Anti-metrication

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Anti-Metrication

The introduction of the metric system has faced popular opposition in a number of countries over the past two hundred years. Opponents generally cite apparent flaws in the metric system itself and cultural reasons for resisting change. Today, only the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Liberia and MyanmarAccording to an old U.S. Metric Association survey, neither Liberia nor Myanmar had officially adopted the metric system or enacted a policy to switch to the metric system in the future. Inquiries by the USMA have led to no response from the countries about use of the metric system since the survey. See here for more information. Continued use of non-metric units in the United States and the United Kingdom is well-established. continue to use their traditional measurement systems to any great extent, although many countries still retain some non-metric units.

Some arguments of the anti-metrication movement

Natural evolution and human scale

One argument used by opponents of the metric system is that traditional systems of measurement were developed organically from actual use. Early measures were human in scale. In English, traditional expressions such as a stone's throw, within earshot, a cartload or a handful disclose the internal logic of traditional measurements. These measures were often relational and commensurable: a request for a judgment of measure allowed for a variety of answers, depending on the context of the request. In parts of Malaysia, villagers asked the distance to the next village were likely to respond with "three rice cookings"; an approximation of the time it would take to travel there on foot. Everyone is assumed to know how long to cook rice. Named units referring to seeming standards also were contextualized. The aune, a French ell used for measuring cloth, depended on the sort of cloth you were measuring, taking price and scarcity into account; an aune of silk was shorter than an aune of linen.Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, p. 25. (Yale University Press, 1998) ISBN 0300070160

The traditional English units of measure, though standardized in themselves, at least reflect these original and organic methods of measuring. A number of these units, such as the foot, share their name with physical objects indicating that they were based on these objects. Folklore relates the yard to the length between the nose and thumb of several kings of England. Tradition also relates the fathom to the distance between a man's outstretched arms: an estimate reflected in its names in other languages, such as French brasse and Italian braccio. Human-scale units used or formerly used in English include the digit, finger, palm, hand, span, and the Biblical cubit, traditionally defined as the length of the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the oustretched hand. The virtue of these units was not scientific precision, but rather that they allowed people to easily learn them and make estimates and judgments of size: in other words, each one was a handy "rule of thumb".

The metric system, on the other hand, employs only a small number of base units (7), none of which are based on the human body. As such, their selection was made without regard to human scale. Other metric units are derived from these base units in a systematic way. For any particular quantity, larger metric units are always powers of ten multiplied by smaller metric units. Units for other quantities are formed by multiplying base units.

Members of the anti-metrication movement say that as traditional measurements have evolved over time, naturally picking up improvements to make them more useful to more people. Thus, it is claimed, they have grown in a way that the metric system, with its rigid systematicism, could not. This process could be likened to Darwinian evolution by natural selection with the most useful units standing the test of time. Proponents of metrication will, of course, point out the advantages of a systematic approach such as that of the metric system's, arguing that it is worth forgoing these claimed naturally-evolved units. Also, it is worth pointing out that pre-metrification there was not-insignificant variation between units.

High modernism and "legibility"

The metric system originated in the ideology of "Pure Reason" that was a feature of the more radical element of the French Revolution.Alder, Ken. "A Revolution to Measure: The Political Economy of the Metric System in France," in The Values of Precision, edited by M. Norton Wise. (Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 39-71. ISBN 0691016011 The metric system was devised in France as part of a proposal that attempted to make France "revenue-rich, militarily potent, and easily administered."Alder, supra, p. 48 It was intended as part of a consicous plan to transform French culture. "As mathematics was the language of science, so would the metric system be the language of commerce and industry," meant to unify and transform French society.Alder, p. 55

The imposition of the metric system, with its basic units originally derived from various scientific calculations removed from daily concerns, can be viewed in terms originated by James C. Scott as a form of high modernism. Local or customary measures do not serve the needs of a central government and its bureaucracy; they pose obstacles to the State's needs for census taking, taxation, and conscription. In forcing information to flow through standardized containers, they tend to obliterate local knowledge shaped by local needs. Scott observes that "Telling a farmer only that he is leasing twenty acres of land is about as helpful as telling a scholar that he has bought six kilograms of books."Scott, p. 26 Traditional measures express common wisdom and utility at the expense of standardization; but standardization is what bureaucracy requires. Scott's critique of the metric system stands in the tradition of E. P. Thompson's critique of the bureaucratic and industrial imposition of time discipline.

