The one thing America cannot do

The tiny African country of Sierra Leone recently did something that even the United States hasn't been able to do. It stopped using the traditional English system of measurements. While the Leoneans enjoy the convenience of the metric system, Americans continue to toil with inches, feet, yards, miles, ounces, pounds, gallons, acres, barrels and bushels.

"I've been living here for five years, and I still don't know how many ounces are in a pound, or how many pints are in a gallon," a Russian immigrant once told me at the cheese counter of an American supermarket.

After Mexico and especially Canada went metric in the 1960s and '70s, the U.S. government felt that sooner or later it would have to follow suit. In 1975, it made an attempt to familiarize Americans with the metric system. Dual labeling was introduced on products: for example, "8 oz (227 g)".

However, three big mistakes destroyed any chance of the metric system coming into everyday use.

• Instead of changing the size of the containers that products came in — to 200 g, 500 g, and so on — most companies kept the old sizes, like 8 oz and 1/4 lb. So by being secondary to traditional units, and being given in uneven amounts, metric units still appear exotic. Pepsi- and Coca-Cola were a big exception: they successfully introduced one- and two-liter bottles. They cleverly told consumers, "A two-liter bottle! That's 10 percent more than two quarts!"
• The government decided that metrication was to be a gradual process. Imagine if Sweden had had that attitude when it switched to right-hand traffic in 1967. People would be driving every which way! Instead, the change was done over 10 minutes, and everyone got used to it.
• Metrication was to be voluntary. So of course it wouldn't work. Americans would panic if they had to buy not 13 gallons, but 50 liters, at the gas pump, or if they learned the temperature outside was 10 degrees (C) instead of 50 degrees (F), or if they had to convert measurements between the two systems.
  

Deirdre Flint: "Metric Is Coming" (words here)

So most things remain as they've always been, with heights and altitudes in feet, weight in pounds, and distances in miles. Some forget, however, that American scientists, like all scientists, use the metric system.

• In 1999, NASA lost the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter because a subcontractor had calculated the space probe's thrust in traditional instead of metric units.
• In 2001, a 250-kilogram tortoise escaped from a college facility in California because its enclosure had been built to hold a 250-pound (110 kg) animal instead.
• In 2005, a baby in Florida was given four times the dose of a drug when a pharmacist interpreted the doctor's order of 0.75 ml as 0.75 teaspoons.

The U.S. government now uses a combination of traditional and metric measures internally, and some industries, like the automobile industry, have changed over completely. This is easier now that the U.S. no longer manufactures much of anything. Foreign suppliers have enormous leverage in making products in one size for the entire world.

Even the English, who gave us the traditional units, are (mostly) done with them. It's a good thing, too, because English gallons aren't even the same size as American ones. I say it's time to end the confusion. America was the first country to dump the king. It shouldn't be the last to stop using his arm or foot to measure things.

If Sierra Leone can do it, so can America — you'd think.