Hector Vera, "Yardstick Nation: The Metric System in America" (Vanderbilt UP, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Yardstick Nation: The Metric System in America"

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Dr. Hector Vera
Date: October 25, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dr. Miranda Melcher interviews Dr. Hector Vera about his book Yardstick Nation: The Metric System in America (Vanderbilt UP, 2025). The conversation explores the longstanding question: Why has the United States resisted adopting the metric system, unlike nearly every other country? Dr. Vera, a historian of measurement at UNAM, situates the American peculiarity within a global context, tracing the historical, political, and cultural reasons behind the U.S.’s “bilingual” measurement system and explores why prior efforts at metrication failed.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introducing Dr. Hector Vera and the Book

• Dr. Vera’s research at Mexico’s National University (UNAM) focuses on the history of measurement systems and their broader social and political implications.
• He describes measures as a “window to many interesting topics—state formation, economic integration, ideas of justice, everyday life practices, scientific communities.” (03:35)
• The driving question: “Why is there no metric system in the U.S.? ... It’s sort of a cultural trademark, but it’s not very clear why that’s the case.” (03:14)

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The Global Context of Measurement

• Only a handful of countries (the U.S., Liberia, Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands) do not use the metric system exclusively.
• “The United States is the only country in the world that has the resources but has decided not to make the transition.” (07:02)
• In the U.S., metric is legal but optional; most countries outlaw non-metric units.

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The Origins of the Metric System

• Developed after the French Revolution, the metric system was conceived as a universal, rational, and centralized system.
• Key French Revolutionary principles behind it:
  1. Centralization – Uniform nation-wide standards
  2. Regeneration – A conscious break from historical tradition
  3. Geometric Spirit – Standardization and uniformity in all things
• “Centralization was very powerful in France … and the lack of centralization in the American political system is one of the keys to understand why the US has not been able to make the transition.” (11:13)

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Why the Metric System Succeeded Globally

• Governments valued the administrative efficiency of standardization.
• Economic actors trading across borders benefited from simpler conversions.
• Scientists valued precision and ease of communication.
• “Government enforcement and the educational system regulated by the state … that was the muscle behind the idea.” (17:18)
• Full “metrication” was gradual, taking decades in many countries.

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Public Attitudes & Resistance to Change

• Most people are satisfied using familiar systems until compelled by necessity or crisis.
• Government-mandated metrication was “always rather unpopular,” especially for adults facing change; violence and resistance sometimes occurred, particularly if metrication coincided with new taxes. (21:30)
• Once ingrained, metric is hard to dislodge, as seen in post-Brexit Britain:
  • “People decided that once they understand the metric system, it’s better to keep it.” (24:49)

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U.S. Metrication Attempts: A History of False Starts

Early Republic (Late 18th/Early 19th Century)

• Founding Fathers (Washington, Jefferson) recognized the need for standard measures; Jefferson proposed a decimal system.
• U.S. led the world in decimalizing currency, not measurement; inertia and the economic connection to Britain stalled full metrication.
• “Every single generation has had a good reason [to wait], but the long-term result is that now they are completely isolated.” (29:48)

Post-Civil War / Reconstruction Era (1860s)

• The moment of greatest federal centralization coincided with increased calls for metrication, as the North imposed new standards on the South.
• Congress legalized the metric system but did not make it mandatory—a “metrologically bilingual” policy that persists.
• “Once all that economic apparatus was put in place, not with the metric system, every single generation who wanted to make the transition afterwards, the cost of doing it became much more higher.” (34:57)

Late 19th/Early 20th Century

• Push for hemispheric integration in the Americas brought up metric again, driven by exporters and diplomats.
• Anti-metric industrial lobbies (National Association of Manufacturers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers) opposed conversion, seeing it as a loss of technical and economic advantage.
• “For them, actually making the transition to the metric system was losing an advantage because they control the measurement system.” (39:26)

World War I Era & Anti-German Sentiment

• Metric seen as “German”; both camps weaponized nationalism in the debate.
• “Every camp...wanted to portray the rival as being way too German.” (41:33)

1970s: The Last Serious Effort

• Allies and trade partners (UK, Canada, Australia) switched to metric, increasing the U.S.’s isolation.
• The Metric Conversion Act of 1975 established the “Metric Board” but kept transition voluntary, offered no incentives, and lacked enforcement.
• “It was a laissez faire system … There was no stick and no carrot as well.” (46:22)
• With America’s economic clout, there was little pressure to “accommodate the technical requirements of other countries.” (49:08)
• “Being so powerful allowed the US to actually not need to accommodate the technical requirements of other countries.” (48:11)

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Cultural and Political Roots of Non-Metric America

• Deeply federal political structure means states “are very jealous of that self determination and independence.” (51:25)

• Centralization is necessary for metrication; the U.S. systemic structure works against it.

