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

After the War of 1812 the question of metrological reform was pushed far into the background of major American concerns and would not reemerge until four decades later. This second phase of American interest in metrication began formally in 1866 when Congress reluctantly passed the Metric System Act which officially recognized use of metric weights and measures in commercial transactions. Unfortunately, the Act did not solve the metric dilemma because it only went halfway by not eliminating the weights and measures of the old system. All that the Act did was to recognize the legitimacy of contracts in which dimensions or sizes were expressed in metric terms. For the remainder of this century and for the first seven decades of the twentieth century there were dozens of bills and hundreds of committee reports and recommendations before Congress which contained a myriad of provisions aimed at establishing varying degrees of metrication.

11 Everyone of them failed in their objectives—even a Bill of 1902 which, prior to the vote, was almost assured of passage failed due to a long delay between the adjournment of one Congress and the inception of its successor. The reasons behind all of these failures during this second phase of American metrication attempts were quite different from those which plagued phase one. The dominant arguments raised against metric conversion now were the following. (1) Since the industrial, agricultural, financial, and technological development of the United States had progressed after the Civil War (1860—65) at such a rapid and dramatic pace, the adoption of the metric system would curtail, or even destroy, further economic growth. English proponents contended that all available evidence based upon the experience of other countries indicated that the substitution of metric designations for existing sizes and the actual replacement of English with new metric equipment was impracticable, and that if the United States contemplated a change in systems it must face the destruction of existing mechanical standards. In addition, they insisted that following the change there would be a long aftermath during which the mechanical industries of the country would suffer from tremendous confusion and the laborious undertaking of rebuilding new standards in another system. (2) Metrication would be too expensive a venture due to the above-mentioned reasons. Because a compulsory change to the metric system would entail the discarding or alteration of a large part of the basic mechanical equipment of the manufacturing industries of the country, would compel the replacement of scales and measuring instruments in use among all classes of people, and would require a period of training in the use of the new system, the only result of the compulsory adoption of the metric system would be to drag the country into an enormous expenditure and waste without providing any compensatory advantages. In fact, by the 1960's, even metric proponents were citing costs in the area of $20,000,000,000, while those opposed to the system used figures of $100,000,000,000 and above. (3) The English system had proved its overall superiority due to the fact that the United States had achieved a phenomenal growth rate in its GNP since