Category Archives: Metrication

The Story of Measurement

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The Story of Measurement by Andrew Robinson

By The Metric Maven

The book The Story of Measurement by Andrew Robinson is a magnificent work of graphic arts. Page after page of eye catching color graphics assault the senses. The illustrations are just candy for the eyes. It is a truly magnificent “coffee table book.”  In the introduction the author impresses upon the reader how prevalent measurement is in our everyday lives:

A few minutes’ reflection reminds us that measurement pervades our everyday lives. In no particular order, we constantly encounter: clocks, calendars, rulers, cloth sizes, floor areas, cooking recipes, sell-by-dates, alcohol content, match scores, musical notation, map scales, internet protocols, word counts, memory chips, bank accounts, financial indexes, radio frequencies, calculators, speedometers, spring balances, electricity meters, cameras, thermometers, rainfall gauges, barometers, medical examinations, drug prescriptions, body mass indexes, educational tests, opinion polls, focus groups, questionnaires, consumer surveys, tax returns, censuses and many other forms of measurement — all of which serve to reduce the world to numbers and statistics.” (Page 7)

One can imagine my anticipation when I read that paragraph. One could only believe a good read was to follow. What would he have to say about the metric system?  We don’t have to wait long, on page 13 he states: “But the acute economic difficulties experienced with the new [metric] system persuaded Napoleon to rescind the original legislation in 1812.” Author Andrew Robinson indicates that only scientists were upset at this reversal. This statement seemed at odds with what I understood to have occurred historically in France. I made a mental note to look into it.

Robinson then indicates that Thomas Young (1773-1829) did not support “the legislative enactment of uniform weights and measures in Britain.” Young had written an article for the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1823 and the author quotes from it. Young sees France’s experiment with creating a single measure as a failure and argued that:

…the British government should ‘endeavor to facilitate both the attainment of correct and uniform standards of legal existing measures of all kinds, and the ready understanding of all the provincial and local terms applied to measures, either regular or irregular, by the multiplication of glossaries and tables for the correct definition and of such terms.’

The more measurement units, the merrier!? Then it hit me. Thomas Young. I’d tried to read the book The Last Man Who Knew Everything two times and found it completely unable to engage my enthusiasm. It is about the life of Thomas Young. I went to my bookshelf and located it. The book was written by, you guessed it, Andrew Robinson. This was not a good portent, but I tried to be optimistic. Then I read this:

In the telling words of the economic historian Witold Kula in Measures and Men: `The reform that standardized weights and measures, which had been so ardently desired for centuries and so widely demanded by the common people on the eve of the Revolution, extolled by so many of the truest revolutionaries and conceived by the finest scientific minds of the day, had, ultimately, to be imposed upon the people.’

Economic historian? Does it disturb the economic historian that currencies are imposed on the public? Should we therefore we should go back to barter? Robinson introduces an economic historian as an indirect backdoor way of introducing an old canard, market Darwinism, as an argument against the metric system without actually straightforwardly stating it. Later, on page 81, Robinson goes further:

Even scientists sometimes take refuge in non-standard units, more ‘human’ than, say, gigametres (109 m) and nanometres (10-9 m). Astronomers like the ‘astronomical unit’ (AU), equaling the mean distance between Sun and Earth; from the Sun to Jupiter is 5.20 AU, a figure easier  to remember than the metric distance, 778 gigametres. Chemists are fond of the angstrom (Å), 0.1 nanometer, for measuring molecular distances; the radius of the chlorine molecule is about 1 (Å).

Oh the humanity!—of unfettered unit proliferation!? I recommend that Robinson read my essay Long Distance Voyager. There he will see evidence of the great utility the metric system has for describing astronomical distances. The angstrom is an exclusionary unit, which acts as a barrier to an integrated understanding of sizes at the nanometer level.