• Only a radical shift in balance between federal and state power, or a major geopolitical/economic realignment, could prompt change.

• “If in the future the US has this feeling of falling behind or feeling the need to catch on with the international scenery, that's a moment when a lot of countries actually decide: okay, it was nice to have our own system of measurement, but now we need to go with the international convention." (54:08)

• Notable aviation anecdote: International pilots generally use feet for altitude due to American standards—except in Chinese airspace, where metric is enforced and U.S. pilots have to convert “on the fly.” (53:40)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On measurement and society:
  • “Measures and the practices of measurement are a window to many interesting topics—state formation, economic integration, ideas of justice, everyday life practices, scientific communities.”
    —Dr. Hector Vera (03:35)
• On why America hasn’t gone metric:
  • “The United States is the only country in the world that has the resources but has decided not to make the transition.”
    —Dr. Hector Vera (07:02)
• On public resistance:
  • “To have an estate mandate to change the way you measure is always rather unpopular.”
    —Dr. Hector Vera (21:30)
• On American exceptionalism and inertia:
  • “Being so powerful allowed the US to actually not need to accommodate the technical requirements of other countries.”
    —Dr. Hector Vera (48:11)
• On future prospects:
  • “For the US to become metric, it may need a more centralized form of state and also it may be necessary a change in the international economic position of the US…”
    —Dr. Hector Vera (51:42)

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Important Timestamps

• [03:31] – Dr. Vera introduces himself and how he came to write the book.
• [05:21] – Context: Other non-metric countries and why the U.S. is unique.
• [07:45] – The metric system’s French revolutionary origins and political philosophy.
• [13:46] – Why and how metric was widely adopted globally.
• [21:12] – Public resistance and the slow, controversial process of conversion.
• [26:09] – Early U.S. debates over metrication; recurring inertia.
• [31:39] – The critical Reconstruction era turning point—and why it failed.
• [37:19] – Industrial resistance, economic factors, and global competitiveness.
• [43:11] – The 1970s push for metrication and why it fizzled.
• [50:13] – Prospects for the U.S. ever adopting metric; necessary conditions for change.
• [55:13] – Dr. Vera’s next research: The “pantometric” impulse to quantify everything.

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Closing Thoughts

Dr. Vera’s analysis reveals the “enigma” of America’s enduring non-metric status as a product of unique historical contingencies, structural federalism, entrenched industrial interests, and its global economic dominance. Unless the U.S. undergoes significant political centralization or finds itself forced by external pressures or competition, it is likely to continue as a “yardstick nation.”

The discussion provides a nuanced and eye-opening look at what seems a mundane topic but, as Dr. Vera emphasizes, unfolds into a revealing window on history, power, and identity.

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For more, see Dr. Hector Vera’s book: "Yardstick Nation: The Metric System in America" (Vanderbilt UP, 2025).

Transcript

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[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Hello. And welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today because we get to talk about a book that asks and answers a really simple question, but one that I think will have immediate resonance to listeners both in the United States and anywhere else really in the world that are aware of some of the US's quirks and something that might sound like a just random historical artifact, but actually is really something that impacts every aspect really of everyday life as we're going to be talking about now, the question of this book is given away by the title, which is why I haven't said it yet, because the question is why does the US not use the metric system that everyone else does? And in fact, that's very much what the title of the book says as well. So the book we're going to be discussing was published by Vanderbilt University Press in 2020 and is titled Yardstick Nation, the Metric System in America. And I'm very pleased to have with me on the podcast the author of this book to help us understand why the US uses things like yardsticks and not metric the way that the rest of us do. So, Dr. Hector Vera, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I'm so pleased to have you.

