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Inching toward Modernity: Industrial Standards and the Fate of the Metric System in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2022

Stephen Mihm
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Abstract

That the United States stands almost alone among nations in its failure to adopt the metric system has long been blamed on conservative, reactionary forces. This paper argues against this interpretation, which passes for conventional wisdom in both academic and popular circles. It instead contends that attacks on the metric system in the late nineteenth and twentieth century originated with progressive engineers, entrepreneurs, and industrialists who had taken the lead in setting the nation's first industrial standards. Far from being backward-looking reactionaries, they enjoyed reputations as cutting-edge leaders in the development of the machine-tool industry, the railroads, and the metal-working industries. Many of them pioneered new methods of management that privileged rationality, efficiency, and systemic approaches; indeed, they strongly influenced the development of what became known as scientific management. These individuals deftly advanced their cause through the nation's political institutions, thwarting the metric cause.

Keywords

Metric SystemStandards and StandardizationModernityScientific ManagementEngineers and Engineering
Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 96 , Issue 1: Standards and the Global Economy , Spring 2022 , pp. 47 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2022

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Footnotes

I wish to thank JoAnne Yates, Craig Murphy, and Walter Friedman for their thoughtful suggestions as well as the three anonymous reviewers who gave invaluable feedback on the initial draft. I also want to express appreciation to the audiences who commented on earlier versions of this paper presented at the annual meetings of the Business History Conference and European Business History Association.

References

1 Ken Alder, “A Revolution to Measure: The Political Economy of the Metric System in France,” in The Values of Precision, ed. M. Norton Wise (Princeton, 1995), 62. On the putative relationship between the metric system, rationality, and modernity, see also Langevin, Luce, “The Introduction of the Metric System: The First Example of Scientific Rationalization by Society,” Impact of Science on Society 11 (1961): 77–95Google Scholar; and J. L. Heilbron, “The Measure of Enlightenment,” in The Quantifying Spirit in the 18th Century, ed. Tore Frängsmyr, J. L. Heilbron, and Robin E. Rider (Berkeley, 1990), 207–42.

2 Monte Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer in America, 1830–1910: Professional Cultures in Conflict (Baltimore, 1967), 178.

3 On academic interpretations of this question, see Calvert, Mechanical Engineer; and David Noble, America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (New York, 1977), 77. More recently, this argument has been repeated in Hector Vera's otherwise lucid assessment of the engineering community's opposition to the metric system in the early twentieth century; see Vera, “Breaking Global Standards: The Anti-Metric Crusade of American Engineers,” in Technology and Globalisation: Networks of Experts in World History, ed. David Pretel and Lino Camprubi (New York, 2018), 189–215, esp. 197–98. On popular treatments, see, for example, “Why Hasn't the U.S. Gone Metric?,” Slate, 6 Oct. 1999; Robert P. Crease, World in the Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement (New York, 2011), 151; John Bemelmans Marciano, Whatever Happened to the Metric System? How America Kept Its Feet (New York, 2014); and Zack Guzman, “Why the US Hasn't Fully Adopted the Metric System,” CNBC, 4 June 2015.

4 Grace Ellen Watkins and Joel Best, “Successful and Unsuccessful Diffusion of Social Policy: The United States, Canada, and the Metric System,” in How Claims Spread: Cross-National Diffusion of Social Problems, ed. Joel Best (New York, 2001), 267–81; Marciano, Whatever Happened, 242–54; “Can the U.S. Continue to Stand Alone Against the Metric System?,” Tucker Carlson Tonight, 5 June 2019, Fox News.

5 On path dependence and history, the work of Paul A. David is most relevant. See, especially, David, “Clio and the Economics of QWERTY,” American Economic Review 75 (1985): 332–37; and “Why Are Institutions the ‘Carriers of History’? Path Dependence and the Evolution of Conventions, Organizations, and Institutions,” Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 5 (1994): 205–20.

6 In using the term “modernity” here, I refer not to a single, one-size-fits-all pattern of modernization based on the experience of Western nations. Rather, the term invokes the “multiple modernities” paradigm that has gained currency in recent years. I also build on this interpretation, showing that modernity took different, oppositional forms within an advanced industrial nation like the United States. The battle over the metric system is a case study in precisely this dynamic between competing groups of self-appointed modernizers. For more on this debate, see the essays in Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, ed., Multiple Modernities (New York, 2017), esp. 1–29; and Johann P. Arnason, “From Occidental Rationalism to Multiple Modernities,” in The Oxford Handbook of Max Weber, ed. Edith Hanke, Lawrence A. Scaff, and Sam Whimster (New York, 2019), 499–518.

