Technology and Globalisation by David Pretel & Lino Camprubí

Author:David Pretel & Lino Camprubí
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Following the ideas of the British sociologist Herbert Spencer (who in 1896 sent to all members of the House of Commons, to some members of the House of Lords, and to all representatives in the United States Congress copies of his booklet Against the Metric System),19 Halsey and Dale elaborated their main arguments questioning the alleged advantages brought by metrication and the assumed technical superiority of metric over customary units. Certainly, Halsey and Dale employed nationalistic cries to attack the metric system (as was characteristic of metric opponents during the nineteenth century), but that was not at the core of their arguments. These were educated and intelligent ‘practical’ men who possessed the intellectual resources to challenge scientists’ claims on their own terrain.

Spencer began what he called a ‘rational opposition’ to the metric system and Halsey and Dale followed him in that path. They articulated their ideas in what became the single most influential book in the history of the metric system in America, The Metric Fallacy.20 The book revolved around the idea that based on practical and economic grounds the transition to the metric system was undesirable. More specifically, Halsey argued that changing a system of weights and measures was enormously difficult and the transition would never be fully completed; that the change of system represented the destruction of the existing mechanical standards; that foreign commerce does not require the adoption of a new system in manufacture; that for industrial processes the metric system was not better suited than the English system; and that England and the United States have ‘the simplest and the most uniform system of weights and measures of any country in the world’.21

Finally, in the Metric Fallacy Halsey also questioned the mere possibility of implementing a universal system: ‘The experience of a century has shown that the idea of a universal system of weights and measures is an “iridescent dream”. We must make up our minds to get along with diverse systems of weights and measures in the world as we do with divers languages and systems of currency.’22

This opposition to the metric system, based on economic and technical arguments, was not restricted to mechanical engineers, and soon enough other groups and associations expressed similar beliefs. The National Machine Tool Builders Association passed, in 1902, a resolution protesting at the prospect of metrication in America, arguing that ‘the adoption of the metric system would entail an enormous first cost of new equipment to conform to the new standards and a constant increased cost in the maintenance of a double standard for repairs and renewals, and a consequent increased cost of the product to the consumer’.23

That same year the NAM, forgetting its fervent endorsement of the metric system from four years previously, adopted a mildly negative resolution that asked for a stop to any immediate change in the country’s weights and measures:It appears to this association, first, that the compulsory adoption of the metric system would probably affect the manufacturers interests of this country as follows: One-third

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