Metrication
Metrication or metrification is the act or process of converting to the metric system of measurement. All over the world, countries have transitioned from local and traditional units of measurement to the metric system. This process began in France during the 1790s, and has persistently advanced over two centuries, accumulating into 95% of the world officially exclusively using the modern metric system. Nonetheless, this also highlights that certain countries and sectors are either still transitioning or have chosen not to fully adopt the metric system.
Overview
The process of metrication is typically initiated and overseen by a country's government, generally motivated by the necessity of establishing a uniform measurement system for effective international cooperation in fields like trade and science. Governments achieve metrication through either mandatory changes to existing units within a specified timeframe or through voluntary adoption.While metric use is mandatory in some countries and voluntary in others, all countries have recognised and adopted the SI, albeit to different degrees, including the United States. As of 2011, ninety-five percent of the world's population live in countries where the metric system is the only legal system of measurement.
According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, there are only three countries that do not have mandatory metric laws, however a research paper completed by Vera stated in practice there were four additional countries, namely the United States COFA countries, and Samoa.Samoa has since mandated metric trade.
In 2018, the Liberian government had pledged to adopt the metric system. In 2013, the Myanmar Ministry of Commerce announced that Myanmar was preparing to adopt the metric system as the country's official system of measurement, and metrication in Myanmar began with some progress was made, however there had been very little progress in local trade.
, the United States has a national policy of adopting the metric system based on the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, amended by the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, and Presidential Executive Order 12770 of 1991, and all United States government agencies are required to adopt it.
The metrication process can take years to implement and complete: for instance, Guyana adopted the metric system in 2002 and was only able to make it mandatory in local trade 2017 after the metric system was fully adopted in schools. Antigua and Barbuda, also officially metric, is moving slowly in its metrication process, with a new push in 2011 for all government agencies to convert by 2013 and the entire country to use the metric system by the first quarter of 2015. Other metric Caribbean countries, such as Saint Lucia officially metric 2000, are still in the process toward full conversion.
The United Kingdom has officially embraced a dual measurement system. The United Kingdom as of 2007 halted its metrication process, and retain imperial units of the mile and yard in road markings, pints for returnable milk containers, and for the pint for draught beer and cider sold in pubs. Throughout the 1990s, the European Commission helped accelerate the metrication process for member states, for the implemented the Units of Measure Directive to promote trade. This acceleration caused public backlash in the United Kingdom, and in 2007 the United Kingdom announced that it had secured permanent exemptions listed above and, to appease British public opinion and to facilitate trade with the United States, the option to include imperials units alongside metric units could continue indefinitely.
The United Kingdom and the United States face ongoing resistance toward metrication, which may be partially rooted in a belief that their cultural identity is intertwined with the traditional measurement systems they historically have used. This has resulted in a review of mandatory sales and trade of metric units by the UK government. The outcome of this review with over 100 000 respondents was that a majority had limited or no appetite for increased use of imperial measures.
Forerunners of metrication
The metre was adopted as exclusive measure in 1801 under the French Consulate, then the First French Empire until 1812, when Napoleon decreed the introduction of the mesures usuelles which remained in use in France up to 1840 in the reign of Louis Philippe. Meanwhile, the metre was adopted by the Republic of Geneva. After the joining of canton of Geneva to Switzerland in 1815, Guillaume Henri Dufour published the first Swiss official map for which the metre was adopted as unit of length. A Swiss-French binational officer, Louis Napoléon Bonaparte was present when a baseline was measured near Zürich for Dufour map which would win the gold medal for the national map at the Exposition Universelle of 1855. Among the scientific instruments calibrated on the metre, which were displayed at the Exposition Universelle, was Brunner apparatus, a geodetic instrument devised for measuring the central baseline of Spain whose designer, Carlos Ibáñez e Ibáñez de Ibero would represent Spain at the International Statistical Institute. In addition to the Exposition Universelle and the second Statistical Congress held in Paris, an International Association for obtaining a uniform decimal system of measures, weights, and coins was created there in 1855. Copies of the Spanish standard would be made for Egypt, France and Germany. These standards were compared to each other and with Borda apparatus which was the main reference for measuring all geodetic baselines in France. These comparisons were essential, because of the expansibility of solid materials with raise in temperature. Indeed, one fact had constantly dominated all the fluctuations of ideas on the measurement of geodesic bases: it was the constant concern to accurately assess the temperature of standards in the field; and the determination of this variable, on which depended the length of the instrument of measurement, had always been considered by geodesists as so difficult and so important that one could almost say that the history of measuring instruments is almost identical with that of the precautions taken to avoid temperature errors. In 1867, the second general Conference of the European Arc Measurement recommended the adoption of the metre in replacement of the toise. In 1869, the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences sent to the French Academy of Sciences a report drafted by Otto Wilhelm von Struve, Heinrich von Wild and Moritz von Jacobi inviting his French counterpart to undertake joint action with a view to ensuring the universal use of the metric system in all scientific work. The same year, Napoleon III convened the International Metre Commission which was to meet in Paris in 1870. The Franco-Prussian War broke out, the Second French Empire collapsed, but the metre survived.During the nineteenth century the metric system of weights and measures proved a convenient political compromise during the unification processes in the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. In 1814, Portugal became the second country not part of the French Empire to officially adopt the metric system. Spain found it expedient in 1849 to follow the French example and within a decade Latin America had also adopted the metric system, or had already adopted the system, such as the case of Chile by 1848. There was considerable resistance to metrication in the United Kingdom and in the United States. Despite this, they were actually the first countries in the World to use a metric standard for cartography.
