The Economics and History of Metrication: An Analysis of the United States Measurement System in a Global Context

The global standardization of measurement represents one of the most critical infrastructural achievements of the modern industrial and scientific era. Today, the International System of Units (SI), commonly known as the metric system, serves as the universal language of science, international trade, and global manufacturing. The United States remains one of only three sovereign nations in the world—alongside Liberia and Myanmar—that has not formally adopted the metric system as its primary, exclusive standard of measurement.
Instead, the United States operates within a deeply entrenched dual-measurement paradigm. It utilizes the metric system in scientific research, military operations, and specific highly globalized industrial applications, while fiercely retaining the United States Customary System (USCS) for domestic infrastructure, daily commerce, construction, and public education. This persistent duality incurs significant, compounding economic costs, stymies international trade interoperability, severely limits educational efficiency, and routinely results in catastrophic engineering and medical failures. This report provides an exhaustive, systematic analysis of the historical divergence of global measurement systems, comparative international metrication strategies, the political and cultural forces that successfully halted American metrication in the late 20th century, and the quantifiable economic and human costs of remaining an outlier in an otherwise standardized metric world.

The Historical Divergence of Measurement Systems

To comprehend the systemic friction of the modern American measurement paradigm, it is necessary to examine the historical and philosophical divergence between the metric system, the British Imperial system, and United States Customary Units. The systems were born of entirely different eras, driven by fundamentally opposed organizational philosophies.

Organic Evolution vs. Rationalist Design

The English system of measurement, which serves as the precursor to both the modern Imperial and US Customary systems, evolved organically over thousands of years. It represents a pragmatic fusion of Roman, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and medieval local units that developed organically to serve the immediate needs of agriculture, local trade, and daily manual labor. Units in this system were historically defined by human-scale intuitiveness and agricultural utility rather than scientific precision. For instance, the foot was subdivided into twelve inches to allow for clean, whole-number fractional divisions (halves, thirds, quarters), which were absolutely essential for timber framing, masonry, and traditional trades where decimal alternatives would have hopelessly complicated spatial ratios. Early royal standards, such as the Winchester standards established by the 10th-century Saxon king Edgar the Peaceable, attempted to enforce uniformity across local markets, but the system remained deeply tied to localized customs, physical standard-objects, and intuitive human proportions.
By contrast, the metric system was born of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. It was designed from its inception as a purely rational, base-10 (decimal) system independent of regional culture, human anatomy, or agricultural history. The fundamental unit, the meter, was originally defined geometrically as one ten-millionth of the distance from the Earth's equator to the North Pole, forever tying measurement to planetary constants rather than the length of a king's foot or the yield of a barley crop. Because it utilizes a uniform base-10 scale with consistent prefixes (milli-, centi-, kilo-), the metric system requires no complex cross-reductions between differing tables of measurement.

The Split Between US Customary and British Imperial Units

A common misconception in the American public discourse is that the United States utilizes the "Imperial" system. In reality, the United States Customary System (USCS) and the British Imperial System are legally and volumetrically distinct from one another, sharing a common ancestor but diverging significantly in the 19th century.
The divergence occurred in the early 1800s. Following American independence, the young United States retained the pre-1824 English weights and measures it had inherited during the colonial era. Meanwhile, in 1824, the United Kingdom parliament passed the Weights and Measures Act, which sought to overhaul, consolidate, and standardize the wildly assorted measurements used across the expanding British Empire. This act redefined various units, most notably establishing the Imperial gallon—defined as the volume of ten pounds of distilled water, equating to approximately 277.42 cubic inches or 4.546 liters—to replace multiple older, conflicting gallon standards.
The United States, operating as an independent sovereign entity, did not adopt the 1824 British reforms. Instead, in 1832, the U.S. formalized its own unique standards. For liquid volume, the U.S. chose to retain the older "Queen Anne wine gallon," defined as exactly 231 cubic inches (or 3.785 liters), as the standard U.S. liquid gallon.

