While almost every country in the world uses the metric system, Americans have never adopted it. They continue to use units such as miles instead of kilometers, inches instead of centimeters.
When you spend some time on the internet, you may have noticed that people all over the world make jokes about Americans because they don’t use the metric system like almost every other state in the world. Notable examples include jokes using giraffes to measure asteroids, cats reaching out to measure furniture, and classic American eagles for social distancing. At the heart of these jokes is the idea that the United States will use literally everything but the metric system for measurement.
But the US has a notable history of not using the same system as nearly all states. What is perhaps surprising is that pirates are at the root of this situation.
After the victory over the British, the newly established United States of America, with the coming together of many states, had to put on the agenda the problems caused by the use of different measurement systems by everyone. When you couldn’t explain exactly how heavy something was, it predictably became very difficult to trade, and so the government started looking for a common system. Europe was leading a variety of methods, but the French had a particularly interesting option that seemed very plausible. This system was what we now know as the metric system.
Perhaps the most important part of uniting the world in one unit was creating the perfect kilogram weight. It was a complex affair, and in the late 1700s, as science allowed, small cylinders were made to represent the mass of one cubic decimeter of water at 4°C. In order for the USA to switch to this system, it had to get some of these cylinders.
The then Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, sent a letter to France expressing their willingness to adopt the new system, and France responded by sending Joseph Dombey, a French scientist, and a kilogram of copper weight to America. Unfortunately, Dombey and the crew of the ship he was on would never cross the Atlantic.
This is what the kilogram samples looked like that never made it to the USThe ship was caught in a severe storm and was thrown far off course. When the storm subsided, Dombey and crew found themselves in the Caribbean Sea, which was probably the last place they wanted to be. If you were a sailor in the 18th century, this area was definitely not a safe place. The ship was captured by pirates and the entire crew was imprisoned in Montserrat. Awaiting a ransom that never arrived, Dombey and his crew perished in captivity.
Unsurprisingly, the pirates didn’t care how much a kilogram weighed and didn’t care about these objects, even if they knew what they were. The contents of the ship were auctioned, and the kilogram that could redefine the American measure was purchased by Andrew Ellicott. Those kilograms were passed down from generation to generation in the family, until later in 1952, when they were given to the organization now known as the US National Standards Institute, NPR said.
The United States developed its own units, called conventional units, which were used until 1959 when the United States and the United Kingdom worked to harmonize the unit definitions and created the most widely used measurements today, along with other systems.
While it’s interesting to think that pirates may be the only reason the US doesn’t use measures like kilograms, there are many other reasons as well. Efforts have been made over the centuries to join the rest of the world, but many different factors have prevented this transition from happening, including the costs of switching systems, the time required, and public reaction to this change. But the first reason the metric system never reached US shores was certainly pirates…
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