Isaac writes:

> P.s.  If the group is really bored we can start a discussion on why the USA
>  is not on the metric system next...

The US is on the metric system -- halfway at least. There are four
fundamental qualities of nature: length, mass, time and charge. All other qualities are
derived from these four. Two we measure in British units (feet and pounds;
e.g., torque is expressed as pounds of force at a unit foot's distance) and two
we measure in SI units (seconds and coulombs; e.g., an ampere is a coulomb of
charge moving past a fixed point per unit second). Everything else is a joyous
mixture of the two.

The principal reason that the US is not on the metric system is that the
country was founded about 20 years too early. Both Franklin and Jefferson were or
had been ambassadors to France, the nascent United States depended heavily on
its friendship with France for protection against England, and the new US
Congress was intent on establishing a common set of weights and measures to insure
the furtherance of commerce between the states. But the first stirrings of a
national adoption of the SI units in France didn't occur until ca. 1790, just
a little too late for the US. If this two events had been shifted in history
in regards to one another, one way or the other, the US would have been a fully
metric.

The US, like the rest of the world, has always been metric in regards to
electrical units, but that too was a product of its time. There never were British
units for electrical qualities, although there was a minor attempt in the
18th Century to create them. Ampere, Coulomb and Franklin were doing their basic
research into the nature of electricity congruent with the founding of the two
new nations (1760 - 1800). By the time that electrical units became important
to the economies of the world, the major countries had all universally
adopted them.

Wirt Atmar

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