Mark Hewitt wrote:

"Henry" wrote in message
...
jj wrote:

I'm curious, has there ever been an attempt at going metric in the US?
e.g.
using Celsius? How do people feel about it?

In the early '70s, there were some Joint Resolutions which said,
basically, that the US should begin thinking about getting ready to
prepare for the possibility of considering a change to the metric
system. In the mid '70s I worked a job in a place that had international
sales and in light of the supposed atmosphere of metrification that was
spreading across the land I made a remark one day about the firm's units
of measurement. The foreman just about jumped down my throat. 'Why
should WE change?!?' he demanded. 'We're number one! Let the rest of
those countries [sic] change to OUR way!'


And why not, I suppose! Americans can do their thing, just as long as they
don't expect everyone else to follow. On the whole they haven't. America has
different standards to the rest of the world for many things, measurments,
mobile phones etc.

Personally, living in the UK they've been trying to introduce metric here
for decades, and it's largely suceeded. However there are still many shops
selling fruit etc by the pound, even though it's actually illegal, they get
away with it. My view is that it isn't because of what customers want,
rather than if they price in KG their prices would look a lot higher!

The best situation, IMO is to have one system or another. In the US they
seem to have decided on imperial measurments, which is good. Unlike here
were we have a mishmash of both.

That confused the heck out of me when I was in England. I can do metric
and I can do imperial, but both was very confusing. Between that and money
conversion, the whole trip was one constant math problem.

Manda