All countries across the globe have officially adopted the metric system except the United States of America, Liberia and Burma (Myanmar).
Feet, yards, inches, miles, gallons, ounces, these may mean something to some people around the world, while others struggle with online converters or, worse, software designed to convert these values, that are not reliable most of the times.
“The money would be pretty good/ if a quart of milk were still a dollar/ or even if a quart of milk were still a quart”
—Cowboy Junkies, “A Horse in the Country”, from Black Eyed Man, (1992).
The Junkies lyric is a reference to the mid-70s when Canada was shifiting to the metric system which meant that an imperial quart shrunk by about 14 percent into a litre.
Canada passed the metric enabling legislation, as I discoverd, in the late 60s, and began the changever in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Had we waited a few years to pass this legislation, we’d still be on the Imperial/Avoirdupois system.
But come on. Liberia, Burma and the US? Map discovered via Digg! Click here to read the entry.
Comments 1
Actually, the United States adopted the metric system in 1866,. Indeed, the use of the metric system was made legal in the United States by the Metric Act of 1866.. This law made it unlawful to refuse to trade or deal in metric quantities.
Nobody seems to have told the American people though! Except the park rangers, I seem to recall park signs giving heights of mountains in metres (sorry, ‘meters’) when we were there in 1993, strangely, distances between places were still listed in miles!
Posted 14 Aug 2008 at 9:08 am ¶Post a Comment