Originally Posted by
maartena
It failed because congress passed a federal mandate called the Metric Conversion Act, and NONE of the 50 states were held accountable to introduce said mandate. Some states outright refused. Thing is, it wasn't a LAW, it was a "mandate" or a "act" without any time line, without any repercussions, without any firm plan. States could just say: "whatever", and they did. Of course the Democrat who introduced the bill was accused by the Republicans of spending time on useless projects, and it was indeed mostly Republican governed states (at the time in 1975) that said: We ain't changing a thing.
The end result is this:
There are 194 countries that use the metric system.
There are 2 countries that use the English system.
And no, that 2nd country is NOT England, they officially changed over to metric in 2000.
That 2nd country is Liberia. Of course Liberia has strong ties with the United States as it was founded by free slaves in the 1820s, and was for all intends and purposes a "colony" of the US until 1847 when it declared independence.
Birma (Myan-Mar) was the 3d country that still used the English system, but is currently in the process of converting. It is said that Liberia is also making progress in converting, so that would leave the United States as the only country left in the world still using the English system of measurements.
A changeover will always take a generation. The older generation in Canada still talks miles and fahrenheit, while those who have been born in the last 50 years or so have either converted at a younger age or were born in a metric society.