Measurements

from DOCTORS, DENTISTS, DISHWASHERS and Other Demons of Modern Life

(c) 1996 by Fred Flaxman

I've lived in these United States of America for more than a half century and still am not sure how many pints equal a quart and how many quarts make a gallon. But, before you pass me off as a hopeless ignoramus, ask yourself if you know how many feet (or yards) there are in a mile, how many gallons in a barrel, how many grains in a carat, how many cubic feet in a cord, how many fluid ounces in a cup, or how many miles per hour in a knot!

Nine out of 10 Americans recently polled in my office during lunch hour didn't know these basic measurements. Which is not surprising.

As if inches, feet, yards, miles, ounces, pounds, tons, cups, pints, quarts and gallons weren't confusing enough, we also measure cement in bags, oil in barrels, cloth in bolts and runs, grain in bushels, gold in karats, wood in cords, glass in cuts, atomic mass in daltons, temperature in degrees, prescriptions in drams, ocean depths in fathoms and leagues, light in foot-candles and lumens, distances in furlongs and light-years, mechanical strength in horsepower, printing in picas and points, and paper in reams.

And if that isn't complex enough for you, we also use bars, board feet, centals, chains, chaldrons, counts, cubits, firkins, geepounds, gills, grades, hands, hogsheads, kips, links, mils, paces, palms, pecks, pennyweights, quadrants, quires, scruples, sectons, signs, skeins, slugs, spans, torrs and, occasionally, varas -- all of which you can find in a very big dictionary, if you can no longer live without knowing what they mean. (But I will tell you that a scruple is not a measure of morality, as it should be, but one-third of a dram.)

Our English system of weights and measures is so complicated, even the English have abandoned it. Like almost everyone else in the world today, they've switched over to the easy-to-use metric system.

Metrics are all based on multiples of 10, so all you have to do to go from centimeters to meters to kilometers is move a decimal point to the right or left. In our system, you have to divide a yard by 3 to get feet, a foot by 12 to get inches and an inch by 8ths and 16ths to get fractions. No wonder most of us have trouble with math.

Although the United States was the first nation to adopt decimal currency (in 1792), we may well be the last to switch to decimal measurements. It makes one proud of our advanced, industrial nation to realize that the only other non-metric countries left are Brunei, Burma and South Yemen. (I've at least heard of Burma.)

Although some Americans favor a full-fledged mandatory switch to the system developed in 1790 by the Paris Academy of Sciences, many others are resistant to change, worried about the costs of conversion or fearful that they will never be able to understand the difference between a meter, a liter and a gram.

I sympathize with their concerns, and wonder: couldn't we, instead, make our own measurements easier to use and remember?

Why not create our own American metric system? One that still uses inches, feet, yards, pints and quarts -- the names we'll never forget -- but simply bases the units on 10? We'd all learn very quickly that 10 new inches were in every new foot, 10 new feet were in every new yard, 10 new pints equaled a new quart and 10 new quarts were in a new gallon.

You might argue that the rest of the planet uses the French metric system, and that international commerce in this shrinking world would be greatly aided by our throwing in the towel and adopting the same units of measurement.

To overcome that problem, we could make the American metric system completely compatible with the French system. One new inch, for example, would equal one old centimeter. One new American foot would equal one old French meter, etc. We would use the same measurements but give ours English names. This would have the added benefit of getting back at the French for trying to substitute French words for "weekend," "sex appeal," "software" and other Americanisms they've adopted from us.

The American metric system would have the additional advantage of preserving the basic meaning of all those cliches of our language that related to measurements: an ounce of prevention... to inch forward... he doesn't have an ounce of sense... she wouldn't budge an inch... he walked a crooked mile... we've used every cubic foot of space... I'd walk a mile for a Camel... inch worm... cheaper by the dozen (though a new dozen would contain only 10)... a stitch in time saves nine (a new stitch would save 10)... penny wise and pound foolish (which would otherwise become, at today's exchange rates, cent wise and a dollar fifty seven foolish), etc.

We've gone long enough with 60 drops equaling a teaspoon and 16 tablespoons making one cup. Would anyone in his right mind dream up a system that had 8 quarts making a peck and only 4 pecks equaling a bushel?

Well, after the revolution, 100 drops will a new teaspoon make, and it will take only 10 new tablespoons to make a new cup. Ten quarts will make a new peck, if they don't already equal a new gallon, and I don't care how many new pecks make a new bushel!

You may be perfectly happy with our weights and measures as they are. But give me an inch and I'll take a new mile.

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