Unit Type	United States Customary System (USCS)	British Imperial System	Metric Equivalent (SI)
Liquid Volume (Gallon)	231.0 cubic inches	277.42 cubic inches	3.785 liters (US) / 4.546 liters (Imp)
Fluid Ounce	29.5735 milliliters	28.4131 milliliters	~30 ml
Weight (Ton)	Short Ton (2,000 lbs)	Long Ton (2,240 lbs)	Metric Ton (1,000 kg or 2,204.6 lbs)
Standard Reference	Pre-1824 English units	1824 Weights and Measures Act	International Bureau of Weights and Measures

This historical split meant that even among English-speaking nations, standardization was highly fractured well before the global push for metrication in the 20th century. Consequently, a vehicle achieving 30 miles per gallon under UK Imperial standards would actually be achieving only about 25 miles per gallon under USCS standards, a discrepancy that continues to cause confusion in international trade and engineering.

Comparative Analysis of Global Metrication Strategies

Following the devastation of World War II, the rebuilding of global manufacturing bases, the massive expansion of international trade, and the necessity of supply chain interoperability drove an unprecedented wave of metrication among the remaining non-metric nations. The varying transition strategies utilized by the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada highlight the specific mechanisms of successful metrication, as well as the political pitfalls that cause such transitions to stall.

The United Kingdom: A Voluntary, Protracted Overlay

In May 1965, driven by intense pressure from the Federation of British Industries, the UK government announced its formal support for a voluntary, decade-long transition to the metric system. The industrial sector recognized that maintaining dual production lines—one based on imperial units for the domestic market and another on metric units for the much larger, rapidly integrating European export market—was economically untenable. At the time, metric-using countries accounted for over 50% of UK exports, making the transition a purely economic imperative.
The government established the Metrication Board in 1968 to advise, stimulate, and educate the public on the transition, focusing heavily on manufacturing, education, and retail. However, because the board lacked coercive authority and the transition was strictly voluntary, the initiative encountered fierce cultural resistance. Public opposition centered on a sense of lost sovereignty, nostalgia, and a defense of human-scale familiarity.
When the UK joined the European Economic Community in 1973, subsequent EU directives mandated metric labeling for consumer goods, shifting the environment from voluntary to compulsory. This provoked intense, organized backlash, famously culminating in the "Metric Martyrs" movement in the late 1990s and early 2000s, where local merchants were prosecuted for selling goods solely in imperial units, sparking national outrage over perceived government overreach. Ultimately, the UK negotiated concessions from the EU, allowing the indefinite use of pints for draught beer and miles for road signage. Today, the UK operates in a state of "gradual overlay." The nation functions largely in metric for science, engineering, and wholesale trade, but relies heavily on imperial units for daily social interactions, body weight (stones and pounds), and road infrastructure.

Australia: Decisive and Mandatory Implementation

In stark contrast to the UK's protracted and politically compromised approach, Australia pursued rapid, decisive, and mandatory action. Recognizing the immense economic burden of maintaining dual systems, the Australian government passed the Metric Conversion Act in 1970 and established the Metric Conversion Board with a strict, state-backed mandate to complete the transition by 1976.
Australia utilized a phased but compulsory approach across specific sectors. For example, the entire nation switched its road signs and speed limits from miles to kilometers over a single month in July 1974. While there was initial public confusion at fuel stations and vocal pushback from protest groups like the short-lived Australian Anti-Metric Association, the government steadfastly refused to capitulate or extend deadlines. Through highly coordinated, government-backed education campaigns and strict legal mandates, Australia overcame the cultural resistance and achieved near-full metrication by the 1980s. Today, Australian industries quietly enjoy massive, ongoing efficiency gains and profitability increases resulting directly from the eradication of dual-system overhead.

Canada: A Stalled Transition Bound by US Proximity

Canada’s metrication journey, initiated in 1970, was deeply intertwined with the United States' stated intentions to do the same at that time. The Canadian transition was structured and highly affirmative throughout the 1970s. Weather reporting, road signs, consumer retail packaging, and fuel sales all shifted to metric units with relative efficiency.
However, the Canadian economy was, and remains, inextricably linked to the United States. When the U.S. metrication effort collapsed in the early 1980s, Canadian manufacturers found themselves in an impossible position: exporting to a massive southern neighbor that still demanded USCS dimensions for everything from timber to automotive parts. Furthermore, affirmative metrication faced rising domestic political pushback from conservatives. In 1984, the election of the Progressive Conservative government under Brian Mulroney led to the abolition of the Metric Commission on March 31, 1985.
Today, Canada remains highly metric in official and public-facing capacities—speed limits are in kilometers per hour, fuel is sold in liters, and temperatures are broadcast in Celsius—but non-metric units persist heavily in construction, real estate, engineering, and daily vernacular due to the interdependent supply chain with the U.S. and the historical inertia of the stalled 1980s transition.

