Yardstick Nation

The Metric System in America

Haector Vera

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English

Vanderbilt University Press
15 May 2025

Instruments & instrumentation engineering

Why is there no metric system in the United States? Why is it that a country known for its openness to the future, its scientific innovations, and its preference for practicality has not adopted the most practical, scientific, and innovative system of measurement? Yardstick Nation answers these questions by analyzing the political, economic, and international factors that determined the trajectory of the United States as a nation self-excluded from one of the most successful global technical languages.

Using a historical-comparative approach and qualitative analysis of archival material, the book examines the trajectories of American scientists, engineers, politicians, and industrialists from 1787 to 1982, to detail what they wanted to attain and to explain what was actually possible to achieve given the political and economic conditions in which they lived. Yardstick Nation argues that in order to understand the unbreached distance between the United States and the metric system, we must consider the interaction between three structural elements: historical timing, state infrastructural power, and international economic integration.

Author Hector Vera's systematic look at when and why countries have adopted the metric system shows that its introduction is never casual. In the countries that voluntarily embraced the metric system, this was the result of either deep internal political transformations or momentous changes in the international economy. When the adoption of the metric system is politically driven, it comes as the result of a social revolution, independence war, national unification, or the draft of a new constitution. When it is propelled by economic factors, metrication is part of the efforts of economically stagnant countries to integrate into international markets.

By: Haector Vera
Imprint: Vanderbilt University Press
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 458g
ISBN: 9780826507839
ISBN 10: 0826507832
Pages: 298
Publication Date: 15 May 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Hector Vera is a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Reviews for Yardstick Nation: The Metric System in America

""Vera convincingly shows how measurement systems are tied to the social, political, and economic life of their users, making Yardstick Nation not just the story of why the metric system failed to gain traction in America, but how it came to shape the rest of the globe. This book makes its case in clear and vivid prose."" --Ken Alder, author of The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World