[Dr. Hector Vera]

Thank you for having me.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Could you please start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?

[Dr. Hector Vera]

Well, I'm a researcher at Mexico's National University, unam. I've been for a long while now studying the history of the systems of measurement. As you were saying now in the introduction, measures and the practices of measurement are a window to many interesting topics, state formation, economic integration, ideas of justice, everyday life practices, scientific communities. So that for me was very attractive to be able to study something that is very mundane and discreet, but at the same time it opens the door to see a whole lot of other phenomena. So that for me was very interesting. And I also was very intrigued about this American enigma to say something that why is there no metric system in the us? Because a lot of people around the world make that question and wonders about it. But also Americans is something that everybody has present, is sort of a cultural trademark in the United States. But it's not very clear why that's the case. So I try to solve that riddle.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Thank you for taking the question on and giving us a bit of backstory about why you are interested in the topic to make sure though, that we don't inaccurately focus on the us to dispel some myths that this isn't just a US story. Which countries besides the us don't use the metric system so that we can understand why we tend to focus on America in this question?

[Dr. Hector Vera]

Sure. Right. Now the list of countries that don't use the metric system exclusively. That's part of the key to understand the question properly, because the US actually allows the use of the metric system, but is optional, is not mandatory, as in the rest of almost all the countries in the world where the metric system is the only legal system of measurement allowed. But the other countries besides the US are Liberia, a small country in Africa that has a long history of historical connections with the US and the other three are three small country islands in the Pacific. Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. This means that 95% of the world population today lives in a country where the metric system is the only legal system allowed in the other countries, the other four small countries, they have shown interest in adopting the metric system fully, but they lack human and economic and technical resources to actually make the transition. Because the transition is not that easy. It takes a lot of state resources and economic resources and expertise. So they've been trying and wondering about the transition, but they simply haven't gathered all the resources necessary. So in that regard, the United States is the only country in the world that has the resources but has decided not to make the transition.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Okay, that's very helpful to establish. And so we will be talking about the US going forward, not because they're the only country, but because they're the only one in this unique situation. So thinking then about what it would take to adopt the metric system in the US we should probably discuss the metric system itself a bit further. It of course developed out of the French Revolution where, well, lots of things were being developed. So can you help us understand some of the key concepts of the metric system and how they came out of that political movement?

[Dr. Hector Vera]

Yes, it's very well known that the metric system was a French invention and a revolutionary invention for that regard. So the French Revolution opened the opportunity to put in practice some ideas that for the whole 18th century, scientists were toying with the idea of having a universal system of measurement and to have a very stable and standardized system of measurement. At that time, people thought that such things were virtually impossible because it was not only that every country had its own system of measurement, but every single town, province, municipality, region uses the same language of measurement, but every single unit had a different magnitude. So standardization within a country was non existent. And also every single profession had its own instruments, vocabulary and units of measurement. So peasants, shoemakers, every single one butchers, every single one scientists have different system for measurement. It was really very chaotic. But the revolution opened the possibility to make a large scale reform and to have a system that would be as the motto of the system was. Was coined in those years for all times and for all people. A single system of measurement, very simple, with only three base units, the meter, the liter and the kilogram, and that this would be used for everyone around the world. But to do that, to implement that very simple idea, you needed a lot of political muscle and a lot of economic cooperation. And the revolution actually made that possible. So there were three general political principles behind the revolution that help this idea behind the metric system. One was centralization, which for me is one of the keys to understand the success of the metric system and the failure of the US government to actually implement it. Political centralization made that the whole country, or an entire country is ruled by a single system of legal requirements. In many cases, for a single language, like you will have an official language in a whole country, a single system of codes and regulations and systems of political representation. Everything would be homogeneous and regulated from the offices of the federal government. Centralization was very powerful in France before the revolution. And after the revolution was even more powerful. Centralization was a key part. And the lack of centralization in the American political system is one of the keys to understand why the US has not been able to make the transition. Also in the French Revolution, another very important idea was the idea of regeneration. This idea of to get rid of the past and to start with a whole new idea of human beings and humanity, to regenerate humanity as a whole with a set of new principles. The idea of the metric system was very congenius to that idea of regeneration. To have a system that was completely new, was invented afresh. Because there was also the possibility of simply use the units of measurement that are used in Paris and implemented those in the whole country. But that would mean that a system from the past would be projected into the future. And they didn't want that. They wanted everything to be new. They invented a new calendar, a new system of a new monetary system. So everything was an adventure for the new regeneration. And finally there was this principle called the geometric spirit, which was a vision of reality, in which everything had to be homogeneous, mathematical, standardized, interchangeable. So they started to change the whole political geography of the country. Instead of having cantons and fuse and all that kind of things, they decided to have departments that would be more or less equal in size, for example. So everything had to be geometric. This grid mentality, to say something, to have a grid in the whole territory and among people and among languages. They decided that they didn't want it to. To preserve the local languages for Example, and the French would be like the national language. So this geometric spirit was also very akin to the metric system. So for me, those were like the three main political ideas behind the metric system.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