The American Metrication Effort and Systemic Failure

The United States has debated metrication for over two centuries, with early advocates including Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams arguing for decimal-based measurement alignment. However, the most coordinated and robust effort occurred in the 1970s. This effort ultimately failed due to a lack of legislative courage, fierce organized labor opposition, small business lobbying, and shifting political ideologies regarding federal mandates.

"A Metric America: A Decision Whose Time Has Come"

In 1968, the U.S. Congress passed legislation directing the Secretary of Commerce to conduct a comprehensive study on the impact of the increasing worldwide use of the metric system, and to appraise the desirability and practicability of increasing the use of metric weights and measures in the United States.
The resulting three-year investigation culminated in the 1971 National Bureau of Standards (NBS) report, famously titled "A Metric America: A Decision Whose Time Has Come," directed by Daniel V. De Simone. The study involved extensive public hearings and exhaustive surveys across all sectors of society, including education, manufacturing, consumer goods, international trade, and national security.
The NBS concluded that remaining on the USCS would increasingly isolate the U.S. in a "metric sea," damaging export competitiveness and causing internal friction. The report emphatically recommended that the United States transition to the International Metric System deliberately and carefully through a coordinated national program. Crucially, the NBS recommended that Congress establish a central coordinating body and set a firm target date ten years ahead, by which time the U.S. would become predominantly, though not exclusively, metric.

The Metric Conversion Act of 1975: A Fatal Compromise

Acting on the broad recommendations of the NBS report, Congress debated and eventually passed the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, which President Gerald Ford signed into law. The Act declared it the national policy of the United States to coordinate and plan the increasing use of the metric system, and it established the 17-member United States Metric Board (USMB) to oversee, plan, and educate the public on the transition.
However, the legislation contained a fatal, politically motivated flaw: it lacked a mandatory transition timeline and relied entirely on voluntary compliance. The strict 10-year deadline recommended by the 1971 NBS report was stripped from the final bill due to intense lobbying pressure. The board was given no coercive authority, rendering it an advisory committee rather than a transition authority.

Forces of Opposition: Labor Unions, Small Business, and Cultural Pushback

The voluntary nature of the Act empowered various opposition forces to stall the transition indefinitely.

1. Organized Labor: Trade unions, heavily represented by massive umbrella federations like the AFL-CIO, mounted fierce, highly organized opposition to metrication in the 1970s. Thomas Donahue, the Executive Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO in 1976, expressed deep skepticism regarding cooperative management initiatives, a sentiment that extended to top-down government mandates like metrication. The unions argued that transitioning would place undue stress on trained industrial workers, who would require extensive retraining and new toolsets. More pressingly, union leadership feared that adopting the global metric standard would eliminate a natural trade barrier, accelerating the influx of imported foreign-made goods and threatening domestic manufacturing jobs.
2. Small Business and Retooling Costs: While massive multinational corporations (such as General Motors and IBM) strongly favored metrication to streamline their global supply chains and avoid dual-inventory overhead, small domestic manufacturers vehemently opposed it. The upfront capital cost of retooling, replacing dies, patterns, and hardware, and maintaining dual inventories during a transition phase was viewed as an existential economic threat to small machine shops and parts suppliers who did not rely on international exports.
3. Cultural Backlash and Apathy: The USMB conducted town halls across the country, which frequently devolved into acrimonious, highly publicized protests. Consumers expressed deep frustration over the loss of familiar intuitive measurements. The conversion of some highway signs to kilometers and the introduction of liter-sized gasoline pumps caused widespread confusion, anger, and accusations of anti-American elitism.

By 1981, the USMB reported to Congress that it lacked the clear Congressional mandate necessary to execute a national conversion. In 1982, citing general budget reductions and preferring a free-market approach that left the transition to the private sector, the Reagan administration defunded and disbanded the USMB, effectively ending the affirmative government push for a metric America. While a subsequent 1988 amendment in an omnibus trade bill designated the metric system as the "preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce," it contained massive loopholes allowing federal agencies to avoid conversion if they deemed it economically unfeasible, preserving the dual-system status quo.

