Interlude: Give them 2.54 cm and they'll take 1.609 km...
Close your eyes and travel with me all the way back to January of 1976. It was the first day of school after Christmas break at Belknap Elementary in Louisville KY. I was in the 5th Grade, and excitement was in the air. It was 1976; America had a big birthday this year, our Bicentennial. 200 years of freedom and democracy, and all around our school there were Red, White and Blue banners and posters. My teacher, Mrs. Daly, had decked out our classroom with posters of all of our Presidents, even Nixon. It was very cool, even with Tricky Dick's untrustworthy mug looking like an old catchers mitt.
As I circled the classroom, dazzled by the bright colors and nearly drunk with patriotism, I came upon a glaring interruption in the display of national pride. On the big bulletin board, smack dab in the middle of the wall, was a very large, very plain poster. It was more like a chart, and its' plain black type on white paper created a stark canyon between Hoover and Roosevelt, as if to highlight the one that already existed philosophically. I approached the poster with trepidation. What could be so critically important as to deserve a place among this timeline of 38 great men, from Washington to Ford? I had to know.
The title of the poster, in big bold black type, was comprised of just 3 words: THE METRIC SYSTEM. The what? What was the metric system? Then it came to me; the system of measurement they used in places like England and China. I read a lot, and had seen terms like "kilometers" and "grams" before. But why was it in my classroom? In Kentucky? In America? We don't use the metric system here. I know it is used everywhere else, but not here. We don't need it. Miles and gallons and pounds had worked just fine for 200 years. As my Dad would say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Just because the rest of the world uses it doesn't mean we should. Did the rest of the world land on the Moon? We flew all 238,855 MILES to the moon and planted Old Glory on it. Alan Shepard even played golf there, during which he hit a ball about 500 YARDS. Why was this stupid poster up here on the wall with all of my Presidents? Well, as it turns out, I needed to look no further than the end of the Presidential Poster Parade, at President Number 38, Gerald R. Ford.
In 1975, Gerald Ford signed the Metric Conversion Act into law. It was sort of non-binding, as it did not really make conversion mandatory, nor did it establish a timeline for conversion. But it was a directive for the U.S. to begin a program of education with the eventual goal of adopting the metric system. In preparation, many school districts began to incorporate the metric system into the curriculum. Hence the boring poster.
Mrs. Daly did not take the directive lightly. She took it up and ran with it. The metric system became the central theme of the rest of the school year. I don't really know why she embraced it so enthusiastically; maybe she had some weird secret crush on Ford, or maybe she thought 90.71 kilograms sounded thinner than 200 pounds. Regardless, she hammered the metric system into us for 5 months. But it was to no avail. We the students, and, as it turns out, We The People, did not share Mrs. Daly's or Mr. Ford's passion for the metric system. In the 6th Grade, we had a 2 week "refresher" on the metric system. By the time I entered high school, it was all but forgotten, both in Kentucky and in the rest of the United States. We would continue to embrace the Imperial System of Weights and Measures. The only aspect of American life that adopted the metric system was in the traffic of illegal narcotics, where cocaine and heroin were distributed in grams and kilos to an eager American public, even after Nancy told us to "Just Say No".
Now let's climb into our mental DeLorean, and let Doc and Marty transport us back to the future, back to the summer of 2017. The summer when this humble author and would be baker wished he had paid more attention to the metric system, because all of his recipes from the Great British Bake Off required ingredients to be measured, measured in grams and milliliters, measured with the Metric System.
As it turns out, not as big a deal as you would think. American ingenuity, the same ingenuity that got us to the moon, made mincemeat of the metric system. Digital kitchen scale measures in ounces and grams, iPhone conversion app takes care of the rest. A piece of cake, Mary Berry's English Walnut cake to be exact.
In my next post I bake a cake and start to get busy.
As I circled the classroom, dazzled by the bright colors and nearly drunk with patriotism, I came upon a glaring interruption in the display of national pride. On the big bulletin board, smack dab in the middle of the wall, was a very large, very plain poster. It was more like a chart, and its' plain black type on white paper created a stark canyon between Hoover and Roosevelt, as if to highlight the one that already existed philosophically. I approached the poster with trepidation. What could be so critically important as to deserve a place among this timeline of 38 great men, from Washington to Ford? I had to know.
The title of the poster, in big bold black type, was comprised of just 3 words: THE METRIC SYSTEM. The what? What was the metric system? Then it came to me; the system of measurement they used in places like England and China. I read a lot, and had seen terms like "kilometers" and "grams" before. But why was it in my classroom? In Kentucky? In America? We don't use the metric system here. I know it is used everywhere else, but not here. We don't need it. Miles and gallons and pounds had worked just fine for 200 years. As my Dad would say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Just because the rest of the world uses it doesn't mean we should. Did the rest of the world land on the Moon? We flew all 238,855 MILES to the moon and planted Old Glory on it. Alan Shepard even played golf there, during which he hit a ball about 500 YARDS. Why was this stupid poster up here on the wall with all of my Presidents? Well, as it turns out, I needed to look no further than the end of the Presidential Poster Parade, at President Number 38, Gerald R. Ford.
In 1975, Gerald Ford signed the Metric Conversion Act into law. It was sort of non-binding, as it did not really make conversion mandatory, nor did it establish a timeline for conversion. But it was a directive for the U.S. to begin a program of education with the eventual goal of adopting the metric system. In preparation, many school districts began to incorporate the metric system into the curriculum. Hence the boring poster.
Mrs. Daly did not take the directive lightly. She took it up and ran with it. The metric system became the central theme of the rest of the school year. I don't really know why she embraced it so enthusiastically; maybe she had some weird secret crush on Ford, or maybe she thought 90.71 kilograms sounded thinner than 200 pounds. Regardless, she hammered the metric system into us for 5 months. But it was to no avail. We the students, and, as it turns out, We The People, did not share Mrs. Daly's or Mr. Ford's passion for the metric system. In the 6th Grade, we had a 2 week "refresher" on the metric system. By the time I entered high school, it was all but forgotten, both in Kentucky and in the rest of the United States. We would continue to embrace the Imperial System of Weights and Measures. The only aspect of American life that adopted the metric system was in the traffic of illegal narcotics, where cocaine and heroin were distributed in grams and kilos to an eager American public, even after Nancy told us to "Just Say No".
Now let's climb into our mental DeLorean, and let Doc and Marty transport us back to the future, back to the summer of 2017. The summer when this humble author and would be baker wished he had paid more attention to the metric system, because all of his recipes from the Great British Bake Off required ingredients to be measured, measured in grams and milliliters, measured with the Metric System.
As it turns out, not as big a deal as you would think. American ingenuity, the same ingenuity that got us to the moon, made mincemeat of the metric system. Digital kitchen scale measures in ounces and grams, iPhone conversion app takes care of the rest. A piece of cake, Mary Berry's English Walnut cake to be exact.
In my next post I bake a cake and start to get busy.
Ready for the ride! I am a huge fan of the #GBBO . Friends on Twitter etc. With most ok f tg ne bskers..you couldn't ask for better people for the most part. Have you joined the #TwitterBakeAlong yet? If not have a look. Each week we have a new challenge and you can participate or not. As Americans we aren't eligible for the prize packages but its a lot of fun. We exchange recipes tips and other things like what we have been doing or pics of family.
ReplyDelete