Gilmore, C. P.

English

eGrove (Univ. of Mississippi)

University of MississippieGroveHaskins and Sells Publications Deloitte Collection1969Will America adopt the metric system?C. P. GilmoreFollow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/dl_hsPart of the Accounting Commons, and the Taxation CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Deloitte Collection at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Haskins and SellsPublications by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact egrove@olemiss.edu.Recommended CitationH&S Reports, Vol. 06, (1969 no. 3), p. 06-09WILL AMERICA ADOPT THE METRIC SYSTEM? b y C . P. Gi lmore A t John Deere , Inc., all engineer ing drawings these d a y s display an o d d feature. F o l l o w i n g each usual dimen-sion marking is a second f igure in brackets. T h o s e w h o read the plans in both the c o m p a n y ' s U.S. and fore ign branches k n o w that the first n u m b e r g ives the dimension in inches; the f igure ill brackets translates it into milli-meters. W h e n U n i t e d Airlines b o u g h t 20 F r e n c h - m a d e C a r a v e l l e jetliners a f e w one to fit the Engl ish-measure parts, the other for metr ic components. W i t h these companies—and many others around the country—the long-proposed shift to some f o r m of the metric system is no longer just theory. T h e y ' v e begun. A n d the U.S . govern-ment, af ter years of controversy, has launched an official s tudy to see if the c o u n t r y as a w h o l e should m a k e the change. On A u g u s t 14 of last year, President Johnson s igned into l a w a bill years ago, it acquired an international mixture of measures. T h e fuse lage is des igned and built to metric measure. T h e Rol ls-Royce engines are k e y e d to British imperial ( inch) standards. A n d the h y d r a u l i c systems are built in the U.S . to Society of A u t o m o t i v e Engi-neers specifications, also based on the inch. T h e c o m p a n y g a v e its mechanics t w o sets of wrenches and other tools: C. P. Gilmore in a magazine writer and television reporter specializing in science, technology and medicine. He appears on evening newscasts of Metromedia TV sta-tions in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Kansas City. In 1968 Ids article on the artificial heart won the mag-azine awards of the National Society for Medical Research and of the Lasker Foun-dation. Mr. Gilmore wrote this article specially for H&S Reports. direct ing the D e p a r t m e n t of C o m m e r c e to find out h o w difficult such a switch w o u l d he, h o w m u c h it w o u l d cost, and h o w much it w o u l d benefit the country. T h e National B u r e a u of Standards is n o w d e e p into the first year of the pro-jected three-year study. Af ter t w o centuries of a r g u m e n t over the relative merits of inches, quarts and pounds as opposed to centimeters, liters and kilograms, the Uni ted States finds itself in an increasingly isolated position. N o w that Britain has d e c i d e d to convert to metric, the U.S. and C a n a d a are n o w virtually the only t w o major Engl ish-measure islands in a metric world. Ninety per cent of the planet's p e o p l e n o w use the metric sys-tem; 7 5 per cent of all c o m m e r c e is c o n d u c t e d in metric units. Opinions vary sharply as to w h a t this means to us. T h o s e w h o w a n t the Uni ted States to scrap the inch and em-brace the centimeter claim that our present system is il logical, unnecessar-ily hard to use, and causes all sorts of h e a d a c h e s and increased costs for com-panies that must deal in both worlds. Some authorities are convinced that our measurement isolationism is one cause of our gloomy balance of pay-ments position. Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, one of the sponsors of the metric study bill, estimates that the U.S. loses as much as $10 billion each year in foreign trade because of its failure to go metric. A big head of steam is building up for change, and many are convinced that change is on the way. Neverthe-less, conversion is still a touchy subject. Many responsible men suspect that the Bureau of Standards study now in progress will show that there is no pressing economic reason to change. Says Roy P. Trowbridge, director of General Motors' standards section: "It may make sense for some companies who want to make the same equipment here and abroad to go metric. But at present there is no major economic in-centive for the U.S. as a whole to make the switch." For accountants, the fact of major importance is tills: there will be tical industry has switched. And so thoroughly has the pharmaceutical in-dustry converted that some drug mak-ers even buy sugar and salt in bags stenciled with their metric weights. Many roller and ball bearings are bruit to metric sizes, as are spark plugs. For those still facing the change, conversion doesn't mean abandoning inch standards at once. Rather, the pro-cess is evolutionary, and can stretch over a period of years. Step one. Decimalize the inch. Con-ventional inch fractions are hard to work with. Try to multiply 5 g / i 6 t h inches by 7 and the point is clear. So, increasingly, U.S. companies translate the clumsy fraction to 5.5625 inches. dards division of John Deere,Inc. ,"and let the inch dimensions fall where they may." It makes the plans a little easier for overseas plants to use, and will facilitate the switch if the company decides to go completely metric. Step four. Design with metric stock. U.S. companies buy bolts, sheet metal, tubing, and other materials sized to fractions of an inch. I11 metric compa-nies, the same materials are made to millimeter sizes. A plant can start with dual dimensions, but to get fully into the