>> in 1975, gerald ford signed it into law with the metric act. >> then when i turned 12, the

board was killed. i have scattered memories and remember this blue plastic ruler that are measures on it and we were not spode -- supposed -- to do anything else. i have this activity box and this was even boring for me. it was by the person who did the great society with super lbj. and he did another one that was, i think, super ted and super bob and teddy which was the kennedy boys as batman and robin. we had a black and white view

from the maze section where it is metric man racing again bad man who was racing in miles per hour which is something on the tenure of the whole metric argument back then. getting to what stewart brand was talking about and he really was one of the main guys who was a huge road block. he was obsessed with body measures. i did not do this chart by the way. we know the foot. that is the most obvious. i grew up in the horse business and my father had a horse farm and it is easy to go this way. and hand measures were historically one of the most poplar measures at all. the span is if you go to the tip

of your toe. the idea of fathom something is taking up the measures when you wind your anchorchoanchor's rop. the cubit was the greatest measure of it. it was measured in the arc in the bible and it is used in i india still. people get their idea into the mind of it replacing the foot and pound and everything else. but it has to do with decimal fractions and the way of dividing stuff. the reason the metric system is needed in the first place is decimals are not a great way of

dividing something. if you tried to divide a pizza into five slices it isn't easy but four and six are really easy. the only thing that ten is good for is counting on your fingers. so they are great for tallying when you just have a running tally of something. but they are not good for fractions. one thing that was blowing me away was the fraction, the decimal point, had to be invented. and it was invented a few times but it is only caught on when this guy invented. simon steven. i am sure you have your french trader cards and savants? somewhere in your mom's attic? tom stevens was perhaps the

greatest flemish science scientist of all time. he wrote a pamphlet that introduced decimal fraction and it went nowhere for a hundred years and in the 17th centuries they started using it and by the 18th century decimals caught on by the educates folks. thomas jefferson, alexander hamilton and governor morris here were really into decimal. they were all involved in the creation of the dollar. the dollar is the first purely decimal measure ever put forward by a country. everything was divided essentially into halves, quarters, 12ths especially. everything the roman empire did

was 12th. shillings were 20th of pound and that came from their system. they had an under we needed a revolutionary way of doing things to go along with the revolution idea. so they came up with the first coin ever meaade. this is how dime was spelled for every years. washington charged him with coming up with a system of american measu american americasment ameasureme up with the first system of

decimal measures opposed to a government. it obviously didn't work because they told congress not to vote on it because there was another system coming from france. during the revolution, the french came up with a thoroughly radical version of every system of measurement. they not only decimalized length and weight and volume but they decimalized the calendar, thermometer and the 10-hour clock which didn't catch on too much in france. some of the hard core people did convert their watch and clocks at home and during the rain of terror -- rein -- they were put on to the public spaces. the whole rein of terror didn't

go down well in the anglo saxon countries. it wasn't poplar to go metric at the time. je jefferson thought it was too french at the time and ignored it. this guy managed to spread the metric calendar which had ten-day weeks all across the parts of europe he conquered. he went to frank and somewhat started the meter, the kilogram and it did okay with bureaucrats but 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 is one thing to try to

explain how to put together ikea book shelves with pure visuals but not so easy to explain the metric system. 90% of the population was illiterate and didn't know how to use numbers. they used tally sticks like this. at the time of the revolution this was still in use by the british. what they would do is the notches represented illness and they would divide a stick in two and give one to the person who had deposited money and they would keep the other and that is how they kept track of records. so the idea of really keeping track of -- let's go back to these people. the idea people are trying to

figure out how to use the metric system was almost impossible. the most poplar thing the meter replaces was the measure of l and that was the measure of clothe. it was basically the reach. you hold a piece of cloth from here and measure. the way that people would ask for something, can i have an 8th of an l and the store keeper would fold the cloth once, again and then cut it. that was replaced by .125 meters. so a 10th plus 200ths plus 5000ths. so decimals were supposed to make it available to everyone but it only made it available to people who were truly well

educated. this guy, john quincy adams, what happened who napoleon went down kings were restored around europe and the metric system went away. it was very sad for john quincy adams who had the biggest crush on the metic are system than anyone. he was the ambassador to russia when napoleon same rolling in and he called it the greatest invention since the printing press. when he returned to america to become secretary of state, he like jefferson was charged with trying to come up with a system of measures. america had never stopped trying to figure out the system of measurement there would be. washington kept asking people. james madison was a fan of decimals. thomas jefferson had an odometer

