[Sca-cooks] measurement

Johnna Holloway johnnae at mac.com
Sat May 24 19:06:21 PDT 2008


Why does the USA still use the mile?
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/internat.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States
where it notes
In 1981, the Metric Board reported to Congress that it lacked the clear 
Congressional mandate necessary to bring about national conversion. Due 
to this apparent ineffectiveness, and in a  
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan> effort by Reagan to reduce 
federal spending, the Metric Board was disbanded in the fall of 1982.

Despite this, the National Highway System Designation Act passed in 1995 
and prohibited the use of Federal-aid highway funds to convert existing 
signs or purchase new signs with metric units.

Johnnae

Margaret Rendell wrote:
> this has already been sorted out (we should have written 'litres' 
> rather than 'l', it would have been clearer), but it leads me to a 
> related question...why does the US still use the old measures, rather 
> than metric? As far as I can tell, there are two possible reasons
>
> 1) nostalgia/historical interest
> 2) the expense and effort in changing
>
> but I don't really know, as I've used metric my whole life, so can't 
> really compare the two systems. I'm interested to know - if there are 
> actually ways in which it is superior?
>
> Recently my eight-year-old asked what a 'mile' was and my husband I 
> explained it to him, which led to an explanation of the imperial 
> system in general. At first he thought we were making it up as we went 
> along to fool him because it sounded so unlikely to him (especially 
> since my husband and I disagreed a bit on specifics, as neither of us 
> really understand it)...
>
> Margaret/Emma
> Krae Glas, Lochac




More information about the Sca-cooks mailing list