What do the US, Liberia and Burma have in common?
March 27, 2010No, it’s not their political systems (!). They are the only three countries in the world that don’t use the metric system.
If the US went metric (as they’ve been threatening to do for years, but have never had the political will to do so), then simple things like parts, drill bits, Allen keys, fabric measurements, shoe and clothing sizes, etc. *might* have a chance of being standardized around the world. Global manufacturers would not have to tool up to make a metric version and a non-metric version, packaging wouldn’t have to have two versions printed on it, etc. The annual savings globally could stretch into billions of dollars.
Why doesn’t the US go metric???
For more information, see this Wikipedia article (which is also where the map comes from): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system and http://science.howstuffworks.com/5-things-about-metric-system.htm
Non-metric countries shaded gray
[Links last checked March 2010]
[...] along with almost the rest of the entire world, embraced the metric system years ago. But many are still confused about how to write metric units [...]
[...] The only thing I couldn’t find was a way to change the units of measure for ingredients from US to metric sizes for the majority of the world’s population that uses metric. [...]