Word: metrication
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...refusal to abandon the English system of measurement in favor of the metric system is shortsighted. Our stubbornly clinging to feet and pounds has a negative effect on everything from tourism to machine-tool exports. Britain, Canada and Australia have changed successfully. Are Americans any less intelligent or adaptable...
...Underwood. "Many of their meetings were quite acrimonious. People who came to them tended to be the naysayers, so the impression was that most of the public feed-back was strongly negative." The board, though legally still on the books, lasted just four years. In 1982 the Office of Metric Programs was created to move the responsibilities of the metric board to the Department of Commerce. Budget and staffing were cut, from $3 million to $300,000 and subsequently reduced even further...
These days, conversion to metric is just a vaguely unpleasant memory for most consumers. The highway signs are largely gone, and the pumps dole out gas mostly by the gallon again. The few visible monuments to metric conversion include liter bottles of soda and liquor, time-and-temperature signs that * still flash degrees in Celsius, and gram equivalents on food containers...
...metric system is alive and well, on the other hand, in many areas where it makes sense. An estimated 25% of U.S. manufacturers are metric; more than 60% of FORTUNE 500 companies produce at least some metric products, in contrast to between 10% and 20% in the early 1970s. The automobile industry, for example, is almost entirely metric...
...changeover to the metric system, in other words, need not be an all-or- nothing proposition -- a remarkably sensible perspective. After all, the reasons for conversion are economic: it is important for U.S. industry to compete in international markets, but there is no particular value in changing the weather report on the nightly news. For most Americans, it seems, an ounce of prevention was worth a kilogram of cure...