Word: metric
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...command. Most of the concrete progress at Fontainebleau has been on the technical level. Map work and photographic interpretation have been standardized, as well as some technical equipment, such as naval couplings, which will permit ships of all Western Union navies to refuel one another at sea. The metric linear measure system has been accepted by Western Union artillery, but centigrade has not yet triumphed over Fahrenheit. Basic manuals for all Western Union forces will be published. The five sovereign nations have not, however, exchanged their secret codes...
...Shot in the Arm. Huachipato's pig-iron capacity of 205,000 metric tons makes it only half as big as Volta Redonda, and tiny by Pittsburgh standards. But the 235,000 tons of steel it is expected to turn out each year when full production is reached will make Chile virtually self-sufficient in steel...
...When the metric system was devised by French revolutionists in 1791, its fundamental unit, the meter ("measure" in Greek), was defined as one ten-millionth of the distance between the earth's poles and its equator. Since this distance is hard to determine accurately, it was abandoned, and the standard meter bar put in its place. Most nations have copies of it. Even the stiff-necked British check their "standard foot" against the meter...
...Paris meter bar has served the world well, but there are two things wrong with it. Modern techniques of measurement make the fine engraved lines on the bar seem coarse and irregular. Then too, many scientists feel that the metric system should not be based on an arbitrary length, but upon some length taken from nature itself. Then, if all the meter bars were destroyed (by atomic war, for instance), the standard could be reestablished, as good as ever, when the radioactive smoke had cleared away...
...directed Congress to fix the standards of weights & measures, Congress did nothing about it for 80 years. Congressmen were passionately interested in the subject, but they could not agree. Repeatedly Washington begged Congress to pass a standardization law; in 1795 he suggested that the U.S. adopt the new French metric system. Jefferson thought he had a better idea: he wanted a system based on the length of a uniform cylindrical pendulum which, at 45° N. latitude, would move at the rate of one beat a second. Congress did not go for that, either...