The Economics of Metrication: A Systematic Analysis of the Cost of Not Switching

Opponents of metrication frequently cite the staggering upfront capital costs of replacing infrastructure and retooling factories. For instance, replacing the estimated 656,000 to 1,640,000 mile markers and speed limit signs on U.S. highways is frequently cited as costing upward of $200 million. In the aerospace sector, NASA estimated that converting the legacy drawings and specifications of the Constellation program (which were based on Apollo-era Imperial units) to metric would cost approximately $370 million.
However, systematic economic analyses strongly suggest that these one-time transition costs are vastly overshadowed by the perpetual, compounding economic hemorrhage caused by operating dual measurement systems year after year.

The Macroeconomic Drag of a Dual System

The cost of refusing to fully adopt the metric system functions as a massive, hidden tax on the U.S. economy. When the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) surveyed its members in 1980 regarding the financial impact of operating in dual systems, they found that maintaining both metric and imperial workflows increased production costs by an amount equivalent to 9% of a company's gross profit, or 14% of their net profit, compared to fully metricated companies.
When this inefficiency is extrapolated to the macroeconomic scale of the United States, the figures are astronomical. Based on 2005 U.S. Gross Domestic Product data, researchers estimated that the inefficiency of dual measurements—stemming from duplicated inventories, translation errors, loss of export competitiveness, and supply chain friction—costs the U.S. economy approximately $1.15 trillion annually, equating to roughly $3,850 per person per year in wasted capital.
This is not a new phenomenon. Historical studies support this systemic drag. In 1915, Dr. Jos. V. Collins published a meticulously researched article titled "A Metrical Tragedy," which estimated an annual national loss of $315 million due to non-metrication. Adjusted purely for inflation (and excluding the massive expansion of the modern economy), that figure scales to over $6.1 billion annually in lost trade, wasted time, and complex cross-reductions. In modern supply chains, American businesses routinely lose contracts because international buyers automatically assume U.S. firms cannot seamlessly integrate with metric engineering tolerances.

The High Cost of Teaching the English System

The dual measurement system places a massive, highly quantifiable burden on the American educational system. In a seminal 1992 study, later updated and rigorously replicated in 2021 by Mary Enderson and David Selover, researcher Richard Phelps demonstrated that teaching U.S. students two entirely separate systems of measurement—alongside the complex, non-linear conversion ratios between them—wastes an enormous amount of instructional time.
The English system requires students to memorize disparate, historically arbitrary conversion factors (e.g., 12 inches to a foot, 5,280 feet to a mile, 16 ounces to a pound, 4 quarts to a gallon). By contrast, the metric system operates on a coherent base-10 structure requiring merely the shifting of a decimal point. Phelps concluded that "a full year of mathematics instruction is lost to the duplication of effort" across a student's primary education.
The Enderson and Selover (2021) cost-benefit analysis applied modern economic modeling to this lost instructional time. They determined that eliminating USCS instruction from elementary and middle schools would generate massive financial and temporal savings.

Economic Metric of Educational Waste (Enderson & Selover, 2021)	Estimated Value
Annual Savings by eliminating USCS instruction	$1.603 Billion to $2.506 Billion
Present Discounted Value of Accumulated Savings Over Time	$53.4 Billion to $83.5 Billion

These billions represent misallocated tax dollars, reduced global academic competitiveness, and the opportunity cost of teaching advanced mathematics, statistics, or computer science instead of archaic conversion tables.

Systemic Failures: The Cost in Lives and Daily Life

Beyond macroeconomic inefficiency and educational waste, the persistence of dual measurement systems creates an environment uniquely primed for cognitive and calculation errors. When multiple measurement systems interface in highly complex, low-margin-of-error environments—such as aerospace, heavy infrastructure, and healthcare—the results are frequently catastrophic, costing both hundreds of millions of dollars and human lives.