In his 1998 monograph Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Scott argues that central governments attempt to impose what he calls "legibility" on their subjects. Local folkways concerning measurements, like local customs concerning patronymics, tend to come under severe pressure from bureaucracies. Scott's thesis is that in order for schemes to improve the human condition to succeed, they must take into account local conditions, and that the high-modernist ideologies of the 20th century have prevented this. Scott cites the Napoleonic enforcement of the metric system as a specific example of this sort of failed and resented "improvement" imposed by centralizing and standardizing authority.Scott, Seeing Like a State, pp. 30-33.

While the metric system was imposed on France by Napoleon Bonaparte in the beginning of the nineteenth century, it failed to pre-empt traditional measurements in the popular mind, and its use was associated with officialdom and elitism. In 1828 Chateaubriand remarked, "Whenever you meet a fellow who, instead of talking arpents, toises, and pieds, refers to hectares, metres, and centimetres, rest assured, the man is a prefect."Quoted in Witold Kula, Measures and Men, tr. R. Szreter (Princeton, 1986: ISBN 0691054460), p. 286

See also: mesures usuelles

Price inflation

The adoption of metric measures in shops, especially in supermarkets, can provide an opportunity for traders to increase prices covertly. Taking the example of a jar of jam or a can of beans, each of these would previously have been sold in a standard 1lb (one pound, 454 gram) measure. But once the pound is abandoned, such items could be repackaged in smaller metric measures—425 or 400 grams for example, but sold at the same package price. To the casual buyer, such goods will often look similar to the one pound jars or cans they used to buy. If such items are sold at the same price as the customary packages they replace, then a price increase can be introduced by stealth. Those educated in the old measures, and able to make conversions, may spot this. But those educated since the abolition of customary measures will not necessarily do so.

An example of this is when liquor started to no longer be sold in fifths of a (U.S. liquid) gallon (exactly 0.2 gallons, approximately 757 ml), but instead in the international standard (750 ml, approximately 0.198 gallons), and the price remained the same. "The Great Metric Rip-Off" from the British Measures and Weights Association, an anti-metrication organization

Unit confusion

Traditional units are often so dissimilarly named that it is difficult to confuse their unit names. By contrast, the names of related metric units tend to be very similar, and may confuse people unfamiliar with the system (e.g. mm and cm).

However, there are a number of different traditional units which share the same name. A gallon, for example, could be an Imperial gallon, a US dry gallon or a US wet gallon (not to mention any of the great number of obsolete gallons). People unfamiliar with traditional measures may get confused also.

Tradition

For some, anti-metrication is a form of traditionalism, looking to a history of usage that stretches back centuries or even millennia. Sometimes it is even considered part of patriotism. For traditional argument, however, the US system and the Imperial system are based upon older English units, which in turn have largely Roman and French (Avoirdupois) roots.

The non-metric units have changed values many times throughout history. At the time of the French revolution there were over 5000 variations on the foot alone. Which one would be traditionally correct? The Imperial system is the result of a clean-up in 1824, some 30 years after the founding of the metric system.

Metric units, however, have not been exempt from redefinitions or refinements. The metre, for instance, was intended to equal 10⁻⁷ or one ten-millionth of the length of the meridian through Paris from pole to the equator. However, the first prototype was short by 0.2 millimetres because researchers miscalculated the flattening of the Earth. Now it is the length travelled by light in vacuum during the time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.

Æsthetics

Another complaint regarding the metric system is the alleged unpleasantness of its terms. Supporters of other systems claim that, being designed for scientific use, most metric terms are “cold”, “harsh” and lack the character of their traditional counterparts.

