May 8, 2008
Seattle, Meet The Metric System
Photo by Nils Geylen. Thanks!
Calling all metric system nerds and Seattle history heads: today is the 217th anniversary of the day the French National Assembly said "Go!" to an official effort to create a metric system. In 1795, France voted the new "meter" into effect as the national unit of measurement and hasn't looked back since; it took the U.S. of A. until 1988 to pass a similar resolution and, 20 years later, we're still not exactly embracing kilometers on our highways and byways.
Where does Seattle come into all of this? That's what we're asking you! We heard a rumor this morning that Seattle was somewhat of a hub for the metrication of our nation back in the 1990s. This rings some bells in the dusty claptrap of a brain we call home, but we have searched the entire internet from top to bottom without uncovering a single trace of evidence for that rumor.
Got anything for us? Any clues at all about what was happening in Seattle 15, 20 years ago with regards to the hallowed, mathematically gorgeous metric system?
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While I’m not old enough to have remember what happened during the big metric push. I do know that the metric system in United States has a much longer history than you think. The metric system has been legal in the United States since 1866 (Metric Act of 1866) and the inch-pound units we use today were officially defined in terms of metric units since 1893. So in essence, we are using “disguised” metric units without even knowing!
There’s more history than I could put into this post so those who are interested in learning about the metric system (also known as SI) should check out the US Metric Association’s website at http://www.metric.org
I have heard people talking about gas stations pricing gasoline by the liter back when the pumps could not handle very high prices. The average gas price in Seattle is quickly approaching $1 per liter (which is $3.785 per gallon because a gallon has a little bit less than 4 liters). A pretty convenient figure if you ask me. Now you can comparing that to the price of bottled water or wine or Coke! Maybe it’ll make us feel better psychologically. Also with the Canadian and US dollars near parity, we don't have to mess with math to compare gas prices up there anymore which is like $1.218. Our Corolla has a 50 liter tank, so it’ll still cost me $50 to fill my empty tank.
Legal or not, it wasn't until 1988 that the US made the metric system our legally "preferred" system of measurement. Not that it's meant a whole lot -- the vast majority of US residents still think and speak in terms of feet, inches and miles. The history of the metric system is fascinating, I agree!
I'm working on an international prject right now. Converting back and forth between LPS, GPS, and CFM is killing me. I'll celebrate the day by trying not to screw up a conversion, causing an island across the world to catch on fire.
Didn't we lose a Mars probe a few years back because of a metric conversion error? Then there's that old tv movie starring William Devane not as a Kennedy, but rather as the pilot of a passenger jet flying from Canada to the US that got filled by the litre, not the gallon and ran out of gas a quarter of the way to its destination. (He managed to land it anyway on a disused airstrip where there was a swap meet going on and everyone had to run to get out of the way.