That's definitely very helpful to have laid out. And as you've mentioned, there's already some aspects of it that clearly are going to make it difficult to adopt in the US context. But, but it's not just a French system. Lots of other countries go on to put this into place. So how and why did the system become so widely adopted?

[Dr. Hector Vera]

That for me is one of the most amazing parts of the history of the metric system as an enterprise for social distribution of knowledge. To say something, this has been one of the most impressive and successful endeavors of humanity. I know it sounds kind of saying too much, but it's really been an incredible story because there was this invention of a few savants, a few philosophers and scientists in Paris, in the academies of science in Paris. And now around the world we use the, this system of measurement for our everyday lives with only a few exceptions. I know you there in Britain, you have in your home scales, stones, for example, which is like a bit of the past that still exists or the beer is salt in pint. But besides those exceptions that you can find here and there in many countries, actually almost every single human being understands the metric units and how to use them. No matter the religion or the political ideology. Gender, age is very, very universal, very, very thorough. But obviously for that to happen it required a really very big changes and plans that required a lot of time to be successful. There were three main set of social agents that made this global adoption possible. One was governments, central governments really, really like standardization because it makes political administration much more easier to make. Census to have, catastrophe maps, surveys, registers of property, all kinds of things became much more easier for the governments to know their populations and their territory. So they really, really like to have those sorts of homogeneous standardized systems. The other are economic actors that work in long distances. And you know, since the 18th century, this is more and more, more and more the case. Since that time, economy was already a global reality. But things have got, you know, but more globalized since then. So to make transactions between countries. Before the metric system, it was very, very difficult to know exactly how much you were dealing, how much of a merchandise of a product you were dealing. So what economists call the cost of transaction, the cost of knowing what are you buying or selling or selling. It was difficult to establish. So these large scale economic actors also push for the adoption of homogeneous standardized system. And the metric system became like the best solution at hand. And finally there is scientists. They are always very interested in precision, in exactness. They are all the time inventing new ways of measurement. For them it was like a natural proposition. Actually the first network of expansion was through very small but very well communicated networks of experts, cartographers, physicists, medicine, stuff like that. But that expansion was rather very superficial. The key was that the governments decided to make the metric system the only legal system. So they outlawed every other unit of measurement, every other instrument of measurement that was not metric. And they confiscated or put fees on merchants that used pints or feet or pounds or whatever. And that was this government enforcement and the educational system regulated by the state that made mandatory the teaching of the metric system in schools for kids. That was the muscle behind the idea and the realization that this was possible. It took a lot of years, actually several decades in every country to achieve what I call full metrication, which is that most of the people made most of their physical calculations using the metric system. It is never completely universal. It's not that in every single country, every single person, every single time uses the metric system to make calculations and measurements, but most of the people, most of the time.

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[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

That's really interesting to hear about that process and kind of especially how long it takes as well. That definitely is a key factor. Was the length though of this implementation, obviously part about changing habits and systems. Were there also instances where part of the reason it took so long was because people weren't happy about it? Like, was this implementation always enthusiastic?