metric system it must eventually switch from inch to metric stock. "You can take a standard American half-inch steel bar and call it a 12.7 millimeter bar instead," says Dr. Alvin McNish, director of the current National Bureau of Standards study, "but that doesn't make it fit into a standard 12.5 milli-meter slot made in Europe." During a company's transition pe-riod, it will have to deal in both systems change, at least in some companies. And the change, whenever it comes, will involve cost. Accountants, conse-quently, will be involved from the earli-est stages. The change could come on two entirely different levels: private and government, Conversion on the private level Scientists—physicists, chemists, bi-ologists, geologists—converted years ago. In medical and dental research the switch is almost complete, and some hospitals have made the change. The N e w York Hospital, for example, re-cords patients' weight in kilograms, height in centimeters, and tempera-tures on the centigrade scale. The op-It helps in-plant arithmetic now; in ad-dition, it's easy to multiply such a figure by a conversion factor (25.4) in order to convert it to the metric dimension (5.5625 x 25.4 - 1 4 1 ^ 8 7 5 mm). Many U.S. manufacturers have already made this move, whether or not they're thinking of going metric. Step two. Dual dimensioning. When French and English engineers got to-gether to build the supersonic airliner, the Concorde, they solved a tricky-problem by putting all measurements on the plans in both English and metric figures, IBM and several other U.S. companies now do the same tiling, so drawings are readily usable on either side of the Atlantic, Step three. Design in metric mod-ules. If an American engineer designs a case for a copying machine, he might make it 30 inches long. If his company were contemplating conversion to the metric system, he could make it 760 millimeters—a trifle under 30 inches, " W e design our castings and forgings to half or whole millimeter lengths," says Fred Ewert, manager of the stan-simultaneously—perhaps for years. A t first, its business will continue primar-ily in the inch system. Then it will work some metric parts into its operation. Gradually, there will be less English and more metric, until finally the entire production will be metric. During transition, manufacturing firms will have to stock sheet metal, tubing, bolts and many other items in both metric and inch sizes. That means more record keeping, more inventory, more warehouse space. People will have to be trained in the new system. And while they're training, they'll he less productive and make more mis-takes. Drawings will have to be dual di-mensioned, When John Deere began this practice five years ago, it added 20 per cent to the cost of drafting, accord-ing to Mr, Ewert. But now, since every-one is used to it, additional costs have dropped to perhaps five per cent. Redesign of the product will trigger a series of other changes. The size of the product changes slightly, which means a new box must be designed. A new carton will be needed to hold the new boxes. T h e labels for both box and carton will have to be redesigned and printed. All production machinery—for product, box, carton and labels—will have to be replaced, rebuilt or read-justed. Engineers w h o design the new prod-uct will need new engineering tables and standards. Their old ones—setting forth the strength of steel in tons per square inch, for example—will no Aeronautics and Space Administration requires contractors to submit research and development reports in the metric system; it also uses metric notation in all of its own scientific investigations. The National Bureau of Standards does practically all its work and writes its reports in metric. The U.S. Army Map Service marks its maps in both miles and kilometers; the Army designates many of its weapons in metric sizes. But undoubtedly the most important governmental development in recent years is the Bureau of Standards study. The three-year inquiry has several spe-cific goals: Find out what effect the increasing worldwide use of the metric system will have on the United States. See how practical it would be to in-crease the use of the metric system in this country. See if it is feasible to pull a switch and get the world to reconvert to the inch system. And the big one: figure out what benefits we could expect from the vari-hardly at all. And those already con-verted—the pharmaceutical and optical industries, for example—would have no trouble, —Trivial, Textile mills and factories making lumber and wood products would only have to re-calibrate ma-chines, re-label or re-describe products in metric language. —Moderate. The primary metals in-dustries and hardware makers would have to change measuring equipment and some parts of tools, such as dies. longer apply. They'll need new tables for fluid flow, pressure drop, horse-power calculations, stresses and mo-ments, heat transmissions, and hun-dreds of other variables that engineers deal with. How much will conversion cost? Stanford Research Institute estimated a Jew years ago that the nationwide switch could be m a d e for $11 billion. Most industrial managers find that fig-ure ridiculously low. Some place it as high as $100 billion. The most painless approach will be to take conversion at a leisurely pace. If machine tools, for example, are not replaced with metric machines until they wear out and have to be replaced anyway, costs could be kept down. Government and conversion While the arguments, pro and con, simmer in private industry, pressure for an official change in Washington is building. Several government agencies have already converted. The National ous alternatives open to us, and how much they would cost. Among other