adams was also a metric Goldilocks, but on a scale much grander than Dale’s:

None of the successive decimal divisions of the metre are suited for either the commercial or manufacturing widths of textile fabrics. For the finished widths of the wide goods the decimetre is too long, the centimetre too short. For narrow fabrics the millimetre in turn is too long and its decimal divisions too short. For all of these widths the inch, divided to suit the particular case, answers every purpose perfectly. Could there be any stronger confirmation of the following extract from John Quincy Adams’ report?
`Thus, then, it has been proved, by the test of experience, that the principle of decimal divisions can be applied only with many qualifications to any general system of metrology; that its natural application is only to numbers; and that time, space gravity and extension inflexibly reject its sway.’

I have to congratulate Mr. Dale, he used an absurd quotation from the report by John Quincy Adams that did not make it into my tome of an essay about it.

Dale tries to cram centimeters into textile usage and shows they just don’t fit, and then quickly dismisses a logical option as impractical: “The objection to the use of the millimetre is that it necessitates the use of four figures to express the width of wide cloths.” Dale earlier argued that loom widths of 1/10 of an inch are all the finer divisions one would need, so apparently 2.5 mm is just too much accuracy. I sure hope his porridge isn’t getting cold with all this long winded puffery blowing over it. He further indicates that:

The centimetre is too short for the finished widths of wide fabrics. Inches express such widths as closely as is necessary.

By the metric system the finished goods are expressed in centimetres. This necessitates the use of three figures for all goods 40 inches or more in width.

Dale asserts over and over that he is a practical man and not some lofty wooly brained academic:

The contrast between the two systems in this respect illustrates the difference between English practice and metric theory.

Believe me, I’m not going to confuse Samuel S. Dale with a professor of mathematics.

Then, I find one of the earliest examples of the “technical Darwinism” argument against metric when Dale states (pg 220):

The choice lies between these two systems, English and metric. One has been adapted to mill work by a process of natural selection. The other is the result of the artificial scheme of French geometers and is unsuited for textile processes. It is inconceivable that America should abandon the first and accept the last.

Dale then launches into a history of metric, argues that metric is only suited for effete scientists, and then begins attacking a pronoun:

The eminent scientists who designed that system were able to solve the most difficult problems in higher mathematics, but they failed to comprehend what system of weights and measures was best suited for the carder, spinner, weaver and finisher of wool, cotton, linen and silk. The glamor of their fame failed to make the centimetre suitable for counting picks. Their system had to stand or fall on its merits, and falling has proved that the highest of mathematical abilities is not inconsistent with a dense ignorance of the practical affairs of every-day life. The most eminent of the mathematicians who designed the metric system exhibited an utter disregard of principle in both private and public life and the most complete incompetency when placed in an administrative office.The son of a farm laborer he owed his education to wealthy neighbors, and as soon as he became distinguished ignored both his relatives and benefactors. Although his discoveries in mathematics were sufficient to make his name immortal, he appropriated the work of others as his own.

So who is this pronoun? It is Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827), one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. Wow, Dale could not even bring himself to use his name?—even when attacking Laplace for plagiarism? This is just a sad ad hominem attack on a person involved with the creation of the metric system and not actually a criticism of said system. Dale just seems to get more and more deranged and finally launches into a Goldilocks on steroids assertion of the metric system’s unsuitability as he writes:

This man could demonstrate that the “lunar acceleration was independent of the secular changes in the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit” but did not know that a weaver requires a unit of length approximating the inch. He could formulate the theory of probabilities with mathematical precision, but was ignorant of the certainty that exclusively decimal divisions of weights and measures are unsuited for manufacturing cloth. He was the first to introduce potential and spherical harmonics into analysis, but failed to recognize the advantage of the English cotton system for numbering yarn. He could prove the stability of the solar system, but failed to recognize the stability of a people’s established weights and measures. He was familiar with theories of infinity, but ignorant of the wants, necessities and limitations of textile manufacturing. The co-workers of this man in constructing the metric system differed from him only in degree. They were a party of mathematical prodigies, ignorant of the essentials of textile weights and measures.

The artificial system they evolved has failed to meet the requirements of the textile trade. Nearly every one of its standards of length, area and weight is either too large or too small, and it has no units corresponding to the inch, foot, ounce and pound, approximations of which are found in every system of natural origin and for which the human mind appears to have some innate need. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the system thus conceived has failed, even in France where’ it was so greatly favored.

At the end of his work Dale warns the US:

It would be a plunge into chaos to emerge no one knows when, how or where. The generation introducing the metric system into the United States would not see the beginning of that chaos. In all probability no other generation would ever see the end.

Well, there is no need to fear the metric system causing the demise of the US textile industry, just metric countries. It is my understanding that at the end of World War II the US had the largest domestic textile industry on the planet. Now we import about 97% of our garments. Imagine how much worse it might have been if Samuel S. Dale did not protect the industry by halting metric in 1904.

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 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.