Aerospace and Aviation Failures

The aerospace sector provides the most prominent, spectacular examples of projects stymied by unit conversion errors.
The Gimli Glider (Air Canada Flight 143 - 1983) In 1983, Canada was in the midst of transitioning its aviation sector to the metric system. Air Canada's newly acquired Boeing 767s were the first in the fleet to measure fuel mass exclusively in kilograms, whereas older aircraft measured fuel in imperial pounds. Prior to a routine flight from Montreal to Edmonton, the aircraft's internal Fuel Quantity Indication System (FQIS) malfunctioned, requiring the flight crew and ground mechanics to manually calculate the fuel load using a physical "dripstick" to measure the volume of fuel in the tanks in liters.
To convert this volumetric liter reading into mass, the crew needed to apply the specific gravity of jet fuel. The crew and ground staff, relying on ingrained institutional memory from older aircraft, used the customary conversion factor of 1.77 (pounds per liter) instead of the newly required metric factor of 0.803 (kilograms per liter). Because this error was systemic—made independently by the captain, the first officer, the mechanic, and the fueller—no cross-checks caught the discrepancy. The calculation yielded a figure they believed to be 22,300 kilograms; in reality, they had loaded 22,300 pounds of fuel, which was less than half the required amount for the journey.
Mid-flight at 41,000 feet, both engines flamed out due to total fuel exhaustion. Only the extraordinary skill of the pilots, who glided the massive, unpowered commercial airliner to an abandoned military airstrip in Gimli, Manitoba, prevented the loss of 69 lives.
The Mars Climate Orbiter (1999) In 1999, NASA lost the $327.6 million Mars Climate Orbiter due to a subcontractor software interface error regarding units of force. While NASA’s internal software systems correctly utilized metric SI units (Newton-seconds) to calculate spacecraft trajectory and thruster impulse, ground software developed by Lockheed Martin provided the impulse data to the navigation system in U.S. Customary units (pound-force seconds). Because one pound-force is equal to approximately 4.45 newtons, the trajectory calculations were wildly inaccurate. The mismatch caused the orbiter to enter the Martian atmosphere at an altitude of just 57 kilometers instead of the planned 140-150 kilometers, causing the spacecraft to disintegrate instantly due to atmospheric friction.
Korean Air MD-11 Cargo Crash (1999) Aviation relies heavily on feet for altitude measurement worldwide, a legacy of American dominance in early post-war aviation. In 1999, a Korean Air MD-11 cargo plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Shanghai. The local air traffic controllers directed the flight to climb to 1,500 meters. The crew, accustomed to aviation's standard imperial altitude measurements, concluded they had misinterpreted the instruction. Believing they were supposed to be at 1,500 feet, they initiated a rapid, fatal descent, resulting in a crash that killed 8 people and injured 37.

Infrastructure and Engineering

Tokyo Disneyland Space Mountain Derailment (2003) In December 2003, a roller coaster train on the Space Mountain attraction at Tokyo Disneyland derailed near the unload platform due to a fractured rear axle. An exhaustive investigation by the Oriental Land Company revealed the failure was caused directly by a unit conversion oversight within procurement and engineering documents.
In 1995, the original U.S.-based engineering specifications for the coaster had been updated and converted from imperial units to metric units. However, when ordering replacement parts in 2002, procurement staff mistakenly utilized the obsolete, pre-1995 imperial drawings. Consequently, axles measuring 44.14 mm in diameter were ordered instead of the required 45 mm metric axles. This seemingly minor discrepancy created a gap between the axle and its bearing of over 1.0 mm, rather than the strictly required 0.2 mm. This loose fit led to excessive vibration, rapid metal fatigue, and eventual catastrophic fracture mid-ride.

Healthcare and Pediatric Risk

Perhaps the most insidious and routine cost of the dual measurement system occurs in domestic healthcare, specifically regarding pediatric medication dosing. While the medical and pharmaceutical communities operate entirely in metric units for exactitude, consumer-facing instructions and dosing tools frequently utilize customary volumetric units, such as teaspoons and tablespoons, to accommodate American patients.
This discrepancy routinely results in dangerous overdosing or underdosing of pediatric patients. A comprehensive study on the "Safe Administration For Every Rx for Kids" (SAFE Rx) observed parent dosing behavior across multiple liquid medication trials to measure the impact of label terminology.