For example, most common traditional measurements (except for 'fluid ounce' and ‘gallon’ and 'bushel' and 'firkin' and 'barrel' and 'hogshead' and 'half-barrel' and ‘acre’ and 'pica' and 'furlong' and 'cubit' and 'candle' and 'fathom') are single-syllable (‘inch’, ‘foot’, ‘yard’, ‘mile’, ‘ounce’, ‘pound’, ‘ton’, ‘cup’, ‘pint’, ‘quart’) which would be more “appealing” to the tongue and ear than terms like ‘centimetre’ or ‘millilitre’.

In English, the names of the metric units, it is claimed, with their prefixes of multiple origins, are imperfectly domesticated loanwords. The corresponding traditional units, though not all of Anglo-Saxon etymology, have been in use long enough to conform thoroughly to regular English phonology.According to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, the word "pound" existed in English before 900 AD, and has cognates in Old Norse and Old High German. Likewise, the words "inch" and "ounce" are attested in English before 1000 AD. The irregular correspondence between spelling and pronunciation of a foreign word like litre, by contrast, marks it as an intruder.According to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, "litre" was borrowed directly from French and appears first in English between 1800 and 1810 AD. It is moreover pronounced as opposed to the expected pronunciation ^*

While there are those who claim this objection is mere parochialism, its existence can be helpful in understanding how much people “hold dear” the units they grew up with, and the difficulties encountered in the metrication process. In countries that have recently gone metric, the traditional terms continue to be used metaphorically and in fixed expressions, and expressions like “a gram of prevention is worth a kilogram of cure” or “I was a million kilometres away (in my thoughts)” or “Due to the heavy traffic jam, the cars just centimetred their way down the road” have not suddenly become commonplace. However, in countries that metricated a long time ago, expressions involving the metric system are more common: “Don’t feel like you are 2 metres tall” (don't overestimate yourself), “one gram of experience is worth of a kilo of theory”, “millimetric precision”, “the traffic jam slithered ahead cent by cent” and so on.

Government compulsion

Another basic argument is that the adoption of metric units has almost always been a matter of government compulsion, prohibiting people from using units they were used to, and that such policies are wrong in principle. The idea of compulsory standards is hardly new, however; in the mid-1820s, for example, the Act for ascertaining and establishing Uniformity of Weights and Measures, signed by George IV, consolidated the various gallons in use at the time and established a new Imperial gallon, simultaneously prohibiting the use of the older units. Compulsory reforms, e.g. the introduction of the euro, in general have been proven to be much more efficient (quicker, cheaper) than voluntary ones without lesser satisfaction throughout the population afterwards.

In the UK there is widespread non-compliance by small-scale fruit and vegetable traders with the requirement to price in metric. Display of “supplementary units” (the equivalent Imperial price) is permitted (until 31 December 2009) as long as they are no larger than, nor more prominent than, the legally-binding metric price. In many towns, fruit and vegetable markets display prominent signs in Imperial units, with a very small metric price beside them. There is also some degree of non-compliance by smaller vendors of carpets, despite the great simplification that metrication affords to carpet-buying. Large supermarkets in the UK have also attempted to undermine the metrication process. They place small metric price signs on the edges of shelves and use these to claim they are pricing in metric. However, all around the store are very large signs advertising the products purely in Imperial units. They claim that the law requires them to price in metric but does not require them to advertise in metric. So far, Trading Standards officers have not taken a supermarket to court over this issue and thus its legality remains untested.

Anti-metrication in the UK often manifests itself in conjunction with Euroscepticism because of the belief that the European Union is responsible for compulsory metrication, although metrication had been government policy since 1953 and the process was initiated by the government establishing the Metrication Board in 1969, four years before joining the EC. In more recent times, anti-metrication supporters have asserted that the legal compulsion to adopt the metric system instead of their traditional weights and measures is an infringement of a right to freedom of speech, though this claim has been consistently rejected by the courts. Most recently, on 25 February 2004, the European Court of Human Rights rejected an application from British shopkeepers who said that their human rights had been violated.