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8 Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg: Christian Gleim, 1814), 13–16; “Weights and Measures,” H. Misc. Doc. No. 463, 15th Cong., 2nd Sess. (1819), American State Papers, Miscellaneous, vol. 2, 538–41; Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 2nd sess., 755–64.

9 “Report of the Secretary of State upon Weights and Measures,” H. Doc. No. 109, 16th Cong., 2nd Sess. (1821), 6–11, 46–47, 134; “Report of the Select Committee to Which Was Referred, on the 26th of December Last, the Report of the Secretary of State upon the Subject of Weights and Measures,” H. Rep. No. 65, 17th Cong., 1st Sess. (1822); Annals of Congress, 17th Cong., 1st Sess., 1251–53. It was at precisely the time when Adams wrote his report that Britain embarked on a significant revision of its own weights and measures, simplifying them and otherwise codifying the existing system. This likely weighed on Adams's mind as he prepared his recommendations. See Rebecca J. Adell, “The English Metrological Standardisation Debate, 1758–1824” (MA thesis, Carleton University, 2000); Adell, “The British Metrological Standardization Debate, 1756–1824: The Importance of Parliamentary Sources in Its Reassessment,” Parliamentary History 22, part 2 (2003): 165–82.

10 Fischer, Louis Albert, “History of the Standard Weights and Measures of the United States,” Bulletin of the Bureau of Standards 1 (1905): 365–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Edward Franklin Cox, “A History of the Metric System of Weights and Measures” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1955), 411–52; JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy, Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880 (Baltimore, 2019), 20–21. Kasson had long been a proponent of international standard setting. See John, Richard, “Projecting Power Overseas: U.S. Postal Policy and International Standard-Setting at the 1863 Paris Postal Conference,” Journal of Policy History 27 (2015): 416–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 4219 (1866); Edward Franklin Cox, “The Metric System: A Quarter-Century of Acceptance (1851–1876),” Osiris 13 (1958): 358–79; United States Department of Commerce, A History of the Metric System Controversy in the United States: U.S. Metric Study Interim Report, National Bureau of Standards Special Publication 345-10 (Washington, DC, 1971), 35–48.

12 On the conditions that made Philadelphia a center for standard setting, see Andrew Dawson, Lives of the Philadelphia Engineers: Capital, Class and Revolution, 1830–1890 (Burlington, VT, 2004); and Domenic Vitello, Engineering Philadelphia: The Sellers Family and the Industrial Metropolis (Ithaca, 2013).

13 On the railroads and standardization, see Steven W. Usselman, Regulating Railroad Innovation: Business, Technology, and Politics in America, 1840–1920 (Cambridge, U.K., 2002). On the general embrace of standardization at this time, see Andrew L. Russell, Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and Networks (Cambridge, U.K., 2014), 25–57; and Yates and Murphy, Engineering Rules, 19–51.

14 Frederick A. P. Barnard, The Metric System of Weights and Measures (New York, 1872); Cox, “History of the Metric System,” 452–81; U.S. Department of Commerce, History, 51–58, 63–68.

15 Joseph Whitworth, “William Sellers,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 159 (May 1905): 381.

16 John K. Brown, “When Machines Became Gray and Drawings Black and White: William Sellers and the Rationalization of Mechanical Engineering,” Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology 25 (1999): 29–54.

17 Sellers, Coleman, “The Metric System in Our Work-Shops: Will Its Value in Practice Be an Equivalent for the Cost of Its Introduction?,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 97 (1874): 385–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sellers would soon advance these arguments in several other venues. See, for example, Sellers, “On the Metric System of Weights and Measures,” Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers 5 (1876): 364–67.

18 Sellers, Coleman, “The Metric System—Is It Wise to Introduce It into Our Machine Shops?” Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 1 (1880), 1–19Google Scholar, quote on p. 7.

19 Sellers, “Metric System in Our Work-Shops”; “Is It Wise to Introduce.” Metric equivalents are calculated on the basis of the figures supplied by Sellers.

20 U.S. Department of Commerce, History, 62–73; Wayne A. Wiegand, Irrepressible Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey (Chicago, 1996), 28, 49–50; Hector Vera, “The Social Life of Measures: Metrication in the United States and Mexico, 1789–2004” (PhD diss., New School for Social Research, 2011), 330–40.

21 Sellers, “Is It Wise to Introduce,” 14–15. See also Bruce Sinclair, A Centennial History of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1880–1980 (Toronto, 1980), 46–60.