Along the way Robinson offers up this about the metric system:

Among the US public, Gallup polls showed that between 1971 and 1991, awareness of the metric system increased from 38 to 80 percent, but the proportion of those favoring its adoption fell from 50 to 26 percent. (page 31)

One should note that he uses the word awareness, which does not imply they understand the metric system. I’m more aware of Cricket after working with English and Indian engineers, but I can clearly claim I do not understand it and probably would be less inclined to favor playing it.

Robinson also has an incredible fetish for fractions and milliSaganistic prose (i.e. millions and millionths). On page 84 he discusses the 19th century mystery of how and why pollen grains vibrated in water, which is called Brownian motion:

From theory, Einstein calculated that particles in water at 17 degrees C with a diameter of a thousandth of a millimetre — that is, 10,000 times bigger than atoms — should move a mean horizontal distance of 6 thousandths of a millimetre in one minute.

I’ll take a stab at editing this set of prose using metric prefixes:

From theory, Einstein calculated that one micrometer sized particles of pollen, in water at 17 degrees C, would move a mean horizontal distance of six micrometers in one minute, in response to being jostled by picometer sized atoms of water, which are 10 000 times smaller than the pollen particles.

Robinson made me pine for the excellent monograph Science & Music by Sir James Jeans when I read:

….and the amplitude [of a sound wave] dictates the sound pressure. At the threshold of hearing, the displacement is a mere millionth of a millionth of a metre (about one fifth of the radius of a hydrogen atom!).

Perhaps?:

“….and the [perceived] amplitude dictates the sound pressure. At the threshold of hearing, the displacement is a mere picometre (about one fifth of the radius of a hydrogen atom!).”

Robinson continues:

and the pressure difference between the peak and the trough of the wave is a two hundredth of a thousandth of a pascal (compare normal atmospheric pressure, which is about 100,000 Pa).

Possibly?:

and the pressure difference between the peak and the trough of the wave is 5 micropascals (compare normal atmospheric pressure, which is about 100  kilopascals or 20 000 000 000 times larger).

One would hope that’s enough zeros for histrionics’ sake!

An example of Robinson’s fetish for fractions is shown in his caption of a photograph which shows Physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988) viewing a tiny electric motor. The motor was engineered in response to a famous technical challenge he made:

Perhaps 750 microwatts of power from a motor which is 4.25 micrometers in diameter? After all how many people own a horse these days?

In Robinson’s section on screws he only mentions Joseph Whitworth, and passes over metric screws completely. When discussing calorie counting he mentions kilojoules only once, essentially as a token conversion factor.

It is a strange book on the story of measurement which has so little of the metric system or its usage in it, but that is what The Story of Measurement is. Now and then, despite his sprinkling of unnecessary centimeters—ok—I’m of the opinion that all centimeters are unnecessary, he uses mm in a way with large decimals that comports with my understanding of accepted metric usage:

The zeros are separated with spaces by three. He uses millimeters. It gives an idea the value is getting smaller—a lot smaller. This is a nice table in a book which is dominated by large fractions and mixed usage. This table is fine, and might be the best presentation, but an alternative way he could have constructed the table might have been using picometers with the whole number rule:

1791  Quarter meridian of of Earth  +/-  60 000 000 pm
1889  Prototype bar                          +/-    2 000 000 pm
1960  Krypton Wavelength                +/-           7000 pm
1983  Speed of Light                         +/-             700 pm
Today Improved Laser                       +/-               20 pm

Unfortunately good examples of metric usage, like his table, are few and far between in this book. There even seems to be a ubiquitous underlying hostility to metric usage just barely below the surface of this narrative. Is there much else I can say that I like about The Story of Measurement? Uh…did I mention the graphics are visually attractive?

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.

Joule in the Crown

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By The Metric Maven

The creators of the television series Futurama had a question about money in the future. Would there be any? After deciding there probably would be, they speculated about what form the currency might take. An early suggestion for a currency basis was the joule, but in the end they opted for the dollar. The joule seemed like a much better idea to me, what is more important to the “modern” world than energy? Energy has made life luxuriant when compared with the life our forefathers (and foremothers) experienced. The joule is the unit of energy in the metric system and would be universally recognized—well except in one country.

