Why pirates are to blame for the complicated and antiquated system of measurement in the USA.

One centimeter is one-hundredth of a meter, one kilogram a thousand times a gram. But this plausible metric measurement system is not granted to everyone. In the US, people are beating around with the complicated and antiquated imperial system. And guilty of it are English pirates.

  Caribbean (English) pirates (privateers) . Click on pic !

Even if you do not travel to the USA, the world has become so small that everyone has come into contact with the comparatively complicated and antiquated Anglo-American system of measurement.

   Yeah, not easy to cook. At least we don’t have to explain anymore the eggs, big or small – brown or white, right ?

Whether with product descriptions on the internet or in English cooking recipes: Who has not ever wondered how many liters are two pint or how many centimeters a 4-inch display measures? And why does a yard not have 10 or 100 inches, but 36?

   It’s challenging if you come first time to the US, renting a motor-home and then having this board in front of a bridge. 11 minus 8 is 3, means 3 meters high, right ?

The US arbitrary retarded „roller-coaster“.

The Anglo-American system of measure, also called imperial system, unlike our metric has no relation to the decimal system. The measurements do not build on each other tenfold.

  The most „unlogic“ measurement system.

As a German growing up with the metric system for pretty much all measurements it is incomprehensible why its still used. During my first journeys to the USA and Australia I made contact to the imperial system and pretty soon I tried to avoid it wherever I could. Why? Because it makes no logical sense.

No wonder that there are so many jokes about the „Imperial – Standard – Customary“ system around the world.

What is the Imperial System ?

The Imperial system as we know it today was inaugurated in 1824 by the British. It was subsequently adopted by as an international standard in measurement. The origins of this system come from just after the turn of the first millennium, but has been since heavily revised.

          It is still the way how they teach it in American schools. Click on pics and try to understand it yourself.
NO JOKE !

When I was talking to some Americans who referenced the „standard“ measurement, or the „standard“ system, I was confused as to what they were referring to. I came to find out that it was what I knew as the imperial System. I was somewhat amused at the name as it showed in my eyes an aversion to the United Kingdom origins and also because the „standard“ measurement was somewhat ironic in its title as „the standard“ is only found in the United States of America.

   That’s how they call the imperial system in the USA.

Same with the, also frequently used term „customary“ system. It suggests that this system is used everywhere from everyone. When our daughter went to an American university she found out that most children in high school age don’t even know that there is  another system (the metric system) in existence around the world.

           
If it weren’t so sad one could laugh about it !  Click on pics in this article to enjoy the pictures.

Currently there are virtually no countries that use the imperial system of measurement, but rather they have adopted the Metric system so reasons which will become indubitably clear as we continue. The imperial system was discarded starting in the middle of the 20th century, and is now obsolete.

America # 1 in the world ?

  On first sight it looks funny, but it isn’t, because Americans are educated like this and they deeply believe in it ! Hi there, you are not #1, you are far behind the rest of the world.

  The only 3 country’s which are officially  still use the imperial measuring system. Just related with some banana republics. You are alone against the world.

    Same here, its no fun at all.
Nicaragua meantime signed the climate agreement.
A Syrian official says the war-ravaged country plans to sign the Paris climate accord. Until now, it had been the only United Nations member state not to have done so. The move was announced Tuesday (7th of November) at the global climate meeting in Bonn, Germany. It means the United States would be the sole U.N. member country outside the deal if President Donald Trump makes good on his threat to pull out.
I know that most Americans stand behind the climate contract, its just your president. But on the other hand, you elected him and therefore you all are responsible for him. My dear American friends, you are not #1, you are far behind, outdated and  you are alone !
Positive is that many Americans are against Trumps „lonely decision“. See the massive presence of Americans (like Jerry Brown, Al Gore or Arnold Schwarzenegger) as climate protection advocates, attending the climate summit 2017 in Bonn.

  This is how it works – just „approximating“, just „abouting“. Measurement always goes „to the nearest 1/8th of an inch ! How precise !

One inch (from Latin „unica“, a twelfths) is, for example, one-twelfth of a foot length, which in turn is defined as the unit of measured foot. A yard is what was once considered the standard length of a step. In Europe too, people were fooling around with this tiresome imperial system.

  As soon as something is a bit bigger then „about 100 yards“, they measure it in „footballfields“. One can hear or see that all the time on TV, by example : „this is about 6 blocks away“, or „that is larger then 3 footballfields“ ! Are you still in the 1700’s ?

No wonder, then, that in the eighteenth century the idea of ​​a group of French philosophers to introduce a unified, simple and precise system of measurement met with open ears. The metric system they proposed was able to avoid the inaccuracies and problems that traders had in one unit bought, but sell their goods in another unit. Scientific measurements could be specified and the international exchange of knowledge could be simplified.

