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Well in my growing up 70s-80s in primary/high school, We got metric courses a few time and some of the books covered it (did you know that a meter is roughly th

Well in my growing up 70s-80s in primary/high school, We got metric courses a few time and some of the books covered it (did you know that a meter is roughly three feet, the distance from the floor to a doorknob? I learnt that in school.) In the early 80s there was another push many California road signs had dual postings of miles/kilometers to destinations. Cars also had dual gauges on their speedometers, large soda bottles were now in liters instead of ounces. Then... it stopped again. Wikipedia fills in some of those blanks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_State... I myself would like to see it change over, it would be a pain for a year or so, but then everything is standard with the rest of the world.

mindcrime 13y ago
Yeah, I remember the same deal in the 80's. In Middle School out teachers made a point to tell us that the US had switched to the Metric system, and taught us all about metric units, etc. And, as you say, road signs often had both units, car speedometers had both, etc. And then it just stopped. No notice, no noise, no nothing. Everybody just stopped talking about it, the road-signs went back to all Imperial measurements, car speedometers dropped km/h readouts. As far as I can tell, the only real legacy of metrification in the US is that anybody who does much tinkering with mechanical "stuff" that might involve bits that are imported, needs a toolbox loaded with both Metric and SAE sized tools. To be honest, I always half figured the whole Metric movement was arranged by Craftsman, Mac and Snap-On in order to double the volume of tools they sold.