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The Mysteriously Missing Metric System
WHY AMERICA NEVER CHANGED TO KILOS AND GRAMS Pirates Stole Our Metric System
Pirates, that’s right, pirates stopped America from changing to the metric system. While they can’t take all the blame, they steal a good chunk of it. There was a specific time in history when America did consider taking up the metric system. But pirates intercepted the standards, and America has refused to change its measuring system ever since. Way back when America was still a new country, there was no regulated measuring system throughout the states. Each territory was using some bizarre system that stayed only within state lines. For example, people were using Roman measurements, Dutch systems, and British systems dating back to King Henry VII. In 1789, Thomas Jefferson decided that some order needed to be in place. A lover of all things French, Jefferson admired the metric system’s logic and principle. He asked the French to help the U.S. transition to the metric system, and they were kind enough to send scientist Joseph Dombey. Dombey boarded a ship and set sail for America with two items pivotal to our measuring system change. The first gadget was a copper cylinder 3 inches in height and width, weighing precisely 1 kilogram. The second was another copper object, but this time a rod estimated to be a meter
in length. These simple trinkets would have eased us into the metric system. Except,
we never received them. In fact, Dombey never set foot in America.
Unfortunately, storm winds blew his ship off course and into the pirate-filled Caribbean. The pirates
hijacked his boat and held him captive, hoping to use him for ransom. In a tragic turn of events, Dombey died in that pirate prison
before any ransom money could be sent. The pirates then auctioned off everything Dombey had on his boat, metric measuring tools included.
So, you can thank the pirates for all the painstaking work we have to go through when using metric-based recipes. Why Americans never swapped systems after 1789 is still a mystery!
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