Recently a fellow from the local energy company knocked on my door and announced he needed to work on the gas meter. Apparently in the mid-1990’s a wireless reader was installed so it could be read remotely. The battery was at the end of its life and so it was to be replaced. I watched as the technician unscrewed the existing meter module, which has its units in cubic feet. He then replaced it with an identical module, which in the year 2014 still reads out in cubic feet of gas.

My utility company sends me a bill for energy usage each month. The word energy is even in their corporate name. Below is a scan of a recent bill’s comparison information section:

The gas and electric energy usage is offered in Kwh per month and in therms respectively. The Kwh stands for kilowatt-hours. A watt is a joule per second, so multiplying a value in watts by hours is pigfish talk. The recognized unit of time in SI is the second. For this bill, the first energy value given is 928 Kwh for the electrical energy used, but energy is internationally described in joules. When all the conversions are done, the electrical energy used for the month in SI is 3341 megajoules.

The natural gas usage is assumed to be in Therms. So what is a therm?  Well, in the US, it’s 100 000 BTU, and BTU are British Thermal Units, but not the British Thermal units used by the British, those are a bit different. These are American British Thermal Units—you know—the patriotic kind. Gas meters don’t directly measure the energy delivered, but instead the volume of gas delivered. According to Wikipedia:

Since (Natural Gas) meters measure volume and not energy content, a therm factor is used by (Natural) gas companies to convert the volume of gas used to its heat equivalent, and thus calculate the actual energy use. The therm factor is usually in the units therms/CCF. It will vary with the mix of hydrocarbons in the natural gas. Natural gas with a higher than average concentration of ethane, propane or butane will have a higher therm factor. Impurities, such as carbon dioxide or nitrogen, lower the therm factor.

The volume of the gas is calculated as if it was measured at standard temperature and pressure (STP). The heat content of natural gas is solely dependent on the composition of the gas, and is independent of temperature and pressure.

Therms “Explained” for Consumers.  It is noted that 10 therms is a decatherm (Dth) and not a dth as one might expect. This is very “metricy” sounding but clearly not metric. Therms are BTUs  (click to enlarge)

So we have to have a temperature correction, and apply a therm factor which is in therms/CCF. So what is a CCF?  Well, it’s centium cubic feet or 100 cubic feet. So  the first C is the roman numeral C and stands for 100. The second identical C stands for the word cubic and F is for foot. It is sometimes alternatively written as Ccf. MCF is also used for 1000 cubic feet. The M standing for the Roman numeral for 1000 The correction factor is used to calculate the value as if it were at STP (i.e. standard temperature and pressure). Obviously, accurate values for temperature are important in determining accurate values of natural gas usage. I assume that the average daily temperature has some relationship to this required correction factor. It does not have an obvious entry on my bill. Here is what my energy company states:

Therm Multiplier

Gas usage is defined in Therms, a measure of the heat, or energy content of natural gas in a billing period. One Therm equals 100,000 British Thermal Units (Btu). The energy content of gas changes depending on its source, the altitude and temperature at which it is delivered. After your meter measures your usage by volume (in hundreds of cubic feet and appearing on your bill as “Measured Usage”), this volume is multiplied by the Therm Multiplier to determine the units of energy consumed.

Kwh “Explained” for Consumers (click to enlarge)

The multiplier is not broken down any further and does not spell out the individual contributions. Apparently the temperature, altitude, energy content and such are all wrapped into the Therm Multiplier. The comparison section on my bill is strange, as it has natural gas printed on a line above electric as if the top line is gas, and the bottom is electric. What appears to be the case is that the Kwh value (yes I used a capital K) is the amount of electrical energy usage and the therm value is the natural gas energy usage. It is assumed the customer knows and understands this energy demarcation from the Account Summary they’ve presented.

The most straightforward way for both electric and gas usage to be described, would be in terms of energy usage with a single, simple, internationally recognized unit, but they choose not to do this. Instead, the company uses kilowatt-hours and therms. In the case of kilowatt-hours, it is a pigfish unit, which is metaphorically based on metric, but not the actual metric unit for energy, and for therms it is a semi-imperial system unit for energy. Neither of them use the internationally  accepted unit for energy—the joule.

