METRIC SYSTEM

Evening Star, Issue 20150, 15 April 1929, Page 8

METRIC SYSTEM

DECIMALS FOR U.S.A. The schoolboy’s long division and the engineer’s slide rule, now needed to convert square yards to acres and cubic inches into bushels, would both bo displaced by the simple movement of a decimal "point under a plan for the adoption of the metric system in the United States which has just been outlined at the twelfth annual meeting of the Metric Association in Isew York, says the ‘ Christian Science Monitor.’

The adoption of the metric system, speakers at the meeting declared, would substitute the metre, tho gramme, and the litre for the complex system of weights and measures now in use in the United States and Great Britain.

These three units, with the aid of a decimal point, would do all the work that is accomplished by more than thirty-five different standards under the English system. The metre, as the unit of length, would displace the inch, foot, yard, furlong, link, chain, rod, fathom, and statute mile. Thus, instead of multiplying by 5,280 to determine the feet in a given number of miles, it would only be necessary to move the decimal three places to reduce the metres to kilometres, which are simply units of 1,000 metres each. The United States and Great Britain, it was said at the session, are the only countries in the world which do not uso the metric system. Since the system was first introduced in France iii 1790, a total of fifty-five nations have discarded long division in favour of tho decimal point, which _ makes weight and measure computations as simple as changing dollars into cents. As early as 1558 Henry 11. tried to standardise the measurements of France, and at that time tho vise of a decimal system was proposed. But it was not until two centuries later that France, at the insistence of Talleyrand, undertook the making of a new system. But what will the standard be? the technicians asked. After long discussion they decided to use a unit related to the earth itself. So they set out to measure a quadrant of the terrestrial meridian, which is the distance from tho Pole to the Equator. They fixed tho metre as onc-tcn-millionth of this distance.

Having determined a unit of length, the technicians adopted 1,000 cubic centimetres as the standard unit of volume, and called it the litre. They determined the weight of one cubic centimetre of water, and that became tho gramme. The- system was taken up .successively by Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, italy, and other Continental nations, while Columbia, and Mexico were the first to adopt it in tho Western Hemishperc. Other speakers stressed the point that many largo industrial concerns throughout the country either used metric measurements entirely, as _ in the case of many chemical industries, or used both systems. All automobile tyres, it was said, are now marked with the metric size equivalents. The effort to enlarge this use in the United States, it was announced by the association, will embrace the reintroduction of Bills in Congress making the metric system the standard in commercial transactions. The legislation would apply only to merchandising, the manufacture of commodities being permitted in the English system. Ten years would be allowed to put the measure into effect, tho subsequent commercial use of the system then gradually displacing the use of tho English system in tho manufacturing field, it was said.