installed that had a chime that went off ever tenth mile. he was the first person that john quincy adams approached and he said good luck. adam wrote, while secretary of the state, what was considered to greatest work ever written about measurements. he talked about all of the great things about the metric system but there was one reason he could not possible recommend it and that is because it wasn't being used anywhere. that changed, though, with another wave of revolution. this image here which is the most famous image of the french revolution was from the 1830 revolution and there was a huge wave of nostalagia that spread across areas that touched

revolution and they started bringing things back like the tricolor and the metric system. it came back first in belgium and then france. it was again hated by almost all people and took about ten years to start even showing up on the market and start being used. but the people who were into it became real zealous about it. this guy is one of my favorites. he is named alexander that mere. he was the biggest star at the time. he was in medical school but kicked off because he through voices on cadaver. he went and made a fortune and made cultural exchange his life work. he made petitions before

congress, appeared before congress, organized the first exchange of metric standards to come to the states and he was a part of something called the international association. we are talking about the 1850s now and the metric system has spread to these latin countries, sort of the core french countries but hasn't gone any fu further than that. the place that tipped the scale was germany. germany was at the time of the french resolution was a thousand little states. when you see the different colors and this is where things were getting more clarified. they were into a number of states but the parts of the states were not continues and there were cities and free towns and bishop wrecks.

when germany spent most of the 19th century trying to unify. prussia, the big guy on the right, was the nation and king that germany formed around. the problem with everybody else is they didn't want to become all prussian. so the parts of the empire that were french wanted to keep the meter and the frank. so they said we will accept the meter but we will not accept the frank. now, let me move on here to the next slide. samu samuel rougel, he created lexinton avenue and napoleon the

third is the guy over there, the french emperor. they were basically, in the 1860s, leading proponents of turning the frank into international money. the amazing thing to me was -- here i will show it to you. 5:18 franks and this was a token of appreciation given to spread back to america. america was said to accept the frank and it was something that people were treating as it was going to happen but there was a big backlash. germany, even though he decided to not take the meter wouldn't take the frank. they went to the mark. it was going to be called maybe

a uropia and it was actually starting the gold standard. the gold standard was the result of this breakdown. he wasn't done yet and wanted america to have a better system of coinage. so did a lot of other people. and the most revolutionary point that every came out in america was the nickel. the first nickel appeared in 1866. it weighed five grams which was the holy grail of coinage for reformers. the one unit of value equaled one gram of weight and it was two centimeters across. so if you put five nickels out you had the metric hand. three on a scale would exactly

match the limit of the new postal standards. and the weight, 5 cents, if it was matched to the frank was going to be the price of the stamps anywhere in the world. so for rougels and people from the american national academy of science it was hugely important and wound up not being that important. metric flight started happening after the war, really. charles sumner, fredic barnered and mel drid dewy who is my favorite and he had library reform and simplified spelling and he changed his last time to

be spelled dui. he based his decimal system more or less on the metric system and formed the american metric bureau which was a propagranda arm. fredrick was part of a society that was pushing not just the metic system but reform of the clock and calendar and curency. this map shows how messed up the clock was. if you were leaving philadelphia it would be noon and you would have to figure out the time in indiana and then you would have

change your watch and figure your next connection which might be in lewisville. that was their big success. their big failure was the metric system. part of it was the country wasn't ready and the then part of it was this amazing campaign built on the work of charles smith. smith was won -- one of the great aststronomers of the day. he was -- astronomers of the day -- he did the first dig and his drawings are wonderful. he believed in the great pyramid he found an inch happened down

by god because god built the great pyramids because the egyptians couldn't have done it. it was exactly 25 inches long which meant that gone gave the inch through the pyramid, it had survived through the british and should be spread across the world. it was a little more scientific but not really. there amazing thing was how many p proponents of it where and that was spread all throughout the world. there were crazed followers in the state. for who wanted to give back the statue of libberty because it was build in centimeters.