[Dr. Hector Vera]

No. Besides this set of factors that I'd Mentioned before, government planners, large scale merchants and scientists. Besides those groups, almost everybody is more or less happy and satisfied measuring in the way they are measuring. They are only unsatisfied when there are big troubles, big technical problems, or when they are cheated in the market. But besides that, everybody thinks that if I weight my body mass using pounds and my length using feet and inches, it's okay if I understand it and I can use it every day and I can communicate with my neighbor and my close relatives with that measurement, everything is okay. So to have an estate mandate to change the way you measure is always rather unpopular. So the convincing part is very important. So every single government needed to implement campaigns for people to learn the system and to accept the system. And it was always very, very slow. It takes decades. It can be 50 years, 60 years, 80 years. I mean, for countries, for example, like Canada, who are neighbors of the US and they share the same English language. So for them the transition, it's been there for more than 50 years and it's still taking place. So it takes a lot of time. Even in France was the case. So it's very slowly. And the people is not always very happy, especially the first generation. I mean, if you're an adult when the change happens, you are not happy about it. There were in some countries even organized, sometimes violent opposition to the metric system. Especially when the metric system was implemented alongside new taxes. For example, you put a new tax on land property and you say that now that land property will be measured in square meters. And you don't know what that is. So that became a very explosive combination. And that's when popular revolts have taken place. But then if you're a child that you learn it when you are small and you start using it and you start seeing changes in the, in the products that you see in the marketplace and it became more of an everyday kind of thing. Now it's when the system starts to be naturalized, it's the obvious thing. And for us people who have grown up in countries where the metric system has been well established, it's something completely natural. It's not problematic at all. It's even surprising to know that for someone who was, was problematic. And that's another interesting aspect of the metric system, that once it takes root in a country, it's very difficult to avoid it. An interesting example about that was precisely in England after Brexit, when Prime Minister Boris Johnson decided that the imperial British system of weights and measures was, as using his words, a system of freedom, that they may start going avoiding some of the metric regulations. And they made a survey with merchants and technicians and regular people. And everybody was very determined not to go back in that regard, which was very surprising regarding the political environment, which was, you know, very, very akin to isolation and nationalism. But even in those cases, people decided that once they understand the metric system is better to keep it.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, I had forgotten that moment. But it is really interesting to think about kind of how embedded it can be once it's put into place. Of course, just because someone wants to put it into place doesn't mean it will get there. So us talking about the metric system in the US not the first time that that's been debated, when in fact, was the first period of attempts to introduce the metric system in the U.S. what were the sort of arguments for and against and why didn't it happen at this point?

[Dr. Hector Vera]

The idea of adopting the metric system has been in the US Floating in the air all the time. But in some key moments of its history, there have been much more emphasis, and the federal government has tried with more force than some other times. But since the time of independence, when George Washington was the first president, he asked Congress to pass legislation to regulate weight and measures, not necessarily adopting the metric system, but made some kind of regulation, at least, because at the time it was first the US Independence and then the French Revolution. So the US became an independent republic before the invention of the metric system. But even since that time, since the first Constitution. The Constitution gives Congress the power to coin money and to fix the standards of weights and measures. It's very surprising that in two and a half centuries, Congress has not taken any definitive action to actually fix the standards of weight and measures properly. But Washington, who was a land surveyor himself, he wanted Congress to pass legislation. And they asked Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, to make a report to Congress about it. He proposed, actually, a system that was very, very similar in its principles to the metric system. It was also decimal. Meanwhile, he proposed the first system of decimal currency, which the American dollar was the first fully decimalized currency. That means that the unit which is the dollar is divided not in 12 or 16 or 20s like it was in the old British system, monetary system. But everything is divided in 100. So you have the dollar and you have the center. You divide the dollar in one cent. So it was very similar to the metric system. And the money reform was successful, but the measurement reform was not successful. What happened? Basically, Congress didn't take action. And that's one of the constants that there's a policy of wait and see, not take any definitive action in this moment, but let's see what happened in the future. So generation after generation, this happens again and again. The arguments for metrication at that time in the presidencies of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, John Quincy Adams in the early 19th century was that even though the metric system at that time has not been adopted by that many countries, at that point in time it was clear that it was an effective, elegant, already well thought out system. So they say, let's go with it. The arguments against it, one which was very powerful was that at that time England was the closest economic partner of the US and they didn't want to make the change without the UK also making the change. So there was a sort of, as it happened, every single time, every single time there is like a rational argument not to do it, rational or reasonable to say something argument, but the long term result is a very irrational long term result, which is an interesting paradox. Every single generation has had a good reason, but the long term result is that now they are completely isolated. But pretty much that was the case at the beginning. The most powerful argument was we don't want to have a different system from our closest partners.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

That's very interesting at this kind of early point in US politics to see that it really was on the table, right? But then it didn't go anywhere. What's fascinating then is that even though it was kind of so clearly a priority, or at least relatively a priority, it doesn't sort of stay top of mind. It kind of goes down and then comes up at different moments. So can you help us understand why just after the US Civil War was another moment when arguments for the metric system kind of came back up again? Was it just repeating the old debates or was there something different at this point?

