Arthur Edwin Kennelly

“ To an American, the superiority of the decimal currency over the non-decimal currency of his British cousin is generally so self-evident as to require no emphasis. But it is notorious that many intelligent and cultivated Englishmen do not recognize this superiority. They are so familiar by habit with their own currency, that they have forgotten their early schoolboy efforts in mastering it. Nevertheless, it is easily shown that the British system, as above enumerated, includes no less than 17 connecting ratios ”

“ Moreover, the labor involved in the change, if the transition is not too sudden, will be small compared with the labor saved to the young in acquiring the present complex system, as well as to adults in wastefully consuming time for constantly applying it.
The United States cover so large a territory, and have within this territory so large a market, that the pressure upon their citizens for meeting the requirements of trade with countries outside of Great Britain, or her colonies, has not been felt as it has been felt in countries like Germany. ”

“ According to Ball's 'Short Account of the History of Mathematics,' the arabic arithmetic was practically unknown in Europe until the end of the thirteenth century. At that date numbers were written in Roman numerals. When we see a date inscribed in Roman numerals upon the portal of a public building, we witness the persistence, in art, of the system which was in universal use for all the arithmetical purposes of the civilized world only a few centuries ago.
How simple to our minds to-day seems such a numerical problem as a determination of the number of seconds in a mean solar day. ”

“ Fears are occasionally expressed that the substitution of the metric system would make mental arithmetic in such matters so easy that the aptitude would be lost. According to this argument, we should make all mental operations as hard as possible, artificially.
So complex is our customary system of weights and measures, that there are comparatively few persons who can recite from memory all the various tables taught in our schools. So ambiguous is the system, that many cultured persons are not aware of the difference between British and U. S. gallons, quarts, pints, bushels, pecks, etc. ”

“ In the metric system, roads are measured in kilometers and hectometers, short distances in meters or dekameters, small objects in centimeters or millimeters and microscopic objects in micrometers or microns. Taking the length of a good-sized bacterium as one micron, it is immediately evident to the mind that a million such bacteria would fit into a meter, and one thousand million into a kilometer. ”

“ In effect, however, there is but one unit, the dollar; because a sum of money expressed in dollars is instantly converted into cents, or into mills, by a shift of the decimal point, without any appreciable mental effort. In Great Britain, however, the currency not being decimal, but divided into guineas, pounds, crowns, florins, shillings, pence and farthings, there are seven different units. Pencil and paper will generally be required by any but skilled mental arithmeticians to transfer a sum of money from one expression to another. ”

“ To a person accustomed to buy sugar at six cents a pound, it would be a little perplexing at first to buy it at 13 cents the kilo, or 61⁄2 cents the half-kilo. It is the experience of the average American, however, that in a foreign city, where the metric units and coinage have both to be acquired, familiarity is obtained after about two weeks. Consequently, less time should be needed to gain familiarity with the metric system, when the coinage is unchanged. ”

“ The argument is often made that the English-speaking people should adhere, for patriotic reasons, to their national standards as against standards of French creation. Surely the answer to such a plea is that the question is not between the English and the French peoples, but between the English-speaking peoples and the rest of the civilized world. ”

“ Moreover, the same objection applies to our decimal currency, and is scarcely felt in that direction. Brokers reckon in the binary scale to one eighth, but are said not to employ sixteenths. An inch is often subdivided to sixteenths, but thirty-seconds are seldom used, sixty-fourths very rarely, and yet smaller binary subdivisions are almost unknown. In fact, where fine micrometer measurements are made in inch measure, they are nearly always in decimals of an inch, and not in binary subdivisions. In metric countries, the decimal subdivisions do not seem to constitute a noticeable hardship. ”

“ If it be questioned as to whether it is worth while for the whole nation to be involved in this trouble and expense of transition, it should be remembered that practically all countries, except the English-speaking countries, have already considered it worth while to make the change, and that none of these countries has expressed regret for the step. ”

“ Criticism of such nations can surely only be fairly laid at their doors when, seeing that their neighbors have a better modern system, up to date and practical, they remain supine and make no attempt to join the ranks of international progress. ”

“ A mosquito will weigh in the neighborhood of a milligram, a U. S. nickel, fresh from the mint, five grams, an average man seventy kilograms, an average elephant about 3,000 kilograms or 3 metric tons. In this manner the weight of any object is brought immediately before the mind in relation to that of any other object, large or small, since virtually one and the same unit—the gram—is used throughout.
In contrast with this simple expression of weights in the metric system, we have in our systems three kinds of weights: viz., apothecary's weight, troy weight and avoirdupois. ”

“ Nevertheless, it is sometimes gravely asserted that the value of the present system is the difficulty it provides for exchange, and estimates, and computations of all kinds, thus affording useful mental exercise, both for school children and for adults. ”

“ Some day, perhaps, angles may be expressed decimally all over the world. The day also is divided in a cumbersome way into hours, minutes and seconds. A decimal subdivision of a day would have much advantage over the existing plan. But decimal reform in angles and in time is undoubtedly much more remote and problematical than in weights and measures ”

“ So far as can be ascertained from the history of transition to the metric system abroad, the transition in this country should not require any machine, tool or piece of apparatus to be discarded or abandoned. ”