The Metric Fallacy |
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adoption American anti-metric aune Berlin bill bushels calculations centimetre cloth commercial confusion cotton cotton yarn decimetre denier difficulty dimensions ells English and metric English inch English pound English standards English system English units English yard expressed fabrics fact favor France French French pound French textile gallons German given Government grammes hanks House Committee John Quincy Adams kilo Lamoitier Leipzig linen Mechanical Engineers metres per kilogramme metric advocates metric countries metric equivalents metric measurements metric standard metric system metric units mill millimetre NON-METRIC UNITS numbering yarn old units Paris Metric PERSISTENCE OF OLD pipe practice Roubaix Saxon screw threads silk skeins spinners system of numbering system of weights systems of yarn textile industry textile manufacturing textile standards textile weights tion tools and gauges trade uniformity unit of length unit of weight vulgar fractions weights and measures width worsted yards per pound yarn counts yarn numbering
Popular passages
Page 139 - Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of CLOTHES, rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, and been : the whole External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing ; and the essence of all Science lies in the PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES.
Page 128 - Congress assembled, that on and after the first day. of January, nineteen hundred and four, all the Departments of the Government of the United States, in the transaction of all business requiring the use of weight and measurement, except in completing the survey of public lands, shall employ and use only the weights and measures of the metric system ; and...
Page 128 - ... ^Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That on and after the first day of...
Page 128 - ... Standards will be confined to metric work very largely. Mr. SHAFROTH. Oh, yes. Mr. CHRISTIE. I am not clear about the wisdom of compulsory legislation as relating directly to the public. It might create confusion by trying to unduly expedite the adoption of the system. Mr. SHAFROTH. I will state that is about the only way it has been introduced. Germany adopted it by compulsory statute of the Reichstag, and I do not see how you can do it any other way.
Page 127 - The causes specified have already changed the positions of Britain and America as industrial powers. America now makes more steel than all the rest of the world. In iron and coal her production is the greatest, as it is in textiles — wool and silk. She produces threefourths of the cotton grown in the world. The value of her manufactures is just about three times that of your own, and are still rapidly expanding.
Page 21 - The decimal numbers, applied to the French weights and measures, form one of its highest theoretic excellences. It has, however, been proved by the most decisive experience in France, that they are not adequate to the wants of man in society : and, for all the purposes of retail trade, they have been formally abandoned.
Page 30 - It is absolutely unworthy of us French who were the first to find and apply the metric system to retain the aune and the denier for measuring silk. Ah! these Americans are not considerate of our feelings and they are right. We are as much in the anarchy of weights and measures for the textile industry as at the time of the Revolution, for we have the denier of Montpel-ier and of Milan, for silk, with the aune as a unit of length. We still have the diverse standards of Roubaix, Fourmies and Reims...
Page 134 - Is your object uniformity ? Then, before you change any part of your system, such as it is, compare the uniformity that you must lose, with the uniformity that you may gain, by the alteration. At this hour, fifteen millions of Britons, who, in the next generation, may be twenty, and ten millions of Americans, who, in less time, will be as many, have the same legal system of weights and measures.
Page 21 - Thus then it has been proved, by the test of experience, that the principle of decimal divisions can be applied only with many qualifications to any general system of metrology ; that its natural application is only to numbers ; and that time, space, gravity, and extension, inflexibly reject its sway. The new metrology of France, after trying it in its most universal theoretical application, has been compelled...