[Dr. Hector Vera]

That was for me the very, very key moment in history, just in that period called Reconstruction, just after the Civil War, for several reasons. One is that this idea of national unification and centralization from the point of view of the federal government was very strong when the northern states defeated the Southern states. Actually Washington D.C. took control of several of the tasks that were in the hands of the southern states and started to implement from a central authority a lot of governmental tasks. So this idea of centralization was being implemented as in no other point before in the U.S. also at that point, we are talking about the 1860s. At that point it was already very clear that if one system was to become a really international global system, was the metric system another, contrary to the times of Washington and Jefferson where the metric system was a novelty, but it wasn't very clear if it would be successful. By the 1860s, it was very clear at that point that the momentum was in favor of the metric system. So there were very serious plans to actually make the transition. For once, Congress took some action, but they made if you're in favor of the metric system to say something if you're in that position. They made a crucial mistake. They passed a law that made the metric system legal, so anybody who wanted to use it could use it. It was not forbidden, but they didn't make the metric system mandatory. That's very important. Since that moment, the US official policy, it's a voluntary transition. Whoever wants to use it can use it. They have this idea, which hasn't been very productive from the standpoint of metrication, that if it is a better system, so people will use it, let's say, naturally or voluntarily, without coercion. But that policy, from the point of view, metrication, again, it's been disastrous because you need to actually have only one legal system. So the US has this very weird condition in which it has two legal systems working at once. So you can use the US customary system of weights and measures, and you have also been legal the metric system, so you can have contracts and dealings and all kinds of things living at the same time. So metrologically speaking, it's a bilingual country, for better or worse. But another problem was the timing at that moment, because after the Civil War, industrialization in the US became a very powerful reality. But that industrialization was made using inches and pounds. And once all that economic apparatus was put in place, not with the metric system, every single generation who wanted to make the transition afterwards, the cost of doing it became much more higher. So the timing was precious at that moment. Obviously they didn't know at that moment, but that was a key moment. If they had made that law with the metric system, as every other country did, making the metric system the only legal system, probably this book couldn't be written because it couldn't be necessary.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Yeah, no, that definitely was a really key moment there. So thank you for highlighting it for us. What I found really interesting was that obviously a lot changes in terms of economics and technology between then and now. But even between sort of that later 1800s moment and like the 1930s, like, there's a lot going on economically in terms of the global system, technology. Loads of things change from sort of 1880 to 1920. And we still see debates about the metric system in this context are some of these Developments about science and technology being brought into the arguments at this point or this kind of the, the weird bilingual legal state that you've just described, it kind of just stays. Is it unaffected by these development?

[Dr. Hector Vera]

Well, there were a lot of things going on in those years, including the First World War. But one thing that was going in favor of the metrication at the beginning of the 20th century was the economic integration of the Americas. The idea of having a continental integration. And that ironically, that idea was pushed mainly by US Industrialists, exporters and diplomats. They have all these American states conferences held in Washington and in other countries aiming for the economic integration of, of all the countries in the American continent. And the metric system was part of that. To have a better integration, you need common custom regulations, a train that could traverse across the whole continent, and also a single system of weights and measures. And some people even ask for a single system of. As a single monetary system, something like the Euro. But for the Americas, this was motivated by an idea of economic integration. And also because European countries, especially Germany, were gaining advantages in the Latin American market, the US wanted to actually control the Latin American market. So there was a big dispute about how to connect with the market in Latin America because it was easier for exporters in Latin America to understand the measurement language of the Germans, which was also the metric system at that point. As in Latin America, Latin America made a transition in the second half of the 19th century. And it was more difficult for them to understand their northern neighbors in the US because merchants in Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, whatever, they couldn't understand exactly. It was much more difficult. The transaction cost, it was higher to understand exactly how much. It was imperial tons and pounds and whatever. So there was a big debate about it. So exporters in the U.S. exporters, educators, scientists, they created all these associations and organizations promoting the metric system. But there was very strong opposition from the national association of Manufacturers and from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, because that was the people who actually made things. They were the people who invented machines and repair machines. And they did all that using inches and pounds. For them, actually making the transition to the metric system was losing an advantage because they control the measurement system with which the machines were made. They see the transition as a downgrade. So they actually financed a lot of political campaigns to avoid any possible legislation that would make the metric system mandatory. So it was a big. There were big controversies, but ultimately the anti metric camp was successful.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