In the US, there is also government compulsion with regard to measurement units. Federal and state laws control the labelling of goods for sale in the supermarket, drugs, wine, liquor etc. For example, US manufacturers are obliged by law to show both metric and non-metric units. It is an offence to have a metric only label, or a non-metric only label. Similarly, a US wine or liquor producer would be committing an offence if the product were delivered in non-metric bottle sizes. Regulation 27 CFR 4.73 requires wine bottled or packed on or after January 1, 1979 to be sold in only the following sizes: 3 liters, 1.5 liters, 1 liter, 750 milliliters, 500 milliliters, 375 milliliters, 187 milliliters, 100 milliliters, or 50 milliliters. Wine may also be bottled or packed in containers of 4 liters or larger if the containers are filled and labeled in quantities of even liters (4 liters, 6 liters, etc.)

Practicality in the United States

The United States is a large nation, the entire infrastructure of which has been built using traditional units. Many Americans see little practical benefit in making a complete switch to the metric system, generally they do not believe that they have been negatively affected by retaining the U.S. customary system, and understand that switching to metric would bring a considerable cost to taxpayers. In general, US citizens appear to be more or less content with using both systems. Other than enforcing the laws about labelling products with metric equivalents (discussed above), there is presently no significant push by the US government to increase the use of the metric system among the American public, nor is there any significant populist movement among the US public to fully adopt the metric system.

One major obstacle to metrication in the United States is its established system of title registration for real property. The metes and bounds descriptions of land in deeds and other title documents typically use English measures such as feet, rods, and furlongs. All of these systems of land measurement were in place well before there was ever any thought of converting any measurements in the United States to metric measurements. The process of re-surveying each tract of land in the United States to produce a revised metes and bounds description of the various lots or sections in metric units would be quite costly.

Multiplication factors

Dividing by three is simple in a base twelve system but difficult with a base ten system. Dividing by five, on the other hand, is simple in a base ten system but difficult with a base twelve system. If you want to take a quarter in a base ten system, you have to use one hundred to avoid getting a fraction. Twelve, on the other hand, divides by four easily.

However, only few parts of the Imperial or US customary systems actually feature the factor twelve, namely the inch-to-foot ratio and the rarely used troy-ounce-to-troy-pound ratio. Powers of two are more common, especially in volume measures, along with other factors including five, seven and eleven.

Divisor	8	10	12	16
2	4	5	6	8
3	2.(6)	3.(3)	4	5.(3)
4	2	2.5	3	4
5	1.(6)	2	2.4	3.(3)
6	1.(3)	1.(6)	2	2.(6)
7	1.143	1.429	1.714	2.286
8	1	1.25	1.5	2
9	0.(8)	1.(1)	1.(3)	1.(7)
10	0.8	1	1.2	1.6
Power
²	64	100	144	256
³	512	1000	1728	4096

Some people mistakenly claim that non-metric units are systematically designed to base twelve, sixteen, etc. This is probably due to a confusion of base with factor. There is no inherent base in English units.

Factors used in non-metric units include:

3 (feet in a yard)
5½ (yards in a rod)
8 (furlongs in a mile)
12 (inches in a foot, troy ounces in a troy pound)
14 (pounds in a stone)
16 (avoirdupois ounces in a pound, US fluid ounces in a US fluid pint)
20 (hundredweight in a ton, imperial fluid ounces in an imperial pint)
231 (cubic inches in a US fluid gallon)

Metric practitioners counter to such arguments that they have a much better solution. Although, the SI standard itself defines no preferred sizes, there exist several widely used guidelines tailored to the needs of particular fields. For example, in the construction industry, a system known as modular coordination is commonly used.

When using modular coordination major dimensions that are multiples of 300 mm or 600 mm are preferred. This leads to component sizes such as 1200 mm × 2400 mm. Any multiple of 600 mm can be divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, 24, 25, 30 without any need for fractions. A comparable length in English units would be two feet which does not divide easily by multiples of five. Other such guidelines for preferred numbers include the Renard series or the system of metric paper sizes.

Another commonly quoted reason against metrication is the difficulties that conversion to and from old units cause. For everyday usage a 500-gram pound, 4-litre gallon and 25-milimetre inch could suffice, and have been used.

See also: metrified English unit