Decimal and Metric

by Tom Kando

On August 5, National Public Radio had a skit on the fact that the US remains one of three countries in the world which don’t use the metric/decimal system (the other two are Liberia and Myanmar).

Maybe so. Of course, metric and decimal are not synonymous. This country IS decimal in many ways - starting with the dollar and our entire monetary system, thanks to Thomas Jefferson who at least pushed that through.

And by now, much of American science, medicine and commerce takes place decimally. Your meds are all measured in grams and milligrams, your primary care physician might record your weight in kilos, etc. But we are not metric. Nor are we decimal in our measurement of weight and temperature.

But I don’t want to nitpick how accurate or inaccurate the statement is that “the US is one of only three countries that remain non-metric/non-decimal.” Instead, I want to share with you some interesting thoughts about this subject:


1) Many different numerical systems are possible - and exist. For example, thanks to the ancient Babylonians, we still measure time in multiples of 60 (called a “sexagesimal” system - what an awful word).

It might have been good if humanity had ended up using the octal numerical system, i.e. a system based on 8, 64, etc., instead of 10, 100, etc. It seems to me that octal would be very logical, since it is binary in its base: 2-4-8-16, etc. Isn’t binary the “Ur” numerical system? Reminds me of the Dani tribe in New Guinea, who know three numbers: one, two and many.

Joking aside: binary seems to be the numerical base of everything, as the digital age increasingly recognizes. One country that used an octal numerical system for a while was Spain, with its Ocho - the Spanish dollar, worth 8 reals, which was for a while the world currency, similar to the US dollar today. I suppose any numerical system is possible, as long as it is based on a primary number - why not one based on 7, or 13? But I am not a mathematician, so I would need some help with this.

2) Getting back to the decimal system: Many cultures claim credit for its invention, including the Hindus, the Chinese, the Arabs and the Cretans.

As to who is responsible for spreading metricity to most of the world: I grew up in France and I went to the Lycée Michelet, just outside Paris. There, my teacher Madame Louvain taught me that it was Napoleon who did it! He conquered most of Europe and imposed the metric/decimal system upon that continent, whence it spread to the rest of the world. Except that Napoleon never managed to conquer Britain, so the Anglo–Saxon world did not adopt the metric/decimal system. How can I disagree with Madame Louvain? I, too, am a rabid Franco-chauvinist.

Don’t you love the intersection of science and chauvinism? Don’t you love it when the Dutch claim that the printing press was invented by Laurens Janszoon Koster, while Germans and many others feel that it was Gutenberg’s invention, and the Chinese claim that it was theirs...

3) And here is a Twilight Zone fantasy for you: The small Parisian suburb where my family and I lived, is called Sevres. As it so happens, that is where the International Bureau of Weights and Measures was  (and to this day is) located, less than a mile from where we lived. This institution contained (and to this day still contains) the prototype metre bar, made of platinum and iridium, no doubt in some highly secure, vacuum container of some sort.

My sisters and I were young teenagers at the time, and we were pranksters, like all teenagers. What if we had broken in at the International Institute one night, and scratched the platinum meter a little bit, or somehow altered its length by a fraction of a millimeter? As we know from the “butterfly effect” and “chaos theory,” an infinitesimal change at the outset can have catastrophic consequences down the road, right? So when my sisters and I came out of the building after our prank, would we have found ourselves in an alternate universe?

4) And here is another weird thought for you:
Fact #1) The world’s circumference is 40,000 kilometers (40 million meters).
Fact #2) The speed of light is about 300,000 kilometers per second (300 million meters).

There is nothing mysterious about fact number #1. Napoleon &co. just arbitrarily decided that the meter should be one 40 millionth of the earth’s circumference.

But what if fact #2 were true? How could Napoleon’s meter be EXACTLY 1/300,000,000th of the speed of light? This would prove the existence of God, and the fact that he is a mathematician!

However: my proof of the existence of God the Mathematician breaks down, because light does not cover exactly 300,000 kilometers per second. It’s only about 299,792.5 klicks.

Aw shucks! Why couldn’t light move just a little bit faster!   leave comment here

© Tom Kando 2014