the story doesn't end there. a bill passed in the 1980 and was drawn back. people like alexander grand bell testified before congress. but it was just -- the push/pull never happened. america was getting stronger and stronger and the argument we were behind the rest of the world is hollow. one reform measurement going a lot further along was the movement to change the calendar to have 13 months that were all 28 days. the orange days are considered wasted day and broken weeks. this was pushed by people who spent a lot of money in the idea of moving to a more sane

rational calendar. there was a bill that said the new calendar should read january, february, vern, and march. vern being the equinox. it was later going to be called soul. it was taken up by the league of nation and you can see the perfect caldender is the same and the only negative is you got 13 fridays that were on friday the 13th. t two things tanked this. one, thing is the guy on the left is a quaker and he was tracing this dream for about 30-40 years and in the late '20s

he achieved some kind of fame and it looked like his system was going to go forward. at an event hosted by dewy, the lady over the heard about the 13 month scheme and hated it thinking it was unbalanced and made no sense. there was a system that was going to practice it into quarter and make the months more regular and she put her fortune into coming up with this ultimate system she called the world calendar. when the league of nation was all for the other guy, she created a wedge. and the great depression also happened and the metric system that was in the public eye vanished. places like japan, which were

looking to go metric, totally stopped. the idea of the frank becoming the world coin. the frank was all over latin america, russia, it was all over. america, now after world war ii there was a thought that the american units were going to become more poplar because hitler was nothing so much as all metric. and all of the countries were metric and all of the ones getting help were getting equipment. after world war ii when colonialism broke apart and it looked like the metric was going to overtake the american measures and america was oblivious this was going on until the russian's got the

atomic beat and beat us to having satellites going over the earth, people believed there would be atomic bombs being dropped from the satellites. suddenly it was like we need our kids to be engineers. the new math came in and kids were tortured starting in third and fourth great with decimals and algebra starting being taught in middle school. and people strata started looking at the metric system and the head of the community said what is metrics system and no one had talked about it in 35 years so that was perfectly understandable. in the late '60s, literature started to appear like this guy.

i love the color and the suddenly threatening imperative of it. let me see if i can find some of the things that old frank donovan wrote about. >> the communist quoted the metric system as the secret weapon of commune ism. he believes one reasons america

accepts this measure is they don't know a better system exist. there is another journal released by a czech journalist who fronted the november 1968 metric today during prague's spring. he said this issue has been delayed because your editor has been traveling around and despite the struggles he enjoyed using the metric unit. and he said the 1930's depression would be a sunday picnic if we didn't change over.

at first the metric system did pretty well. there was peanuts wrestling with it, time magazine and news week started printing in metric units. 1973, coca-cola made litters for first time. and there was sexy propeganda and then, and i'll leave this open a moment while i find some more -- and then there are the guys who are totally against it. william s burrows, a guy named john michele who was this british mystic who did things

like took the rolling stones to stonehen stonehen stonehenge to look for flying saucers. there was a guy named dean crackle who was the director of the cowboy hall of fame in oklahoma. he said metric system is definitely communist. we homesteaded 168 acres not a hector. we milk with gallon buckets. and particularly pointed out a textbook with buffalo bill riding with kilometers measured. but the number one anti-activis was the guy who made these t-shirts and put together something called the football. there are way too many puns in the movie.

it was at the battering terminal where the faerry leaves for the island but it was abandoned at the time. and thousands of people turned out to cover this and it was happening basically in 1981 right before the metric system was killed. one of the surprising things to me about the whole movement was it wasn't the people who were for the metric system at the time were the ones that seemed the less thinking, had the less good arguments and whether or not you agree with their particular arguments, it seems like the people bringing fresh ideas to the movement were guys like this. but what really killed the metric movement was stuff like this. road signs. it was just -- it wasn't a good time in the country. it was a time of i am mad as

well and not taking it anymore. take this job and shove it was number one on the charts. when carter got elected the metric system was coming and it was like we have to eat our spinach and find the things making our country go down the tube and change it. when reagan got elected, i don't think it was his fault it was killed, but the country was looking to itself saying we do a lot right and let's look at what we do right and not others, whether that is right or wrong. so the metric system just totally disappeared and the only thing you can see it in poplar pop culture was miami vice talking about keys of cocaine keys being kilograms.

but i will somewhat end it on that. why not. well, let me get this guy steve fill burn who was part of the metric martyr movement in england and refused to sell his bananas by the kilogram and was arrested on the 4th of july on 2000 and he became this martyr figure. he was a greengrocer. and one of the things that i found just really interesting place to go look at measure is in the super market buzz because that is the place where you see america is not, you know, this idea we are not metric is crazy because everything we buy is made using metric components. whatever space stuff we do is all metric.