                                 Near the end of the 1700s, King Louis XVI of France ordered a new system of measurement in an effort to crack down on rampant cheating taking place under the existing systems. Left pic: The king’s commission recommended what would become the decimal metric system, and for mass measurements proposed a new unit called a grave which was defined as the mass of a liter of water at the ice point. Right pic: Redefining the Kilogram, woodcut from 1800, left the liter, middle the kilogram, right the meter.

Pirates prevent distribution of the metric system.

But why did not the system became established throughout the world? The answer: Pirates foiled his introduction to the United States of America.

In 1793, the scholar and aristocrat Joseph Dombey was sent from the Old World to speak on the other side of the Atlantic with US Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. In the luggage he had a pole that measured exactly one meter and a copper cylinder, which weighed exactly one kilogram.

  The one kilogram copper weight.

In the years after the American Revolution, American money was a total mess.
The currencies were all divisible in different ways. The British pound was divided into 20 shillings, and each shilling was divided into 12 pence. The Spanish dollar was divisible into eight reales, one for every finger (thumbs didn’t count).

  Thomas Jefferson would have changed – for sure – the measurement system into the metric system, like he did with the monetary system.

In April of 1784, Jefferson wrote „Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit, and of a Coinage“ for the United States. It’s essentially this 11-page ramble about currency, rates of exchange, weights of gold and silver coins. It made the US dollar what it is today, an international „metric money system“ with 100 cents to a dollar.

Very very sad that there was no chance to change the measurement system too. Try to understand the above.

Jefferson had previously been a diplomat in Europe and was open to the ideas of the enlightenment and the metric system. So there was reasonable hope that he would convince Congress to adopt the new system. What happened ?

Who was Joseph Dombey ?

Joseph Dombey was born in Macon, France on 20th of February 1742 and died as a    prisoner on the English island of Montserrat, West Indies, in May 1794. He was a well known French botanist.

  Joseph Dombey.

Dombey ran away from home and acquired a thorough knowledge of botany in Montpellier, where in 1768 he graduated in medicine. In 1772 he went to Paris, where he became assistant to the botanist Bernard de Jussieu, and in 1776 was appointed by Turgot as the head botanist of the Jardin des Plantes.

  The „Dombeya“ flower.

A year later he was sent on an expedition to visit South America and collect useful plants as such could be cultivated in France. He arrived in Callao in January 1778, and soon gathered a large herbarium of the Peruvian flora, also accumulating much valuable information concerning the cinchona tree. In 1780 he sent a portion of his collection home, but the vessel containing them was captured by the British, and the specimens sent to the British Museum, where they are still retained, not withstanding the subsequent claims by the French government.

  Dombeya Spectabilis.

Dombey sought at once to replace this loss, and soon had in readiness a second shipment, but the authorities of Callao confiscated over 300 original designs of rare plants on the pretext that works of native artists were not permitted to be exported to foreign countries. These designs were given to the Spanish botanists Pavon and Ruiz, who used them in their publication of „La Flora Peruana“. Not one word was granted for or/and about Dombey.

   One of the „stolen“ collections.

In 1782 he visited Chile and collected the plants indigenous to that country. During his stay in Concepcion the cholera broke out, and at once Dombey offered his services and was appointed physician-in-chief of the city, which office he resigned in 1783 when the epidemic had passed. He was then invited to examine the quicksilver mines of Chile; the mines in Coquimbo he put in working order, and discovered the mines in Jarilla, and although he spent considerable money in this work, refused all compensation from the officials in Chile, saying that he accepted payment only from the king of France. Finally he sailed for Cadiz, where he arrived in February 1785. Here he suffered the loss of half of his collections, which were seized by the Spanish government and himself imprisoned until he agreed not to publish his researches prior to Pavon and Ruiz. What an extortion.

  Dombeya Natalensis.

Dombey succeeded in escaping to France by way of Le Havre, and secured, on Buffon’s recommendation, an indemnity of 10,000 francs and an annual pension of 1,200 francs. His remaining botanical collections were transferred to the French botanist L’Heritier who had to flee to London with them when Spain demanded these also.

Back to the Pirates.

In 1793 Dombey was sent on this mission to the United States, but Dombey was off course on his passage through a storm. His ship was driven into the Caribbean and fell there in the clutches of British pirates. These captured Dombey and destroyed his equipment. The luckless botanist died a short time later in prison on the English island Montserrat.

  Was Dombey boarded like this ?

  Whatever, he was brought to the English island Montserrat in the Caribbean, where Dombey died in prison.

France sent a second envoy on the way. He reached the USA in good health. But in the meantime, Jefferson was no longer foreign minister. The future US president had just at the time a meaning crisis. After exhausting disputes, he had withdrawn from politics.

   Thanks to Edmund Randolph, to „old fashioned“ to change, the United States of America still fool around with the tiresome imperial system.

His successor Edmund Randolph had little left for the idea of turning existing standards in the US upside down. And while many countries in the rest of the world have introduced the metric system, Americans are still dealing with the confusing imperial system.

For how long ?  Is alteration on its way, finally ?