The comparison section of my energy bill could have been written  in a  much, much clearer way, that anyone could understand, using the metric system and gigajoules:

Comparison Information

Metric Comparison (click to enlarge)

When the bill is written this way, one can immediately see the difference in direct energy cost per gigajoule between Electric and Gas. Electricity is 4.85 times more expensive per joule when compared with natural gas. One can assume that the electric usage is essentially for operating appliances and gas is used for heating, just by looking at the energy usage from this year to last. This year was sixteen degrees colder than last year, and the amount of gas usage in gigajoules was different by a factor of 2.6. The previous energy use was lower for the warmer average temperature as one would expect. One also notices what is missing in this table, the comparison cost per gigajoule from the previous year for electric and gas. This would be a very useful way to gauge the change in cost from year to year. The way the energy bill is originally written one could easily confuse the columns. When presented this way, it is clear.

The way the energy usage is presented in the actual/original bill does not allow a consumer to directly compare energy prices—which are offered by an “energy” company. This is because two non-metric proxy units are used, kilowatt-hours and therms, which have a conversion factor between them of approximately 29 (i.e. 1 therm = 29.307 kilowatt-hours).

One cannot be certain about the origins of the format of the bill I received, but I could not help but think about the word confusopoly, which was introduced in Scott Adams’ book The Dilbert Future. According to Wikipedia:

The word is a portmanteau of confusion and monopoly (or rather oligopoly), defining it as “a group of companies with similar products who intentionally confuse customers instead of competing on price”. Examples of industries in which confusopolies exist (according to Adams) include telephone service, insurance, mortgage loans, banking, and financial services.

I would like to add energy companies to the list.

Australian Gas Meter — Photo by Peter Goodyear

Electricity and Gas are pretty basic, both are sold by energy content, so despite the view they are public utilities, one can only wonder if they are not following the confusopoly model when they present bills in Kilowatt-hours and Therms. My rework of my utility bill certainly looks simpler to understand than the one that uses “our traditional measurements.” When the metric system is implemented, people can readily see it’s a system.  When energy is discussed in any context using the metric system, it is always joules, so the energy content on food packages are in kilojoules, as is a person’s energy bill in gigajoules. The metric system allows for a more integrated and systematic understanding of the world by everyone. There will always be those who will try to use metric in a non-transparent manner, but it takes much more effort than when using the potpororri of “traditional” measures currently established in the US. The joule in the crown for energy description is the joule. No matter what energy is under discussion:

Australian Subway napkin with food energy in kilojoules (kJ).  An average person burns (i.e. radiates as heat) about 169 000  kJ per month (169 MJ) (courtesy of Peter Goodyear — click on image to enlarge)
US Subway Napkin with Calories (kilocalories) and grams of fat — The word energy does not appear on the  US napkin (click to enlarge)

Postscript:

On a side note, New Scientist on 2014-01-04 related that since the UK phased out incandescent light bulbs there has been a considerable drop in energy usage. They state:

The average amount of electricity needed annually to light a UK home fell from 720 kilowatt-hours in 1997 to 508 kWh in 2012, a drop of 29 percent.

So  the average energy use by a UK home in 1997 was 2592 megajoules/year  and in 2012 was 1829 megajoules/year

Unfortunately New Scientist can play fast and loose with energy quantities and power values. On 2014-03-08 in an article about using batteries for energy storage from wind power they state on page 20:

Last year California passed legislation requiring the state’s energy companies to create more than 1.3 gigawatts of energy storage between them by 2020.

One could blame this technical faux pas on scientifically illiterate California legislators, but one would expect New Scientist to note this mistake, and possibly comment on it. Energy storage is in joules, the amount of energy flow out of the batteries is watts (joule/second). It is like equating the amount of water behind a dam with the flow rate of water leaving it.

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.