Whatever A
Happened To
The Metric
System? How
America
Kept Its Feet
(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 “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 18thcentury, with a triad of Americans
in Paris: Thomas Jefferson, John
Adams, and the bon vivant of the
Parisian salons, Benjamin Franklin.
by John Bemelmans Marciano
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