22 Cox, Edward F., “The International Institute: First Organized Opposition to the Metric System,” Ohio Historical Quarterly 68 (1959): 54–83;Google Scholar Reisenauer, Eric Michael, “‘The Battle of the Standards’: Great Pyramid Metrology and British Identity, 1859–1890,” Historian 65 (2003): 931–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 A. M. Wellington, “Charles Latimer,” Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers 15 (1889): 137–40; The American Railway Engineering and Maintenance of Way Association,” Railway Age 43 (1907): 370; Cox, “International Institute,” 62–63.

24 “Transactions of the Ohio Auxiliary Society of the International Institute,” International Standard 1 (1883): 402; “Monthly Receipts from Subscribers to the International Standard,” International Standard 2 (1884): 189–92. On the history of civil engineering at this time, see Bernard G. Dennis Jr., Robert J. Kapsch, Robert LoConte, Bruce W. Mattheiss, and Steven M. Pennington, eds., American Civil Engineering History: The Pioneering Years (Washington, DC, 2002).

25 George M. Bond, “Standards of Length and Their Subdivision,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 117 (May 1884): 357–86; Bond, Standards of Length and Their Practical Application (Hartford, CT, 1887), 71; “George Meade Bond, M.E.,” Stevens Indicator 38 (July 1921): 220–21; Bruce Sinclair, “At the Turn of the Screw: William Sellers, the Franklin Institute, and a Standard American Thread,” Technology and Culture 10 (1969): 20–34.

26 Calvert, Mechanical Engineer, 184, 186; Noble: America by Design, 77. This argument resurfaces in Vera, “Breaking Global Standards.”

27 Vitello, Engineering Philadelphia, 136.

28 Coleman Sellers, “Theory and Construction of the Self-Acting Slide Lathe,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 94 (1872), 106.

29 “Defending Our Standard Unit of Measurement,” National Car and Locomotive Builder, Mar. 1889, 44.

30 “William Sellers,” 365–81; Thomas J. Misa, A Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America, 1865–1925 (Baltimore, 1995), 180–82; Geoffrey W. Clark, “Machine-Shop Engineering Roots of Taylorism: The Efficiency of Machine-Tools and Machinists, 1865–1884,” in Scientific Management: Frederick Winslow Taylor's Gift to the World?, ed. J.-C. Spender and Hugo J. Kijne (Boston, 1996), 93–110; Vitello, Engineering Philadelphia, 136, 146–47.

31 The request to consider the metric system came from the New England Railroad Club, which represented some of the smaller companies in the Northeast. The group had a history of opposing standard sizes of components favored by competitors in other parts of the country. Their flirtation with the metric system may also have reflected the metric movement's outsized sway in this area of the country. See “Metric Measurements in Railroad Shops”; Bond, “The Metric System of Measurement;” and “Defending Our Standard Unit of Measurement,” all in National Car and Locomotive Builder 20 (1889): 28, 41, 44. On Bond, see “George Meade Bond, M.E.,” 220–21.

32 Cox, “History of the Metric System,” 551–52; U.S. Department of Commerce, History, 96. Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, who became superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, emerged as the most visible proponent of metrication in the 1890s. See, for example, T. C. Mendenhall, “Fundamental Units of Measure,” Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers 30 (1893): 120–34.

33 U.S. Department of Commerce, History, 102–9.

34 House Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, Hearings on H.R. 2758, 54th Cong., 1st Sess., 1896; Cong. Globe, 54th Cong., 1st Sess. 3688–98 (1896); ASME Transactions 18 (1896): 10; U.S. Department of Commerce, History, 569–84.

35 Henry R. Towne, “The Engineer as an Economist,” ASME Transactions 7 (1886): 428–32; “Henry R. Towne,” Railway Age Gazette 89 (1915): 207; Frank Barkley Copley, Frederick W. Taylor: Father of Scientific Management, vol. 1 (New York, 1923), 400; Noble, America by Design, 267; Daniel Nelson, Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management (Madison, WI, 1980); Sinclair, Centennial History, 57–59; JoAnne Yates, Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management (Baltimore, 1993), 85; Daniel R. Nelson, Managers and Workers: Origins of the Twentieth-Century Factory System in the United States, 1880–1920 (Madison, WI, 1996), 52–53; Yehouda Shenhav, Manufacturing Rationality: The Engineering Foundations of the Managerial Revolution (New York, 1999), 75–76; Fred Carstensen, “Towne, Henry Robinson,” in American National Biography, vol. 21, ed. John Arthur Garraty and Mark Christopher Carnes (New York, 1999), 780–81.

