Technikatörténeti szemle 10. (1978)

A MÉRÉS ÉS A MÉRTÉKEK AZ EMBER MŰVELŐDÉSÉBEN című konferencián Budapesten, 1976. április 27–30-án elhangzott előadások II. - Zupkor, R. E.: A méterrendszer az Egyesült Államokban

ït. E. ZUPKO* THE METRIC SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES: PROM DEBATE TO CONVERSION On December 23, 1975, President Gerald Ford signed into law two bills which established the administrative and financial machinery for regulating the initial stages of the metric system changeover in the United States. Although no time limit for this conversion process was promulgated, the government, various scientific institutions, and heavy industry expect metrication to be achieved over a ten-year period. Thus, by l986, the United States, with the exception of a few segments of its economic and social sectors, will join the international metric community. Almost two hundred years of ambivalence, indecision, and, at times, open hostility to metric weights and measures has ended and a new metrological era has begun. This study delves into the dominant events and personalities that either forwarded or impeded metrication in the United States and it summarizes the principal reasons for America's longstanding metric system impasse. J The earliest consideration of a decimal-based metrology in the United States dates from the first year of President Washington's administration in 1790. Having recently commanded American armed forces during the Revolutionary War which severed permanently America's ties to England, Washington, in his new role of head-of-state, brought the question of what to do about America's antiquated system of weights and measures before the people in his first official address to Congress. The President informed the assembled representatives that, as in England, there was no metrological uniformity throughout the States of the Union and that the continued proliferation of local and state units of measurement would have detrimental consequences in the future. America had inherited the weights and measures of Great Britain, which, by the later stages of the Industrial Revolution, had grown to slightly more than 500 national standard units having more than 50,000 local variations.

1 Washington knew that such proliferation, although not yet a reality in America, could become a definite possibility if immediate steps were not initiated. He also informed Congress that the Constitution mandated the representatives of both Houses to concern themselves with the task of metrological uniformity. Hence, from the very beginning of this country's existence, the question of how to achieve a well* Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.