In the 70's the US started to adopt the metric system then some crackhead decided it wasn't worth it and even, that keeping the archaic "imperial" system would help protect the US against import.
Did'nt work against import but on the other hand, people did not want to buy US made products as you could find equivalent if not better products from Japan, Germany, Swizterland, Taiwan ... and now China and built to international standard !
The sad thing is that scientists have struggled for more than 100 years for the US to move on !
i.[FONT="] [/FONT]Metric system (SI). The abbreviation for the metric system is SI, the International System of Units (from the French, Systeme International d'Unites). It evolved from the original French metric system and is currently being used virtually worldwide. Long the language universally used in science and among technically adept individuals, SI has also become the dominant language of international commerce and trade. All new USA standards (ASTM, ANSI, SAE, IEEE, ASME, etc.) are now written in metric, as the lead engineers in these organizations recognize the importance of trying to get the USA on track with technically advanced countries, in an effort to regain lost USA competitiveness in a global economy, as there is essentially no global market for the archaic, oddball, incompatible product dimensions USA arbitrarily comes up with, while they forfeit industries and jobs to third-world countries who have no problem understanding something so simple and fulfilling the need efficiently. IEEE was intelligent enough to recognize this decades ago. Japan also was intelligent enough to recognize simple matters such as this long ago. This small country, defeated in WWII only 60 years ago, has since captured a large portion of the global economy due to their intelligent progress, and consequently has become a major global financier, while USA has become a world-class debtor to the tune of trillions due to inefficient business practices, low educational level, slackerism, and inability to solve or understand even simple problems such as metric conversion.
