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>> i have to navigate everything over here. thank you all for coming tonight i'm going to steal the line of my friend. the last reading i went to she

sent it just so exciting to not have to read a book upside down which is what we children's book illustrated is always have to do so i'm going to start by reading the opening of the book. atrocities, the solidarity movement 3-mile island. these were some of the stories on the cbs evening news broadcast of february, 1982. after getting through these reports they tried to get viewers to stick through commercials for the final segment of the evening he defeated measure. the story appeared a few minutes before 7:00 and was introduced by dan rather who had replaced walter cronkite the year before. other countries have done it for years but versions of the metric system didn't draw many and only inched along. bob schaffer has more on what it

after a lot of the plot and tax dollars spent and other things to tell us why we need to go metric is in trick system that's about to go. he wasn't talking about ronald reagan didn't ask the metric system. he descended a something called the u.s. metric board delete either was playing in one of them earlier. the report went on to interview a few folks about these issues including these two who are arch enemies. tom wolfe was working on the vanities but his big point had been the right stuff of astronauts. so he goes on and was noting that nassau has managed to go to

the moon and it was to blame on the blame on the collectibles he believed things were done better in europe and for the most obedient colonials when it comes to things intellectual. the other guy wolves have actually introduced and have been one of the merry pranksters that he had gone on to found the catalog in his commencement speech they called google. he was against anything in the world against the global capitalism which he took the metric system was doing. he also believed really deeply in the concept of measures came from the human body and that there was something important in that.

the defeated measure air on my 12th birthday february, 1982. my existence had been coincident with america's move to work centric system. the national bureau of science's sciences standards report came out that said it was time for america to go metric and that should have been in ten years. in 1975, gerald ford signed into law with the metric act in which he said we have miles to go before we achieved what we were looking for and then the board was killed. i remember this this ruler that had measurements on it and we were not supposed to do anything else. we didn't have to learn customary measures and i had

this activity book. i loved anything to do with superheroes and it's amazing this book was even too boring for me to want to do. it was by this comic guy that was famous for doing a book called the great society. he also did another one that was i think super bob and ted which was the kennedy boys. so he had a black-and-white worldview where it is metric man against batman racing in miles per hour. [laughter] which gives you a a 90 year old metric argument back then. to get to what stewart brand was

talking about, he was one of the main guys. we all know the most obvious. i also grew up in the horse business. my family had a horse farm. a hand is about 4 inches. hand measures are historically one of the most popular pitchers of all. if you go from the tip of your thumb. to have your arms spread wide apart the idea comes from taking up the measures when you wind the rope around. and thank you it comes from the elbow which is the greatest measure of all it's the one

everything in the bible is measured in. it was also carried from islam off away from indonesia. many people get their mind to the idea that it's all about replacing the foot into the pound in everything else. it has to do with the decimal fractions into the way that it's dividing stuff. the reason it was needed in the first place was that decimals are not such a great way to divide things. if you try to divide the pizza into ten slices it's not very easy. the only thing that it's good for is counting on your fingers. so, fair to good they are excellent for tallying when you

want to have a running tally of something. but they are not good for fractions. the decimal point had to be invented and it was invented a few times that it only caught on when this guy is intended. you have been in the attic somewhere. when he was still in school in the university he wrote a little painful at and it basically introduced decimal fractions and went nowhere for about a hundred years and then in the 17th century mathematicians started to use it in the decimals have

caught on among the educated folks. they ran to the idea of the decimals were these guys. thomas jefferson and alexander hamilton and governor morris. they were involved in the creation of the dollar, the first purely decimal measure that was ever put forward by your country. everything was divided into quarters, almost everything that the roman empire did was in 12th. shillings per 20th of the pound and that came from charlemagne. so anyway, they had this idea that the new country had to have a revolutionary system of measurement to go along with the

revolutionary idea. so they came up with this. and you can see the spelling, the original spelling didn't change about 100 years later. plus jefferson came up with a system when he was the secretary of state. washington asked and basically charged him coming up with a system of american measurement and it didn't but he came up with the first comprehensive system of the measurement that was ever proposed to the government. it obviously didn't work. but the reason it didn't work as he called congress they shouldn't vote on it because there was a better system coming. if there was another system coming from france. during the revolution the friend

she came up with a fairly radical version of every system of measurement. they not only does the last and weight and volume but also the calendar, the thermometer into the clock which didn't catch on although some of the people did convert their watches and clocks at home and during the reign of terror when he was having his way they were actually put on to the public spaces. the whole reign of terror than to go well in the anglo-saxon countries and it wasn't very popular to say we should go metric at that time are you most jefferson had his own problems and we thought that it was too french. this guy however managed to spread the tens can he spread

the metric calendar all across the parts of europe into the first decimal currency to ever be outside of the u.s. and somewhat he spread spread the meter, the kilogram did okay with the bureaucrats but it didn't go down so well with the people. here is one of the reasons. this kind of stuff was handed out to try to explain what the metric system was. it's one thing to explain how to put together bookshelves with visuals but it's not so easy to explain a measurement system. the real problem is people were completely illiterate and they didn't know how to use numbers.

