Anti-metrication

Efforts to prevent metrication have largely failed except in the United States.

The basic philosophy of anti-metrication is that non-metric systems of measurement were developed organically from actual use (thus units which share names with physical objects, such as the foot, hand, barrel, cord) and are therefore properly suited for normal usage, whereas the metric system is based on easy decimal conversion between various units, not natural usage. In the United Kingdom the anti-metrication cause is also linked with distrust of the European Union, although UK metrication was in fact initiated by the UK government establishing the Metrication Board in 1969, four years before the UK joined the EEC.

The primary direct reason for anti-metrication is the difficulties that conversion causes. This is discussed in more detail in metrication.

Moreover, anti-metrication is a form of traditionalism, looking to a history of usage that stretches back centuries or even millennia.

Units of time have largely escaped the metrication debate because they are common to metric and non-metric systems. Although for strict scientific use, the SI recommends only the second and decimal multiples of the second, whereas units such as minutes, hours, days etc are related to seconds by non-decimal multiples, the metric system in fact permits these time units for general use (for example speeds in kilometres per hour).

• http://www.hostess.com/womanhood/f2m/ An anti-metrication site