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Whatever happened to the metric system? : how America kept its feet / John Bemelmans Marciano.

Marciano, John Bemelmans, author.
2014
QC92.U6 M37 2014 (Mapit)
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Title
Whatever happened to the metric system? : how America kept its feet / John Bemelmans Marciano.
Author
Marciano, John Bemelmans, author.
Edition
First U.S. edition.
ISBN
9781608194759
1608194752
Published
New York : Bloomsbury, 2014.
Language
English
Description
310 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 22 cm
Call Number
QC92.U6 M37 2014
Dewey Decimal Classification
389/.15
Summary
"Most of the rest of the world is on the metric system, and for a time in the 1970s America appeared ready to make the switch. Yet it never happened, and the reasons for that get to the root of who we think we are, just as the measurements are woven into the ways we think. John Marciano chronicles the origins of measurement systems, the kaleidoscopic array of standards throughout Europe and the thirteen American colonies, the combination of intellect and circumstance that resulted in the metric system's creation in France in the wake of the French Revolution, and America's stubborn adherence to the hybrid United States Customary System ever since."--Dust jacket.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 285-300) and index.
Record Appears in
On-Campus Resources > Books
All Resources
The day the metric died
Thomas Jefferson plans
American Paris
Metric systems
The decimation of everything
Napoleonic measures
Lighthouses of the sky
The internationalists
A universal coin
The battle of the standards
Standard time
A toolkit for the world
The Great Calendar Debate
Shocks to the system
A metric America
Isolated
Appendix A. U.S. customary and metric measures
Appendix B. Customary metric measures.

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