they literally used things like this, tally sticks. this was still used and what they would do is please represented numbers and they would divide a stick into and give one to the person that deposited money into the would keep the other and that's literally how they kept track. the idea of people really trying to figure out how to view the metric system was almost impossible. the most popular thing was basically the reach.

what was difficult is that people would ask for something like the storekeeper would fold the cloth once and again and they would cut it. that was then replaced by 1.25 to 110 plus 200 plus 5,000 where they were supposed to make the currency available to everybody made it available only to people who were truly educated. >> what happened when napoleon went down they were restored all over europe and the metric system went away along with any revolutionary values. it was very sad for john quincy

adams who had the biggest crush on the metric system. he liked jefferson was charged with trying to come up with a system of measures. america never stopped figuring out what system of the measurement of there would be and they asked we need a system of measurement. james madison was a big fan of decimals into thomas jefferson was he had a carriage odometer installed that was divided into the heinz and had each time that went off and he was one of the first people john quincy adams approached interested good luck i hope you do better than we do. he wrote while he was secretary of state what is considered the

greatest work ever written about measurement. he talked about all that great things about the system but there was one reason he couldn't recommend and that's because the metric system wasn't being used anywhere. the french revolution was from ddt and 30 revolution and there was a huge wave of nostalgia that swept across not only france but also places that had ike adderley and belgium and they started to bring back all kind of stuff such as a tricolor and the metric system so it first came back and belgium and it was again heated by almost

all people. the people that were into it became zealous about it. this is alexander vladimir biggest star in the world he was eventually quits to tony doctor. he got kicked out of a medical school because he did put through voices onto cadavers. he then went to one one day in and made demand made a fortune and returned to france and made cultural exchange his life work. he organized petitions to congress and organized the first exchange and he was a part of something called the international association so we are talking about the 1850s and the metric system has spread

to the poor countries but it hasn't gone any further than that. most people didn't think it was going to go further than that. place the tip the scales was germany and this is why. germany was at the time of the french revolution something like a thousand. this is when things were starting to get a bit more clarified. not only were they into an extraordinary number of states that the parts of the different states were not even continuous and then there were cities and towns. when germany spent most of the 19th century trying to unify, prussia, the big one on the right, was the nation and became germany formed around. the problem with everybody else is else's they didn't want to become all prussian.

so especially those in the empire that had been french they wanted to keep the meter. so when germany said okay we will accept that but they wouldn't accept the frank. now let me go on to the next. one person went to columbia with me. he was a guy that created lexington avenue. the one over there is napoleon the french emperor. samuel and napoleon were in the teen 60s proponents of turning the frames into completely international money. the amazing thing to me, $5, 25

francs into 1868. this was a token of appreciation that they gave to sprint back. the treasury secretary said they were going to accept the frank and it was something people were treating that their wound up being a big back -- and the in the congress about it and it never happened. what also happened and really tanked is germany even though he decided to go with the meter they wound up going into the mark. the big thing about this claim which wasn't going to be called the frank butts v. europa that it actually started the gold standard. the negotiations have ended in 1867 paris. but the gold standard was the revolt. she wasn't done yet. he still wanted america to have

a better system appointed and so did other people. the most revolutionary point that ever came out of america was the nickel. the first appeared in 1866. it weighed exactly 5 grams which was the holy grail appointed to reform reformers that one unit of value would equal 1 gram of eight. not only that but it was exactly 2 centimeters across. so you could measure it. if you put five nickels nickels out of the would have is the metric hand. if you put three of them on a scale that would be, they would match the limits of the new postal standards and at the weight of five cents it was matched and was going to be the price of standard the standard anywhere in the world. so, for rivals into the academy

of sciences this was put in the pockets of every american and was considered usually important but it wound up not being that important. charles sumner and the last guy over there is no ability we. she's one of my favorite people i've researched. he had three causes in his life, library refund, the metric system and simplified spelling. he changed his name to be called dui rate do we basically based his decimal system or less on the metric system and forms the bureau does a propaganda arm in the 1860s and 70s.

