Whatever
Happened To
The Metric
System? How
America Kept
Its Feet
by John Bemelmans Marciano
(Bloomsbury, 2014, 310 pages,
hard-cover with inset of colour and
black and white photos)
Quick: Where were you the day
the Metric System died in America?
ctually, it’s a trick (and
tricky) question. For one
thing, despite what the
gas-station attendant
pumping your gas in gallons
would tell you, the metric system is
very much alive in The U.S.A. Your
medicine comes in metric doses (no
one, on a long trans-Atlantic flight,
asks for 1/18th of an ounce of Xanax),
as does cocaine (in kilos), and soda
(remember those famous 1970s
“2-litre Pepsi ads”, where the kid
knocks the bottle off the table in
super slow-motion and the family is
horrified—until the bottle doesn’t
break! It bounces!) And if you’ve
watched the Olympics or the World
Cup (in Russia and Brazil,
respectively), all of those sprints are
measured in metric.
But then, we go about buying our
pound of butter, gallon of milk, and
sponsoring the neighbourhood kids in
A
a “two-mile-Fun-Run” to cure cancer,
reverting to our own weird Americanonly system of measurements.
John Bemelmans Marciano, who sat
down with us to talk about his latest
book in his Red Hook, Brooklyn home,
has written what must be considered
the definitive (and eminently
readable) book on the metric system:
Whatever Happened To The Metric
System? How America Kept Its Feet.
“Actually, I wanted to do a full-on
history of measurement, going back to
the 1600s”, Marciano noted. However,
like all authors who must work with a
heavy-handed editor, his book begins
in the late 18th-century, with a triad
of Americans in Paris: Thomas
Jefferson, John Adams, and the bon
vivant of the Parisian salons, Benjamin
Franklin.
Turns out that the Metric System is
(or was) a lot more American than
most of us ever gave it credit for. It
was that renaissance man—architect,
president, vice-president, secretary
of state, University of Virginia
Founder, and author—Thomas
Jefferson who, per Marciano, really
got the Metric System rolling, by (1)
getting out of America and over to
our newest ally, France (who hated
Great Britain at least as much as we
did), where a fetish to measure
everything from the circumference of
the earth to systemizing weights and
distance and coinage was all the rage,
and (2) coming up with a decimal
system we still use today: our dollar
currency (after all, our dimes, dollars,
etc. are based on tens—nickels and
quarters not withstanding).
Marciano says that the book took
him “About four years to research and
write” and I believe him; for what the
book mercifully lacks in foot- or
end-notes, there’s no question that
Marciano has done his (and our)
homework on The Measuring System
That Almost Was.
And it’s a personal tale, too.
Marciano, who is sorely stricken with
tall, dark and handsome European
good looks, and American fitness, was
born the same year I was (and, for
that matter, Luxe Beat Magazine
Editor-in-Chief Sherrie Wilkolaski),
1970. This was the beginning of “The
Decade of Nightmares” (to use Philip
Jenkins’ title) and at the same time,
“It Seemed Like Nothing Happened”
(Peter N. Carroll’s title), and whatever
else was going on (Watergate, the end
of the Vietnam War, the hostage
situation in Iran, Three Mile-Island),
the Metric System was going to
happen here, dammit! As President
G