36 The tangled intellectual relationship between these different self-appointed modernizers is summarized well in Shenhav, Manufacturing Rationality, 102–21; Nelson, Managers and Workers, 49–55; and Noble, America by Design, 266–68.

37 Nelson, Managers and Workers, 53–55; Robert R. Jenks, “Halsey, Frederick Arthur,” in American National Biography, vol. 9, ed. John Arthur Garraty and Mark Christopher Carnes (New York, 1999), 888–89; Robert Kanigel, The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 282–84; Morgen Witzel, A History of Management Thought (New York, 2017), 112–14.

38 Frederick Winslow Taylor, Shop Management (New York, 1911), 116, 124; David Montgomery, Workers’ Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles (Cambridge, U.K., 1980), 113–38; Tom Korver, “Standards and the Development of an Internal Labor Market,” in Spender and Kijne, Scientific Management, 93–110.

39 House Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, Hearing on House Doc. No. 625, 56th Cong., 1st Sess., 1900, 7–8; Samuel W. Stratton to E. E. Corthell, 16 Aug. 1901, folder MS 1901–1911, box 20, “IWL-MS,” in Records of the NBS, RG 167, NARA; David Cahan, An Institute for an Empire: The Physikalisch-Technische Reichanstalt, 1871–1918 (Cambridge, U.K., 1989).

40 Thomas Corwin Mendenhall to Samuel W. Stratton, 15 Mar. 1901 and 17 May 1901, both in Samuel W. Stratton Papers, MC 8, box 2, folder 17, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institute Archives and Special Collections, Cambridge, MA; “Uniformity of Measures,” Washington Post, 20 Apr. 1901, 9; Stratton to Corthell, NARA.

41 House Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, Metric System of Weights and Measures: Hearings on H.R. 2054, 57th Cong., 1st Sess., 1902, 33–40, 52–56, 63–70, 88–102, 109–20, 151–62. On the Navy's interest in standards, see Report of the Board to Recommend a Standard Gauge for Bolts, Nuts, and Screw-Threads for the United States Navy (Washington, DC, 1880).

42 “The Metric System of Weights and Measures,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 153 (1902): 405; “The Metric System of Weights and Measures,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 154 (1902): 59–72; “The Metric System of Weights and Measures,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 154 (1902): 107–20; “The Metric System of Weights and Measures,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 154 (1902): 171–91.

43 Nelson, Managers and Workers, 53–55; Jenks, “Halsey, Frederick Arthur,” 888–89; Kanigel, One Best Way, 282–84; Witzel, History of Management Thought, 112–14; Frederick A. Halsey, The Metric Fallacy (New York, 1904).

44 Frederick A. Halsey, “The Metric System,” ASME Transactions 24 (1903): 397–629, esp. 434, 455; Halsey, Metric Fallacy. On the formal report of the ASME, see “Report of the Committee Appointed to Discuss the Arguments in Favor of and Against the Metric System,” ASME Transactions 24 (1903): 630–712. On Halsey's role in the power struggles within the ASME, see Sinclair, Centennial History, 67–71, 76–81; and Jenks, “Halsey, Frederick Arthur,” 888–89.

45 Halsey, “Metric System,” 460, 517, 592–629; “Engineers Divided over Metric System,” New York Times, 4 Dec. 1902, 2; “Metric System Discussed,” New-York Tribune, 4 Dec. 1902, 6; “The New York Meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers,” Engineering News 48 (1902): 509.

46 “Manufacturers’ Meeting,” New York Times, 26 Jan. 1898, 5; “Manufacturers and the Metric System,” New York Times, 25 Apr. 1902, 8; “Report of the Committee,” 630–712; “The Metric System,” American Machinist 25 (1902): 1796; “The Meaning of the Action of the A.S.M.E. on the Metric Question,” American Machinist 25 (1902): 1804–5; “The Metric System Bill Withdrawn,” Iron Age 71 (1903): 29; U.S. Department of Commerce, History, 134–36.

47 Proceedings of the National Association of Manufacturers 7 (1903): 181–94; “Report of a Committee of the National Association of Manufacturers on the Metric Question,” American Machinist 26 (1903): 594–95; “Marshall Cushing,” Shop Review 12 (1915): 277; Vera, “Breaking Global Standards,” 191–97; Jennifer A. Delton, The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism (Princeton, 2020), 30–33.

