Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
U.S. chances to go metric were good; then came pirates
The proposal, conceived by a bunch of Parisian intellectuals, sounded brilliant: a universal system of measurement, derived from decimal-based units and identified by a shared set of prefixes.
It would end the era of merchants buying goods according to one unit, selling in another and pocketing the resulting ill-gotten profit. It would simplify scientific calculations and enable the free exchange of ideas around the world.
It was an enlightened system for an enlightened time. If only the French scientists could persuade other countries to adopt it.
But pirates have a way of ruining even the best-laid plans.
In 1793, botanist and aristocrat Joseph Dombey set sail from Paris with two standards for the new “metric system”: a rod that measured exactly a meter, and a copper cylinder called a “grave” that weighed precisely 1 kilogram. He was journeying across the Atlantic to meet U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, a fellow fan of base-ten systems who, Dombey hoped, would help persuade Congress to go metric.
Then a storm rolled in, knocking Dombey’s ship off course. The unlucky academic was washed into the Caribbean and straight into the clutches of British pirates. Technically, they were “privateers” because they were tacitly sanctioned by His Majesty’s government as long as they raided only foreign ships. But it amounted to the same thing.
The brigands took Dombey hostage and looted his equipment. The luckless scientist died in prison shortly after his capture. His belongings were auctioned off to the highest bidders.
France sent a second emissary to promote the metric system. But by the time the replacement arrived, America had a new secretary of state, Edmund Randolph, who apparently didn’t care much for measurements. As the rest of the world adopted the metric system, the U.S. continued to use imperial units.
More than two centuries later, Americans are still dealing with the consequences. Had Dombey made it to the United States on schedule, he and Jefferson may have succeeded in changing systems.
But Elizabeth Gentry, metric coordinator for the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, cautioned that this is not quite a case of “for the want of a kilogram, the kingdom was lost.”
Gentry’s job for the past 12 years has been to talk Americans into adopting the metric system, now known as Systeme International.
Systeme International is simpler and easier to use, she said, and is the system of choice for pretty much the rest of the world.
Gentry doesn’t just talk the talk: Her car speedometer displays kilometers per hour, and the weather app on her cellphone gives the temperature in degrees Celsius.
“Practicing and thinking about it and shifting the way you think — it’s really pretty easy,” she said.
She and her colleagues have made a convincing argument: Metric units are now commonplace. American companies use meters and grams for most manufacturing and all international trade.
In the days just after the Revolutionary War, the United States had no standard system of measurement. It barely had a single currency. A bushel of oats purchased in New Jersey contained 32 pounds of grain, but a merchant could then take the wares north to Connecticut, where a bushel was 28 pounds, and turn a tidy profit. It was madness.
Even George Washington thought so. The president devoted part of the first-ever State of the Union address to arguing for a system of standard weights and measures, which he called “an object of great importance.” Jefferson was assigned to develop a standardized system, a task he took up with gusto, but Congress considered his proposals only in a “desultory way,” according to a 1973 history published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Back in Paris, proponents of the new metric system saw their opportunity. Jefferson was a noted admirer of France, and France had just helped America win the Revolutionary War. A shared system of measurement would promote trade between the nations and serve as a slap in the face to the British, who were still fumbling about with feet and furlongs.
So the French dispatched Dombey. He seemed like a good choice: smart, hardworking, a veteran of previous trans-Atlantic voyages.
“He was only missing one trait,” joked National Institute of Standards and Technology research librarian Keith Martin. “Luck.”
In the previous decade, Dombey had the yield of one collecting trip stolen by the British and thousands of specimens from another expedition confiscated by Spain. He had escaped from a Spanish prison and fled home to France only to find his country in the throes of revolution and several of his aristocrat friends in line for the guillotine. His capture by pirates was perhaps par for the course.
“The Dombey event is probably a bit of a footnote to history,” Martin said. But, had he and Jefferson achieved what he set out to do, “it could have made a big difference.” Since everyone was using different systems anyway, they might have been more willing to convert to metric, Martin said.
In 1875, the U.S. signed the Treaty of the Meter, which set up the International Bureau for Weights and Measures and established metric as the system of international commerce. But it wasn’t until 1975 that Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act, which called for increased use of the metric system at home.
Gentry calls measurement “that invisible infrastructure that goes on around us every day.” Nearly every experience you have had since the moment you woke up this morning — the tick of your alarm clock, the weather forecast on TV, the cereal you poured into your bowl — was based on a measurement, probably one taken in metric units.