Ever wondered what happened to our country’s conversion to the metric system? I did too. So, I did some digging and turned up some dead bodies in the process. Advertisement Article continues below ...

December 23, 2025, marks the 50th anniversary of the Metric Conversion Act, designed to bring US weights and measures in line with the rest of the world. The United States is one of the last holdouts ...

Following the loss of the Mars Climate Observer, the NASA Office of Inspector General initiated a review of the Agency’s use of the metric system. By law and policy, the metric system is the preferred ...

Now that the United Kingdom is outside the European Union, it’s reviewing thousands of EU rules and regulations to see which it should jettison. Among them is the compulsory use of the metric system ...

Metric units have conquered the globe, but in the US and the UK, their presence has become part of a culture war between ‘traditional’ and ‘progressive’ values. is a senior reporter who has covered AI ...

When it comes to measurement systems, the world largely follows a single standard: The metric system. Yet, the United States ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American I’ve met a lot of people and learned a lot ...

Here’s a good trivia question: What are the only 3 countries in the world that do not use the metric system? Everybody knows the good ol’ hard headed USA is in there, but the other two? How about ...

An oft-repeated "weird fact" is the claim that, if not for the scourge of Caribbean piracy, the United States would have adopted the metric system in the 1790s, making it the country's standard system ...