Metric first imperial is a YouTube minefield if we do our videos in metric only, we
controlled by American brose meters are for the week and if we do our videos in imperial
units only be controlled by everyone else.
So on behalf of all Americans, I'm here to tell you it's not our fault that we haven't
fully adopted the metric system.
If you want to blame someone, you got to blame pirates.
Let's find out why.
Welcome to the Y files were smart folks like us get together to talk nerdy today we're
trying to answer the question, why doesn't the US use the metric system?
Well, one reason is pirates like from Pittsburgh, no actual Pirates peg legs in parrots
and eyepatch pirates.
Here's what happened in seventeen ninety three.
The United States was brand spanking new and it needed standards for weights and measures
and each state was kind of doing its own thing.
New York had a Dutch system.
Other states were using measurements based on English units, little France and their
little Spain. Interstate commerce was a mess.
The secretary of state at this time was Thomas Jefferson, who spent a lot of time in
France. He was a Francophile and France was in the middle of their own revolution and was
implementing a new decimal based system of weights and measures.
This intrigued Thomas Jefferson.
So he said, bring us some of that.
So French scientist Joseph Dumais was dispatched to the US with two objects, a one
kilogram copper weight called a grave.
And a one metre scale number was on his way to Philadelphia when his ship hit a storm and
blew it a little too far south.
He ended up in the Caribbean and, you know, he was hanging out in the Caribbean in the
18th century. Pirates, that's who.
Technically, they weren't pirates, they were privateers.
What's the difference? Privateers are sanctioned by a government and are legally allowed
to attack and harass and even steal enemy ships.
Oh, nice work, if you can get it.
It is in this case, British pirate Teres intercepted a ship, stole the metric doodads and
threw him in prison Almanzora, hoping to hold them for ransom.
OK, he died in prison.
Oh, no. When the doodads sold at auction.
Tough break. Why is the room gone by the mid eighteen hundreds?
The US was pretty well settled on what's called the US customary system, which is based
on UK's imperial system.
But we kept trying it.
1866, Congress authorized the use of the metric system and supplied each state with their
own set of metric weights and measures people didn't like.
What's the problem? Well, the US system was, and some argue still is just more accessible
and relatable. A foot is about the length of your foot and inches about the width of your
thumb. It's tangible and it's been consistent.
Today's kilogram is not exactly the same weight as that copper doodad.
Back from seventeen ninety three.
It's changed a little bit.
And in the 19th century, with all the political upheaval and turmoil around the world,
metric units fluctuated a little bit and some countries just went off the metric system
altogether and then came back later.
Meanwhile, the US during all that time stayed consistent and we kept trying.
In eighteen seventy five, the United States signed the meter convention, which was an
international treaty that created a system of metric standards.
But American industry pushed back the Illuminati.
Not quite powerful.
Industrialists argued that switching to metric would be too expensive and that American
infrastructure would be harmed.
So they resisted.
The Illuminati still in eighteen ninety three.
All measurements in the United States were defined by this international standard.
So officially in the US, a yard is not defined as three feet or thirty six inches.
A yard is zero point nine one four four meters, pounds, inches, miles.
They're all defined by their metric equivalents.
By the mid 20th century, the world's economy was becoming more and more globalized.
And if you wanted to do business internationally, you had to do metric.
The reason the UK switched in nineteen sixty five was because they wanted access to more
European markets. This is the metric symbol for the United States was also part of this
trend. And in nineteen seventy one, Congress recommended that the United States go metric
within 10 years of that work.
It didn't. The Metric Conversion Act of nineteen seventy five encouraged the use of
metric but didn't require it.
So Americans kept doing what they were doing.
But big business in America did see the value in going metric.
They were saving millions of dollars.
So big companies like Xerox, GM, IBM, Ford, they all switched to metric long before
nineteen seventy five and most big American companies followed suit.
The American scientific community also saw benefits to switching, especially after NASA
crashed the Mars Climate Orbiter into the Martian atmosphere.
Because the thrusters on the orbiter were being measured in metric Newtons, the ground
control was still using pounds, so that was years of work and one hundred and twenty five
million dollars vaporized because they didn't use metric.
And it was the 70s though this was nineteen ninety nine.
Now come on, NASA, get it together.
You eggheads know it wasn't all NASA's fault.
You can also blame the engineers at Lockheed Martin Illuminati.
Will you stop with that.
There is no Illuminati.
Oh you silly, simple bastard.
Congress tried again with the Omnibus Foreign Trade Act in nineteen eighty eight.
It didn't take the Savings and Construction Act of nineteen ninety six.
Now the high end Computing and Revitalization Act of 2004 still no joy for metric.
Mm and KG.
What metric needed in America was a champion, a forward looking leader who can take the
country into the twenty first century.
And during the twenty sixteen presidential campaign, a champion emerged with a bold
vision for having the United States join the world by implementing metric.
That champion was Lincoln Chafee.
Oh, Lincoln Chafee.
Sounds like the name of the car.
Is this a person? Former senator, former governor of Rhode Island, presidential candidate
Lincoln Chafee? Yeah.
Doesn't ring a bell. Right.
Here's one against the advice of his family, his advisors, Lincoln Chafee made going
metric a core part of his presidential platform.
Earlier, I said, let's be bold.
Here's a bold embrace of internationalism.
Let's join the rest of the world and go metric.
Let me guess, Lincoln Chafee, he'll be out of this race in point two nanoseconds.
Woofy, tactically, America is a metric country, all federal agencies are required to use
metric, all consumer and food products are required to have metric on the packaging and
use metric in manufacturing.
So we're getting there slowly.
It's going to take a little time.
Inch by inch, baby really is either me or somebody in a comment section.
Thanks for hanging out with us today.
My name is A.J. That's Hellfish, this has been the wife files Metrick.
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