it is mostly we want to weigh ourselves, measure ourselves in old units, we want to, you know, road signs to be in miles and in things we understand. the place where it is the most jumbled up and confused is the supermarket. we do buy things like staples in pounds, 16 ounces of spaghetti or flour or sugar. but where it gets messed up however is with the drinks. does anybody have questions or any q&a before we get into this? good. well if anybody has any during the drinking portion -- oh, sure. >> so what are the philosophical reasons for refusing the metric

system like for someone like william burrows for example? rather than the nationalistic reason. >> there were very little -- there remember people like the cowboy hall of fame guy where it was really nationalistic. oth others were divided by other things. the football guy game from a family of arcitechts and believed in different mentio mentions -- dimensions. there was the idea of it being part of your culture which is where i stand on it. there is no reason to turn over the metric. most of us have smart phones and we can speak what is 16 ounces

in grams and it just automatically pops up. so for me it is just -- we want to keep languages and don't want them to die out. why do we want the language of measurement dying out? there is the idea our kids would be smarter to learn the metric system but i don't think any noble peace prize winners will fail because of it. i am pro-metric but i am pro-customary measures. i think we should keep it -- i think we should keep it all. i do think, however, that one place we really could use the metric system is with our liquids.

the growling is a fascinating measurement. there were a couple breweries tat restarted it. a gallon is half a gallon and filled with four pints. what i think the growler speaks to is the craft beering movement came out of the united states i think the pint is a more honest system of measurement. ben and jerry revised the idea of using a pint for ice cream.

it sounds like it comes right off the farm. almost all of our dairy is still in soley in customary measures. when you realize it is engrained in people's mind is when you buy in a whole unit. not just buying 14 ounces of something. you are buying a pint or quarter or half gallon of it. if it is just 14 ounces or it is .46 millilitters we may no attention to it. -- mililitters -- this was the only cooler i could borrow with

inches and centimeters on it. and anyone know why theas there is a ruler on top of the growler? i think the metric system has a name and customary measures is had first time i have heard a name. >> it is awful we don't have any good name to our system. i think when people review the book they have not read it when they call it emperil measures. a pint in imperil measures is

difference. if you have been in a pub in england and you are getting drunker than you think it is because it is 10-15 percent more booze than you would have. the most metric thinking state in the union was in california. wine growers wanted also to be exporting more. at that time the wine industry was purely serving the united states and they wanted to embrace wider standards and pushed for booze to go metric

system. wine used to come in a fifth. and after that all the hard liquor came along and that was pretty much the only successful thing that came out. interestingly the litter and two litter ballles which were in plastic and a big change -- bottles -- was a huge success with coca-cola. one thing that is rattying and i maybe the only person that did this but when you go to a sup supermarket and look at what people are selling. the cheap sugar is in two litter

bottles but custom soda comes in less amounts. the opposite is true for water. even poland spring now is going over to the litter. >> considering the blunder that nasa did do they measure in customary or -- >> yeah. in 1999 there was a mars orbitor disaster and i think hundreds of millions of dollars -- it was a weather satellite that went to mars. it was -- you know, the mist take was the ground crew was

using metric or reversed. it created somewhat of a big divide because there were scientist who said it was a stupid error. of the million other things that had to happen. in science, there is also what they call the si police and that is the system international and that is the organization that controlled the metric system and they want everything in science journals to only be which exact si measures.

how much energy is in a jelly donut is something they looked out. so there is a divide in science about how zelious they should get but i don't think anyone actually thought nasa should be using the metric system. tom wolf is wrong. everyone in nasa wanted to be using the metric system but the only reason they were not is most stuff in aeronautics was being supplied by the aero space industry and that was the industry the united states was still dominating them. finally nasa, after mars rover said you have to be sourcing in metric units. >> anybody done a recent cost analysis on cost conversion? >> no. it is interesting.

after the highway signs i showed, something like 5,000 letters came in that were scathingly angry about it. there was another attempt to start putting up more highway signs and i think it was '92 and there was so much reaction and people hated it so much. the amazing thing is that while digs -- and the numbers for people wanting the metric system is plummeting -- but the country is getting more and more metric. reag reagan, bush the first and cl clinton pushed for the government to go totally metric. and that was something that pushed everything to go. thank you for listening. [applause] >> i don't need to do a

demonstrations. i think we just need to get glasses now. 750 mililitters here and imperil stout here and ben and jerry was upset their competitor claimed their pint to be 14 ounces which it should be 15. ben and jir jerry is keeping the true pint alive.

>> booktv is on twitter and facebook. we want to here from you. twitter/booktv or facebook.com/booktv. >> host: joining us outside the history room is the author of this children's book malcolm little. who are you parents? >> my father was malcolm-x and my mother was a humanitarian to. >> host: what do you remember about your father? >> guest: a tall man with great presence and always smiling. i remember the way