48 “The Railway Master Mechanics on the Metric System,” American Machinist 26 (1903): 994; “The Metric System Again,” Engineering News 50 (1903): 482; “The Metric System in Relation to Shipbuilding,” Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers 11 (1904): 167–88; “The American Society of Heating and Ventilation Engineers on the Metric System,” American Machinist 27 (1904): 169; “American Industries and the Metric System,” Electrical World and Engineer 43 (1904): 847; Frederick Halsey, “The Metric Fallacy,” Canadian Engineer 12 (1905): 133–35.

49 On Dale, see Ida M. Tarbell, “A Wonderful Truth Seeker,” American Magazine, Dec. 1914, 60–63; Samuel S. Dale, The Metric Failure in the Textile Industry (New York, 1904); and U.S. Department of Commerce, History, 136–38. On the complicated, centuries-old history of textile standards, see David J. Jeremy, “British and American Yarn Count Systems: An Historical Analysis,” Business History Review 45 (1971): 336–68; David M. Higgins and Aashish Velkar, “‘Spinning a Yarn’: Institutions, Law, and Standards c. 1880–1914,” Enterprise & Society 18 (2017): 591–631.

50 U.S. Department of Commerce, History, 144; House Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, The Metric System: Hearings on H.R. 93, H.R. 2054, and H.R. 8988, 58th Cong., 2nd Sess., 1904, 1–56, quotes on pp. 25 and 42.

51 U.S. Department of Commerce, History, 145; House Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, The Metric System: Hearings on H.R. 93, H.R. 2054, and H.R. 8988, 58th Cong., 2nd sess., 1904, 68–76, 91–132, 138–84, 208–13.

52 See, for example, M. Cushing to F. W. Taylor, 1 Mar. 1906, and M. Cushing to F. W. Taylor, 16 Mar. 1906, both in box 148, Frederick Winslow Taylor Collection, Samuel C. Williams Library, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ.

53 House Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, The Metric System: Hearings on H.R. 8988, 59th Cong., 1st sess., 1906, 111; U.S. Department of Commerce, History, 152–53.

54 “Take Warning!,” American Machinist 44 (1916): 563; Towne, Henry R., “Metric System in Export Trade,” American Machinist 44 (1916): 825–26Google Scholar; “American Institute of Weights and Measures,” American Machinist 45 (1916): 1100; “American Institute of Weights and Measures,” American Machinist 46 (1917): 378; Bulletin of the American Institute of Weights and Measures, 1 Apr. 1920.

55 Towne, Henry R., “Adoption of the Metric System Would Do Untold Damage,” Industrial Management 59 (1920): 473–74Google Scholar; Busch, Lawrence, “Herbert Hoover and the Construction of Modernity,” Journal of Innovation Economics and Management 22 (2017): 29–55Google Scholar; Colleen A. Dunlavy, “The Unnaturalness of Mass Production: The ‘Gospel of Simplification’ in World War I and the 1920s” (unpublished paper delivered at the Business History Conference in Miami, FL, 26 June 2015). For a representative sampling of the institute's activities, see the Bulletin of the American Institute of Weights and Measures for July 1920, October 1920, January 1921, July 1921, April 1922, January 1923, and October 1923. On the metric system in medicine and electrical engineering, see Spencer M. Vawter and Ralph E. De Forest, “The International Metric System and Medicine,” Journal of the American Medical Association 218 (1971): 723–26; Cox, “Metric System,” 358–79.

56 See, for example, Frederick A Halsey, “Pan-Americanism in Weights and Measures,” American Machinist, 8 Apr. 1920, 784–86; “President's Foreword,” Bulletin of the American Institute of Weights and Measures, 1 July 1920, 2; “Metric Activities,” Bulletin of the American Institute of Weights and Measures, 1 Oct. 1920, 6–7; “International Chamber of Commerce,” Bulletin of the American Institute of Weights and Measures, 1 Oct. 1921, 7; Vera, “Breaking Global Standards,” 204–9. On textile standards, see Biggs, Norman, “A Tale Untangled: Measuring the Fineness of Yarn,” Textile History 35 (2004), 120–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 W. R. Ingalls, “Why the Metric System Should Not Be Adopted,” Mining and Metallurgy, May 1921, 15–16; U.S. Department of Commerce, History, 169. The language of the “iron cage” owes as much to Talcott Parsons as it does to Max Weber. Whether a mistranslation or not, it has become a powerful metaphor for modernity. See Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York, 1958), 103–4; Baehr, Peter, “The ‘Iron Cage’ and the ‘Shell as Hard as Steel’: Parsons, Weber, and the Stahlhartes Gehäuse Metaphor in the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” History and Theory 40 (2001): 153–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Stratton quoted in U.S. Department of Commerce, History, 131.