Abstract
IN a circular letter, dealing with the world-wide spread of the metric system, the Decimal Association points out that the time is soon coming when metric usage, instead of being regarded as a hindrance to British trade with the Far East, will have to be adopted as a necessity in our dealings with China, Japan, and Siam, which have each taken definite steps to establish that system. Already the Advisory Council of China has passed the first reading of a law to that effect, and two Chinese gentlemen are now in Paris studying the technical details of the subject. Japan has for the present four legal systems of weight and measure, but the Government has declared its preference for the metric system by making it obligatory for the services of the customs excepting a few articles. The metric system is taught in all the public schools of Japan, and is prescribed for the army, for medicine, and for electrical work. Siam has employed the system with success on its railways and public works for some years, and last year joined the International Convention of the Metre, from which it has received the apparatus needed for a Central Bureau of Standards at Bangkok. Siam proposes not to make metric reform compulsory at one and the same time in all Darts of the kingdom, but to deal with each province separately at convenient times. Russia also has adopted the metric system for several purposes, and has announced to the Decimal Association that the metric system is favoured, but has to await the necessary arrangement of control and inspection throughout the Russian Empire. This conversion of Russia is notable as completing the solidarity of all Continental Europe in metric reform. All South and Central America are either metric or tending to be so. The Australasian Dominions of Great Britain have urgently pressed the question; and last, but most important of all, are the United States of America, which have gone far in preparing for reform, and will act with vigour when the time comes.
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The Spread of the Metric System . Nature 92, 384 (1913). https://doi.org/10.1038/092384a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/092384a0