That's really interesting to understand kind of which pieces formed the anti metric camp and the kind of economic reasons for it. Is there anything else we should understand about the role the economy played in these debates at this point?

[Dr. Hector Vera]

Well, yeah, Continental unification and anti German sentiment. The war was part of it. There were actually some episodes which were very colorful, maybe not that impactful, but they are at least interesting in which every camp, the prometric camp and the anti metric camp, they wanted to portray the rival as being way too German. So the prometric camp was saying, you know, actually our measurement system, the British system was first developed in Germany or in the German region in the German culture. So by sticking with the old measures, we are being Germanized in a way. And the anti metrocat was saying that actually they were trying to portray the prometric enthusiast, saying they are just working for Germans economic gain. So it was like a whole anti German sentiment that both sides wanted to play with.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

That's very interesting to think about how the war is impacting this. We have another dip then in the debates about the metric system and we see it pop up not in the 1930s or 40s, but a while later in the 1970s. Why does it come up at this point?

[Dr. Hector Vera]

Well, mainly it was an international situation over there. Since 1965, very close international allies of the US were making the transition to the metric system. Now, as I was saying that in the 19th century, a lot of people in the US didn't want to make the transition without the UK actually doing the same. Well, now that happened, the UK, Ireland, the neighbors, Canada, Australia, South Africa, all these countries, all these former British colonies and English speaking peoples were making the transition starting 1965. So at that moment it was very clear that the US had two options, either to switch to the metric system or to stay completely isolated. So that put a lot of pressure and that actually confirmed some of the fears of the prometric camp saying we need to make a transition in order not to be isolated. And now reality was actually giving them, confirming those ideas. So in the early 1970s, Congress asked for a new assessment of the situation. They made this report to Congress called Metric America. And they passed in Congress the American metric act in 1975. So everything seemed to be going in that direction because the international scenery had changed.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

All right, so that definitely has at least some impact. You discuss in the book that there's the Metric conversion act of 1975. That sounds all nice and official, but we are talking here today in 2025. And so obviously something didn't work because the US did not convert to metric. So what happened?

[Dr. Hector Vera]

Well, it's now this year is exactly 50 years. Now in December, we will have the anniversary of that final and unsuccessful push towards metrication. President Joel Ford signed, as you were saying, the Metric Conversion Act, I think it was December 28th in 1975. So we will have that anniversary very, very soon, in a couple of months. And they created a metric board to coordinate the transition. But the weakness of the plan was the same as before. It was a policy of voluntary transition. Whoever wanted to change could do it, but if you don't want, you don't need to. Besides that voluntary element, which is the opposite, as I was saying before that in all other countries it was always a mandatory transition. So they didn't have no stick and no carrot as well. So it was a laissez faire system to say it in the language that some people of the time used. So there was no economic help for industries to actually change all the machinery necessary. There were no economic or tax incentives for, for the transition, and there was no legal instruments to actually penalize the people who didn't change. So with that scenario, you know, schools tried to do something, scientists, there was, there were large campaigns in media, television, you know, printed press and that sort of thing. Many people had the idea, the wrong idea that the transition would be mandatory. But once that was clarified that the transition wouldn't be mandatory, things became much more difficult. And at that time, something that also changed internationally vis a vision, the time after the Civil War, when people didn't want to make the change because they wanted to do it at the same time as the UK was that in the 1860s, America was too weak that it couldn't afford to go metric without England. But in the 1970s, the United States was so strong that it could remain non metric without the United Kingdom. So being so powerful, allow the US to actually not need to accommodate the technical requirements of other countries. So, for example, England actually made a transition because it needed to get more efficiently into the European markets. So that's why in the 1960s and 70s they decided, okay, we are going to make a transition. They had this, it was called, I think in 1971, the metric day, where everything started to operate and the currency was divided not in shillings and pence, but in cents, in 100 cents and that sort of thing. But the United States has never been pressured with that kind of necessity. So for example, with nafta, with the free market integration of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. the U.S. never needed to actually accommodate to the technical demands of Mexico and Canada because the U.S. market is so Big So they've been able to, to being, to being alone. So it's like a sort of an isolated country, but a giant country. So they don't have the pressures that other countries have felt when they made the transition.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