things, the study would attempt to find out how conversion to the metric sys-tem would affect our world trade. So far, the primary task of the study has been to classify U.S. businesses ac-cording to what impact conversion would have on them, These arc the categories: —Negligible. Businesses that deal in hulk products would simply have to convert their billing. The Bunge Cor-poration, a large commodities shipper, says it buys and sells in both worlds, simply converts back and forth arith-metically for billing. Agriculture, for-estry and fishing would be affected Other problems could be solved by conversion charts, —Substantial, Machinery makers, automobile manufacturers, builders of electrical equipment would have to change many of their manufacturing machines and practices. They'd have to redesign products, make basic deci-sions on sizes of sheet metal, tubing, screws and scores of other parts. —Severe. In a few industries, such as oil field machinery and aircraft, the world generally adheres to U.S. stan-dards, although in some places dimen-sions are expressed in their metric equivalents. (In Japan, engineers use 6.35 millimeter bolts. Rut the same bolts fit quarter-inch nuts on U.S.-made airplanes.) The study wil l probably conclude that these industries should not convert. For a f e w businesses, not classified by the survey, the changeover would be a windfall. Printers would be called upon to reprint the millions of charts, books, tables and standards now in use. Manufacturers of measuring equip-ment from ill lei's to micrometers would be similarly in demand. T h e searchlight of the National Bu-reau of Standards s tudy is focus ing primari ly on the i m p a c t conversion w o u l d h a v e on industry and interna-tional trade. B u t if C o n g r e s s should ever d e c i d e to m a k e the switchover of-ficially b inding, there w o u l d b e striking changes in our e v e r y d a y lives, too. W e m i g h t find ourselves w e i g h i n g letters b y the gram, b u y i n g w h i s k e y by the liter, measuring land holdings by the hectare or square meter. H o u s e w i v e s w o u l d p u r c h a s e cloth b y the meter; meat , flour, and vegetables b y the kilo-gram; vanilla b y the cc. T h e system might b e confus ing at first, but shoppers w o u l d q u i c k l y find that they could m a k e price comparisons more easily w i t h the simplified arith-metic of the metric system. A n d they m i g h t soon save enough money to buy a set of metric measures for the n e w recipes coming out in that system. M e a n w h i l e , n e w cars w o u l d h a v e kilo meters-per-hour speedometers to match the n e w road signs. Speed-l imit laws w o u l d h a v e to b e changed, as meter w o u l d b e one ten-millionth the distance from the equator to the North Pole, In 1840, it b e c a m e mandatory in France . A s France w a s considering adoption of the metric system, T h o m a s Jefferson proposed it for the Uni ted States. B u t most felt too d e p e n d e n t on the British to take on the n e w F r e n c h system. I n 1893 the U n i t e d States gov-ernment recognized the meter as the international standard of length b y de-fining our i n c h in terms of metric mea-surement. It did the same with pound-to-kilogram conversion factors. T o this d a y , our system is based on metric units; there is a meter bar and a stan-d a r d ki logram in W a s h i n g t o n from w h i c h our inch and p o u n d measures are der ived. A s the U.S . approaches its t ime of decision, it is clear that the b i g prob-w o u l d laws concerning thickness of masonry and steel fire doors for fire protection, bui lding and sanitary codes, and legal p a r k i n g distance f r o m fire hydrants, T V w e a t h e r m e n w o u l d cite temperature 011 the cent igrade scale, barometric pressure in mill imeters of mercury , and w i n d velocity in kilo-meters per hour. T h e English—or inch—system over w h i c h the controversy n o w b u b b l e s is certainly one of the oldest measure-m e n t systems in the world. Our mile c a m e from the R o m a n mille passus, a thousand paces. T h e y a r d w a s estab-lished by Henry II, the p o u n d b y El iza-b e t h I. T h e system w a s a lways arbi-trary, wi th various units b e a r i n g little consistent relationship to each other. T o br ing some order into a chaotic situation, F r a n c e a d o p t e d the metr ic system in 1 7 9 5 , s p e c i f y i n g that the lem will not be people. Scientists h a v e a lready swi tched; engineers, a lready familiar with the metric system, will do SO w i t h o u t missing a beat. Technic ians and non-technical people wi l l also h a v e little problem, " W h e n w e switched over to the dec imal ized inch w e heard a lot of guff that w e couldn't do it and it w o u l d cost p l e n t y , " says Mr. E w e r t , " B u t it wasn' t true. A n d the same thing will h a p p e n wi th the metric . Experi-ence has s h o w n that p e o p l e a d a p t rela-tively easily. M e c h a n i c s in many gar-ages h a v e switched effortlessly to metric wrenches for foreign cars, w h i l e con-tinuing to use inch standards for do-mest ic autos. C h a n g e , obviously, is in the air. If w o r l d w i d e trends and the recent dri f t t o w a r d the metr ic system in this coun-try are any indication, it seems possible that the Engl ish system wil l s lowly f a d e in c o m i n g years. A n d perhaps some day soon looking for a quarter-inch bolt wi l l be like looking for a carburetor for a 1948 Ford. You'l l find it if y o u look hard enough. But it won't b e easy. • 

Will America adopt the metric system?

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Will America adopt the metric system?

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