SAFE Rx Study Finding (Dosing Errors)	Statistical Observation
Any Dosing Error (>20% deviation)	83.5% of parents
Large Dosing Error (>2x the intended dose)	29.3% of parents
Impact of "Teaspoon" vs "mL" label	"Teaspoon" labels increased nonstandard tool usage (AOR=4.4)

The primary vector for these massive errors was unit confusion. When pharmacy labels read "give 5 teaspoons" instead of "give 5 mL," parents routinely bypassed standardized, highly accurate oral syringes and instead used highly variable household kitchen spoons. The study demonstrated that using "teaspoon" or "tsp" on prescription labels exponentially increased the likelihood of a parent using nonstandard dosing tools resulting in massive errors compared to strictly mL-only labeling. Consequently, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) and the FDA have issued urgent guidance calling for the total elimination of teaspoon terminology on prescription labels in favor of strictly metric (mL) dosing devices to prevent toxic overdoses, highlighting the daily, life-and-death stakes of unit standardization.
Similar errors plague Emergency Medical Services (EMS). A study of paramedic interventions involving children found a 34.7% medication dosing error rate. These errors were heavily influenced by the necessity of rapidly converting a child's estimated weight from pounds to kilograms in high-stress environments to determine proper mg/kg drug dosages, resulting in intravenous epinephrine overdoses averaging 808% of the target dose.

Does it Get More Expensive to Switch Over Time?

A critical policy question surrounding U.S. metrication is whether the transition cost increases with time, or if natural technological advancement makes it easier. The evidence firmly indicates that the longer metrication is delayed, the more exponentially expensive and complex it becomes.
Modern industrial economies are heavily digitized and automated. The integration of legacy non-metric units into Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software, massive relational databases, proprietary supply chain management algorithms, and automated manufacturing robotics means that USCS is literally hard-coded into trillions of dollars of digital and physical infrastructure.
NASA’s recent experience with the Constellation and Artemis programs starkly illustrates this compounding cost. When NASA sought to utilize proven Apollo and Space Shuttle-era designs for modern heavy-launch vehicles, the agency realized that the legacy engineering drawings, physical tooling, and testing data were entirely in USCS. Converting the baseline engineering architecture for the Constellation program to metric to align with international partners was estimated to cost approximately $370 million in pure overhead. As the Constellation program's "Lessons Learned" documentation explicitly warned future aerospace managers: "Unless SI units are specified prior to acquisition, the cost to change will be prohibitive. Assign a champion to enforce implementation at all levels until use of SI units is standardized". The Artemis program continues to face massive budget overruns and delays partly due to the friction of modifying legacy architectures and managing complex subcontractor interfaces.
Because civil infrastructure operates on 50-to-100-year lifespans, every new highway sign erected, every new architectural blueprint filed, and every non-metric database constructed today locks the United States into another century of dual-system maintenance. Unlike the 1970s, where transitioning primarily involved replacing physical rulers, analog dials, and mechanical dies, a modern transition requires rewriting millions of lines of proprietary code, recalibrating automated global supply chain algorithms, and translating vast historical datasets to prevent data corruption. The compounding interest of this technical debt makes future transitions dramatically more expensive than the aborted efforts of the 1970s.

Conclusion

The failure of the United States to adopt the metric system is not merely a harmless quirk of American exceptionalism; it is a systemic economic and operational handicap. By clinging to the United States Customary System while operating within an entirely globalized, metric world, the U.S. subjects itself to immense financial waste. This waste is quantified in the billions of dollars annually in educational inefficiencies alone, and exceeds a trillion dollars in lost industrial productivity and dual-system overhead.
The historical record clearly demonstrates that voluntary metrication fails. The successful transitions of Australia and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom, relied on firm, unyielding governmental mandates that prioritized long-term economic integration and standardization over short-term cultural discomfort and corporate retooling expenses.
The human and financial toll of maintaining two incompatible systems—evidenced by crashed spacecraft, derailed transit systems, and highly prevalent, dangerous pediatric medication errors—proves that translation between units is inherently fallible. As global supply chains become more tightly integrated and aerospace, digital, and mechanical engineering grow increasingly complex, the friction of the American dual-measurement system will inevitably escalate. While the upfront capital cost to adopt the metric system today is undeniably vast, the compounding, perpetual cost of non-metrication ensures that avoiding the transition will only become more prohibitive, expensive, and dangerous with each passing year.

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