Whatever Happened to the Metric System? Quotes

“The tombstone of coinage, arguably the most important measure in history, could read: Born Lydia, Anatolia, 7th century B.C. Died Washington, D.C., 20th century A.D.”
― John Bemelmans Marciano, Whatever Happened to the Metric System?: How America Kept Its Feet

“Jefferson offered a simpler plan: Adopt the Spanish dollar. But with a twist. Rather than splitting it into eighths and sixteenths or twelfths and twentieths, Jefferson wanted to take the radical step of dividing the coin by tenths, hundredths, and thousandths—decimal fractions. It was a thing no other nation in the world had ever entirely achieved, not with coins or any other measure.”
― John Bemelmans Marciano, Whatever Happened to the Metric System?: How America Kept Its Feet

“What weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold? sounds like a trick question for third-graders, for which the answer should be, A pound is the same no matter what it weighs! Except it doesn’t. A pound of feathers is heavier than one of gold by 22 percent, because plumage and precious metals in the United States are weighed according to different pounds.”
― John Bemelmans Marciano, Whatever Happened to the Metric System?: How America Kept Its Feet

“A pound of feathers is heavier than one of gold by 22 percent, because plumage and precious metals in the United States are weighed according to different pounds. With”
― John Bemelmans Marciano, Whatever Happened to the Metric System?: How America Kept Its Feet

“Such simple questions as How many feet are in a mile? or What’s the number of square feet in an acre? produce the not-so-simple answers of 5,280 and 43,560.”
― John Bemelmans Marciano, Whatever Happened to the Metric System?: How America Kept Its Feet

“containerization has had a greater impact on global trade than all GATT talks combined.”
― John Bemelmans Marciano, Whatever Happened to the Metric System?: How America Kept Its Feet

“It is deeply ironic that while America was hemming and hawing over whether to go metric on account of its shrinking place in world trade, a U.S. innovation sized in customary feet was becoming the most important measure of capacity ever to hit the global market.”
― John Bemelmans Marciano, Whatever Happened to the Metric System?: How America Kept Its Feet