Few Colorado residents have ever heard of John F. Shafroth (1854-1922). He was governor of Colorado, a U.S. senator and representative, Denver resident, and perhaps the most fervent champion of the metric system in the history of U.S. politics.

What strikes one about Shafroth, who interviewed Lord Kelvin concerning the adoption of the metric system, is that in that era, Shafroth did what he could to educate himself about the metric system. Recently announced presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee mentioned he wants the metric system, but seems ill-informed about why.

There are many reasons to adopt the metric system in the U.S. Here are a few:

1) Building construction is 10 to 15 percent more costly in the U.S. because we do not use the metric system.

2) An estimated 98,000 deaths occur in the U.S. heath care system each year because we do not use the metric system.

3) When added up, the inefficiencies and errors associated with the lack of the metric system costs each person in the U.S. at least $15 per day.

4) The most important issues of the day, from Climate Change to resource depletion, involve measurement and are best understood, and are most intuitive, when expressed properly with the metric system.

Building construction in Australia and the UK is done with millimeters alone (no centimeters!). This allows all dimensions to be expressed as integers, without any decimals. These simple numbers decrease the errors and in turn the amount of scrap generated at a construction site.

The confusion between teaspoons and tablespoons has been the source of misdosages in the U.S. since their adoption. This confusing problem has been lamented for over 100 years, and nothing has been done. The late metrication expert Pat Naughtin cited a Swedish Study which estimated about 98,000 deaths occur in the U.S. healthcare system that are directly attributable to the lack of the metric system.

Naughtin estimated that, when all added up, the lack of the metric system in the U.S. costs each citizen about $15 per day. I suspect it is higher. Clearly, if we had adopted the metric system in 1903 when Shafroth was at his most influential, we could have saved 10 percent per year on building construction costs over the last century. When counted up over the entire economy, the savings that could have been achieved to date is staggering.

Pat Naughtin demonstrated the utility of using whole numbers with metric prefixes to present scientific concepts so they are intuitive to everyone. I offer my own examples in my internet blog. My favorite is changing over monthly utility bills to metric so we can directly compare electricity and natural gas costs. Kilowatt-hours and therms are not comparable directly, nor proper measurement units. The cost difference becomes obvious when the energy of each is expressed in Gigajoules.

Lincoln Chafee argued that we should become metric to become more international. He indicated that metric is easy, and then gave perhaps the least intuitive example possible by citing a Celsius temperature. He threw in, almost as an afterthought, that the metric system would help our economy. Chafee was in the Senate and did not sponsor a single metric bill. John Shafroth sponsored a bill calling for mandatory metrication at every opportunity over many years. Chafee’s feckless endorsement of the metric system makes me long for the days of politicians like Colorado’s own “Honest John” Shafroth, who was a true metric advocate.

Randy Bancroft is a professional engineer who practices in Denver. He blogs as The Metric Maven (www.themetricmaven.com).

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