The USA Should Adopt the Metric System

You, in this country [the USA], are subjected to the British insularity in weights and measures; you use the foot, inch and yard. I am obliged to use that system, but must apologize to you for doing so, because it is so inconvenient, and I hope Americans will do everything in their power to introduce the French metrical system. ... I look upon our English system as a wickedly, brain-destroying system of bondage under which we suffer. The reason why we continue to use it, is the imaginary difficulty of making a change, and nothing else; but I do not think in America that any such difficulty should stand in the way of adopting so splendidly useful a reform.

Notes:

Kelvin predicts Britain is stuck with it, but America will adopt.

Folksonomies: measurement metric cultural stasis

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Inch (0.927949): dbpedia | freebase
Metric system (0.921601): dbpedia | freebase
United States (0.737185): website | dbpedia | ciaFactbook | freebase | opencyc | yago
International System of Units (0.658263): website | dbpedia | freebase | yago
English language (0.645432): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc | yago
Units of measurement (0.533767): website | dbpedia | freebase | yago
Length (0.521963): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc

 Journal of the Franklin Institute, Nov 1884
Periodicals>Journal Article:  Kelvin, Baron William Thomson (1884), Journal of the Franklin Institute, Nov 1884, Retrieved on 2012-06-07