it was more of a high-minded group that was pushing not just the metric system but the form of the clock and the calendar. it was creating standard time and the concept of time zones spread all around the world. to give you an idea of how messed up it was before the time zones if you are leaving the train in philadelphia you would have to figure out okay it's noon in front of you today i'm going to indianapolis where it is now 11:18 then you would have to change your watch to give up having:18 and in indianapolis would have figured out your next connection. so that was the big success. the big failure is the metric system part of it was the country wasn't ready for it and it was an amazing propaganda

campaign against them build on the work of charles smith one of the great astronomers of the day. he would also get completely obsessed with things. one he did the first great archaeological ad and his drawings and sketches and everything else were really wonderful and precise. he believed in the pyramid he had found there was an inch that was handed down by god because god had clearly built great pyramid because think pick even the egyptians couldn't have possibly died. what they but they used was exactly 25 inches long which meant through the peer that it has survived through the british and now that should actually be

spread across the world. it was a little bit more scientific than that but not hard. the amazing thing is how many proponents there were not only in britain that there were also astronomers in france and belgium thought it was a pretty cool idea. there were also some really crazed followers in the states, people who for instance wanted to give back the statue of liberty because it had been built using the meters and centimeters. the story didn't end there. from the 1890s to the 1920s it was before congress. every year there were bills being put forth to read one bill passed in the 1890s and quickly draw back. people like alexander graham bell, george westinghouse testified before congress that there was the push and pull that

never happened. america was getting stronger and stronger and the argument that we were behind the rest of the world was homeless. -- hollow. if you look at the little orange those are considered wasted days. this was pushed by people that george eastman investment in the idea of moving to a more sane and rational calendar. for years there was a bill put before the congress but said the new calendar should read january to february, vern, march. the amazing thing is that it was taken up by the league of

nations and their unit to the perfect calendar. the only thing is you would have 13 friday the 13th century year. there were various conference is being held and two things tanked it. a quaker was interested with a lot of americans. he had been basically chasing the dream for about 30 or 40 years. in the late 20s he achieved in like his system was going to go forward.

he heard about this and he heated. he thought it was regularized and what may come for regular and she put her portion into coming up with an alternate alternative system she called the world calendar. the other thing that happened as the great depression. all measurement reform at that point stopped. the metric system that had been in the public eye since the 1860s completely vanished in places like japan. it was all completely over. after world war ii there was a

fought that they were going to become more popular because hitler was nothing so much as all the ones getting help for getting equipment in the units but after world war ii when colonialism broke apart that is when the metric system actually jumped forward and it looked like it was going to overtake english measures. america was oblivious to any of this going on until spike nick. when they got the atomic bomb and had rockets and satellites going over the earth people believed there could be atomic bombs dropped in the satellite. we need to get our kids to become engineers. at that point they were tortured

starting at third or fourth grade every conceivable map but people also started looking at the metric system. the head of the finance committee said what is this matrix system which is perfectly understandable because nobody had seen and heard or talked about the metric system in about 35 years. in the late 60s the literature started to appear. frank donovan prepared. i loved the cover and the imperative. let me see if i can find some of the things he wrote about.

they quoted the nobel prize and the secret weapon of communism. all all informed opinions that change are inevitable and donovan thought that was fine. the 10 billion-dollar estimate of the conversion is also totally fine. he also believed one reason americans accept the system, weights and measures is that they do not know that a better system exists. there was also the metric journal this was happening

during spring he said this has been deleted because your editors sent to several years in europe and much time is spent in czechoslovakia he did enjoy using only metric units. the journal also said that the coming down was going to make the depression i. picnic -- sunday picnic. on a few occasions they were wrestling with it and started putting things in the trick units. coca-cola, 1973, seven up in the

bottles that the leader was in plastic and there was also some propaganda. think metric. it was the day of the bathing beauty babes. then there were those that were completely against it. he was a british mistake that did things like took the rolling stones for flying saucers. there was also a guy named dean crackle who said something like metric is definitely communist.

one language, one measurement system. there's 160 acres. we built the homes and the down buckets in the textbook that had buffalo bill writing across the columbus of the west but the anti-metric activist was the one that made these t-shirts. there he is hanging out with tom wolfe and he put together the football which happened. it was covered by the new yorker, "new york times," thousands of people turned out. it happened in 1981 before the metric system was killed.