France (1795–1840)
The introduction of the metric system into France in 1795 was done on a district by district basis with Paris being the first district. By modern standards the transition was poorly managed. Although thousands of pamphlets were distributed, the Agency of Weights and Measures who oversaw the introduction underestimated the work involved. Paris alone needed 500,000 metre sticks, yet one month after the metre became the sole legal unit of measure, they only had 25,000 in store. This, combined with the excesses of the Revolution and the high level of illiteracy in 18th century France, made the metric system unpopular.Napoleon himself ridiculed the metric system but, as an able administrator, recognised the value of a sound basis for a system of measurement. Under the décret impérial du 12 février 1812, a new system of measure – the mesures usuelles was introduced for use in small retail businesses – all government, legal and similar works still had to use the metric system and the metric system continued to be taught at all levels of education. That system reintroduced the names of many units used during the ancient regime, but their values were redefined in terms of metric units. Thus the toise was defined as being two metres, with six pieds making up one toise, twelve pouces making up one pied and twelve lignes making up one pouce. Likewise the livre was defined as being 500 g, each livre comprising sixteen once and each once eight gros and the aune as 120 centimetres. This intermediate step eased the transition to a metric-based system.
By the Loi du 4 juillet 1837, Louis Philippe I effectively revoked the use of mesures usuelles by reaffirming the laws of measurement of 1795 and 1799 to be used from 1 May 1840. However, many units of measure, such as the livre, remained in everyday use for many years, and to a residual extent up to this day.
Germany (1810–1877)
At the outbreak of the French Revolution, much of modern-day Germany and Austria were part of the Holy Roman Empire which had become a loose federation of kingdoms, principalities, free cities, bishoprics and other fiefdoms, each with its own system of measurement, though in most cases the systems were loosely derived from the Carolingian system instituted by Charlemagne a thousand years earlier.During the Napoleonic era, some of the German states moved to reform their systems of measurement using the prototype metre and kilogram as the basis of the new units. Baden, in 1810, for example, redefined the Ruthe as being 3.0 m exactly and defined the subunits of the Ruthe as 1 Ruthe = 10 Fuß = 100 Zoll = 1,000 Linie = 10,000 Punkt while the Pfund was defined as 500 g, divided into 30 Loth, each of 16.67 g. Bavaria, in its reform of 1811, trimmed the Bavarian Pfund from 561.288 g to 560 g exactly, consisting of 32 Loth, each of 17.5 g while the Prussian Pfund remained at 467.711 g.
After the Congress of Vienna there was a degree of commercial cooperation between the various German states resulting in the German Customs Union. There were, however, still many barriers to trade until Bavaria took the lead in establishing the General German Commercial Code in 1856. As part of the code the Zollverein introduced the Zollpfund which was defined as exactly 500 g and could be split into 30 'lot'. This unit was used for inter-state movement of goods, but was not applied in all states for internal use.
In 1832, Carl Friedrich Gauss studied the Earth's magnetic field and proposed adding the second to the basic units of the metre and the kilogram in the form of the CGS system. In 1836, he founded the Magnetischer Verein, the first international scientific association, in collaboration with Alexander von Humboldt and Wilhelm Edouard Weber. Geophysics preceded physics and contributed to the development of its methods. It was primarily a natural philosophy whose object was the study of natural phenomena such as the Earth's magnetic field, lightning and gravity. The coordination of the observation of geophysical phenomena in different points of the globe was of paramount importance and was at the origin of the creation of the first international scientific associations. The foundation of the Magnetischer Verein would be followed by that of the Central European Arc Measurement on the initiative of Johann Jacob Baeyer in 1863, and by that of the International Meteorological Organisation whose second president, the Swiss meteorologist and physicist, Heinrich von Wild represented Russia at the International Committee for Weights and Measures. In 1867, the European Arc Measurement called for the creation of a new, international prototype metre and the arrangement of a system where national standards could be compared with it. The French government gave practical support to the creation of an International Metre Commission, which met in Paris in 1870 and again in 1872 with the participation of about thirty countries. The Metre Convention was signed on 20 May 1875 in Paris and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures was created under the supervision of the CIPM.
Although the Zollverein collapsed after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the metric system became the official system of measurement in the newly formed German Empire in 1872 and of Austria in 1875. The Zollpfund ceased to be legal in Germany after 1877.