If we're talking then 50 years since then, I don't know. With all of this, do you think there's prospect for the US to become metric in the future?

[Dr. Hector Vera]

Well, I speculate a little bit about it at the end of the book. You know, making those sort of forecasts is always very risky and social scientists always have made a lot of predictions that turn out to be completely wrong. But so it's difficult to say what will happen in the future. My ideas is that there has to be structural changes in two aspects, one in the political system. So the balance of power, of political power between individual states and the federal government has to change. Because right now, as you know, individual states have a lot of leverage regarding federal policies. And that explains a lot of the peculiarities that one sees in the US Just to put an example, the electoral system, which is very, very weird for someone who ceases from the outside, but also for Americans themselves. A Federal election is 50 separate small elections with different ballots, different machines and procedures. And is a confederation more than a single country to say something. And individual states are very jealous of that self determination and independence regarding federal policies. So to implement a federal policy in education, in science, in the environment is very, very difficult. So that is a lack of centralization, something that I have mentioned that is a key element for the success of the metric system. So for the US to become metric, it may need a more centralized form of state and also it may be necessary a change in the international economic position of the US because right now, as I was saying with the previous question, the US don't need to adopt the technical conventions of other countries because it's so powerful. The other markets need to, to adapt to the US but we don't know what's going to happen in a few decades. Probably China is going to be the new US and the US will need to actually adapt to that and actually adopt the metric system. I put an anecdote there in the book which is interesting. As you know, when you fly, there is this moment during the flight that when the Capitan announces that the plane has reached 10,000ft of altitude, so that's a non metric unit. But you can be in an airline of almost every country in the world. And even though it's an airline from a metric country, they would use that Feats of altitude following the American conventions. And this is funny, but the Chinese airspace is actually regulated through the metric system. So it's one of the few occasions where pilots have to make calculations literally on the fly to actually understand what the control tower is saying to them and indicating to them. So China, in that regard, it's making its power real. It might be China, it might be Europe or Japan or whoever. If in the future the US has this feeling of falling behind or feeling the need to catch on with the international scenery, that's a moment when a lot of countries actually decide, okay, it was nice to have our own system of measurement, but now we, now we need to go with the international convention. That hasn't been the case with the US in the last century and a half, but we don't know, maybe in the second half of the 21st century we'll see that transition.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Well, we shall have to pay attention to see what the future holds. What might you be working on while we wait to determine whether or not the US Becomes metric? Do you have any upcoming projects you want to give us a brief sneak preview of?

[Dr. Hector Vera]

Well, I've been working alongside this project with a lot of ideas regarding what is called pantometry, this social obsession and tendency to measure and quantify everything possible. So it's something that we can see in all sorts of things. This idea of to improve something, you need to measure it first and everything is measurable, which is a very modern and, in a way, weird idea. I've been looking at several aspects of that social tendency. In particular, I've been studying, for example, how the academic world has made this obsession with quantification very real. And now everything that we academics do is quantify the number of papers you publish, the number of citations you have, and we have all these indexes and metrics to determine the worth of our activities and ideas. But everything is going through this metric. So I've been very interested in that aspect.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Well, that certainly sounds intriguing. Best of luck in investigating those ideas.

[Dr. Hector Vera]

Thank you very much. And thank you. Thank you for having me. Was a treat.

[Dr. Miranda Melcher]

Well, any listeners who want more can, of course, read the book we've been talking about titled Yardstick the Metric System in America, published by Vanderbilt University Press in 2025.

[Dr. Hector Vera]

Thank you for listening, Sam.