What is the significance of the Metre Convention for the United States?

[diogenesNY]

http://www.worldmetrologyday.org/

From the site:

World Metrology Day is an annual celebration of the signature by representatives of seventeen nations of the Metre Convention on 20 May 1875. The Convention set the framework for global collaboration in the science of measurement and in its industrial, commercial and societal applications. The original aim of the Metre Convention - the world-wide uniformity of measurement - remains as important today as it was in 1875.

The theme for World Metrology Day 2015 is ‘Measurements and Light’. The topic was chosen to align with the UNESCO International Year of Light and Light-based technologies 2015 (IYL 2015), a global initiative designed to highlight the key role light and optical technologies play in our daily lives and their importance for our future and for the sustainable development of the society we live in.
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diogenesNY

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Thanks for sharing!

 

[SW VandeCarr]

The US was represented at that convention. It's not common knowledge that the US officially adopted metric units in 1866 and received standards for the meter and kilogram around the time of this convention. However, being the US, using metric units was left optional. We are still free to ignore the system that practically the whole world uses as we sit on the 50 yard line of a game that almost no one else plays.

http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/laws/metric-convention.html