one of the surprising things about the movement is that it wasn't the people who were for the metric system at the time were the ones that seemed the less thinking at the less good arguments and whether or not you agreed with their particular arguments it seemed like the people who were bringing fresh ideas to the movement were the guys like this. what helped track would help the metric movement of stuff like road signs. it wasn't a good time in the country. it was a kind of i'm not going to take it anymore. take this job and shove it was number one on the cards.

we have to find all the things wrong. i don't think that it was ronald reagan's reagan's fault that got killed. the country was suddenly trying to look to itself into thinking it okay we doing a lot of things right. we want to look at what we do right and not what other people do write and whether that is right or wrong. as of the metric system just basically totally disappeared. but disappeared in the popular culture was on miami vice talking about the keys of cocaine being kilograms. i will end on that. he was the head of the metric movement in england and he refused to sell his bananas by

the kilogram. he was arrested on the fourth of july, 2000 and he became a martyr figure. one of the things i found to look at the measure is in the supermarket because that is the place where you see that america is not, the idea is crazy and almost everything that we die is using metric components. the cars we buy our metric. we are now going to whatever space stuff we do is metric. it's mostly we just want to weigh ourselves, measure ourselves in the units. we want to have road signs to the miles, things we understand. the place it is the most jumbled up and confused as the supermarket.

we buy 16 ounces of spaghetti, 16 ounces of flour and sugar. where it gets messed up however is with the drinks. >> while i prefer to prepare the drinking portion of the evening does anybody have any question? if anybody has any -- sure. >> what are the philosophical reasons for refusing the metric system for someone like william burroughs rather than the nationalistic reasons. >> there were people like the hall of fame where it was a nationalistic kind of thing.

most of the other people that were divided by different things. he was the football guy from a family of architects who believed in this the idea of these other kinds of proportions the man of da vinci is that there are not going to be any decimals. he was dead set against the metric system. other people there was the idea being part of your culture which is where i stand that there is no reason to change over the metric. most of us have smart phones we can speak with 16 ounces and grams and it automatically pops up. so for me we want to keep -- we don't on the languages to die out. there's also this idea that we

want our kids to be smarter if they were only learning the metric system but i don't think like any nobel prize winners to learn customary units are going to fail because of it and one was learning more. >> [inaudible] >> now i am pro- measures and i think we should keep it all. one place we could use the metric system is the quids -- liquids. i think there were a couple of wyoming brewers who restarted

it. it's half a gallon filled with 4 pints. the craft came out of the u.s. and i think the reason it gets to be used as it seems like a more honest system of measurement. it sounds like it comes right off of the farm. almost all of our dairy is still when i realize it is still ingrained in people's mind is when you actually buy.

if it is played for 6 milliliters it doesn't really -- we just pay absolutely no attention to it. >> [inaudible] >> this happened to be the only that had inches and centimeters on it. do we know why through the ruler on the top backs in canada or in the u.s. [inaudible]

>> one thing i think about the metric system is that it has a name and customary measures is the first time i've ever heard a name. if you are getting drunker than you think it is because it is about ten to 15% more than you would have.

>> why is alcohol and metrics quick the metric system got further in the 70s the winegrowers wanted to export more. at that time the industry was purely serving the u.s. so they want to embrace standards, so they pushed for booze to go attract.

it is a big thing people hadn't used the big plastic bottles. one thing that is interesting but i may be the only person that does this when you go to the supermarket and you are looking at what people are selling you have cheap soda that has fructose corn syrup that is in the 2-liter bothers to be two bottles and it comes in the customary measures and fluid ounces. the opposite is true. it comes from europe and so almost all of that stuff is in poland spring now.

it was a weather satellite that went to mars. it actually created kind of a big divide because there were scientists accept luck it was just a stupid era that could

have been in any of the other million things that had to happen. in the sciences there's also the police. they would be called the jelly doughnut for energy and that is something people could understand is how much is in the jelly doughnut. so even within science there's a little bit of a divide as to how zealous they should get. tom wolfe was totally wrong. everybody wanted to use the

metric system. the only reason that they were not using the metric system is most stuff into aero dot x. is being the one area that the u.s. was still dominating to the point that they didn't have to go metric. they were just scathingly angry about it and there was another attempt to start putting up more highway signs and i think it was 92 and there were so many reactions people just hated it so much. the amazing thing is that while

the numbers for people wanting the metric system is just plummeting and what is fascinating is that the same time at the same time the country has been getting more and more metric. they heavily pushed for the government to go totally metric and that is one of the things. >> the only demonstration that we need -- [applause]