- [Interviewer] Do you know how many feet there are in a mile? - [Interviewee] 3,000-something. - [Johnny] This is the moment I realized I will never use the metric system. Okay, let's see how far
you can jump. Ready? My six year old is constantly asking me to measure how far he can jump. - I have to get on that. - [Johnny] Okay, I'm gonna count it. Ready, set, go. And inevitably, this ends up happening. Okay, stay there, stay there. One, two, three... That was two meters. - No, it was six. No, remember you got... - [Johnny] Oh, six feet, yeah. Oh, whoof. - [Son] Yeah. - You're right. (upbeat music) The entire world uses the
same measuring system, except for three countries. So, you have the richest,
most powerful country, and then you have this
small African nation that the US kind of invented
to, like, ship slaves back to. It's a weird situation that
I made a whole video about. Totally different. And then you have Myanmar,
a Southeast Asian country that used to be called Burma. You don't see maps like this very often, where the whole world is one color, and then you have three random countries peppered across the globe
that are a different color. And I'm looking at you, Britain. I know that you're green on this map, but we all know you still kinda dabble in pounds, and pints, and miles. I want to show you
exactly how this happened, and show you why I will
never use the metric system. - If somebody runs a 5K, I have no idea what that
translates into miles. - [Announcer] A thousand two-step
paces of a Roman soldier. - We have no reason to be ashamed
for using feet and pounds. - [Narrator] Now, many
calculations are merely a matter of moving the decimal point. - It's one of the great
things about Americans, is: we won't change no mater
how good it would be for us. (intense instrumental music) - Hey, real quick. We'll get back to metric in just a second, but I need to thank today's sponsor, because that's how I run a business so I can make these videos for you. The sponsor of today's video is NordVPN, which is a brand that has
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your money back if it's not. Pretty good deal. Let's get back to why I will
never use the metric system. (upbeat instrumental music) The first thing humans measured was time. You think of, like, sun, moon, stars, sundials, constellations. This was pretty easy because we're all looking up at the same night sky. It basically does the same
thing every day and every night. Totally reliable and unchanging. Measuring stuff like weight
and length is way harder, and for a long time, the best thing we had was our bodies. - Humans are about this big. So we've always wanted a
unit of measurement about this long. The earliest unit of measurement that we know of is the cubit, which was basically the
length of a forearm. Not super precise, because we all have
different-sized forearms, but it got the job done, at least in the case of building giant pyramids in Cairo, or in Noah's ark, which was
apparently 300 of these puppies. Over time, humans needed to measure bigger and longer things, so they began using their
daily activities as references, which was mostly just
like, a lot of farming. Like the acre, which
was the amount of land that a farmer could
manage to plow in a day. Or the hundred-weight which was kind of how much a man could
carry on his back comfortably. Because, yeah, it's the
same for everyone, right? - What say you, Corey? - More weight! - So by the 1700s, there was, like, a billion ways of measuring things. But up here, they had a few popular ones. So you've got the foot, which was, well, the average length of a man's foot. This is a ruler that you
always have handy with you. Handy. Hand, foot. Handy. Right? Should we keep that? - [Crew Member 1] Fuck. - [Crew Member 2] No, absolutely not. (upbeat music) - And then you've got the
inch, which, in the 1300s, was decreed as three grains
of barley laid end-to-end. - From the midst of the ear. Right. Who knows what a barley corn is. - Super convenient, right? (cartoon sound effects) Who needs a measuring tape when you could just bring
around a little pouch of all your barley corns
to measure things with. And then there was the yard, which was the average measurement
around someone's chest. And then King Henry shows
up in England, and is like, "We need to standardize
the yard using my body." And for a while there in England,
it was King Henry's body, like the length from
his nose to his thumb, or like, the length of his arm, that was used to derive all of
these yard-like measurements. It was his literal body. Like, that's what they were using. And then there's the mile,
which is the distance covered by Roman soldiers
walking one thousand paces. They then somehow discovered that the mile was roughly about eight furlongs, furlongs, of course, being the distance that a team of oxen could
plow without resting. The pound was defined at the weight of seven thousand grains. 6,987. 6,988. (sighs) This is really terrible. What is happening? I mean, all of these measurements seem so tenuous and inconsistent. And they were. 6,999. 7,000. We've got a pound,
everyone. We've got a pound! It was madness! (aggressive instrumental music) Meanwhile, down here in
France, in the late 1700s, they were dealing with their own madness, and it had nothing to
do with measurements. At this time, the French were
beheading kings and queens, and they were drinking lots of coffee, and sitting around in
salons doing science things. The people of France wanted to
change just about everything, and the measurement systems were not off the table in these discussions. So in the middle of all
of this Enlightenment, they look at each other and they're like, "Why the hell are we using our
forearms to measure stuff"? They needed something precise. Not like barley corns and forearms, but something that they could peg their new measurement system to that was an unchanging baseline. "How about the literal planet we live on?" said the coffee-drinking
French science guys. "We should measure this
distance right here, "and divide it by ten a bunch of times, "and get a really precise unit of measure "so that we don't have to
use our feet and arms." Great idea! But how the hell do you get this massive measurement in 1792? And the answer was this
thing, plus some math. So these two French astronomers go out into the French countryside, looking for high up places
like hills or castle towers. And then, they look
through this fancy little platinum map telescope and measure the angles between two
points out in the distance. This fancy telescope allows
them to make this measurement without having to walk
these whole distances. And in this way, they could start making little triangles across
the French countryside. And then, using some basic math that we all learned in middle school, they could start to calculate
a hyper-accurate distance along this straight line. It took them seven years
to calculate all of this, but they got it! And once they had this distance, they were able to calculate this distance: between the north pole and the equator, one-fourth of the earth's circumference. So they took this line, this measurement, and they chopped it up into
10 million little parts and one of those parts
is called a 'meter'. Like, this is pegged to a
real unchanging measurement that is our Earth! I mean, it'll change eventually. (explosion) But not in our lifetimes. The name meter comes from
the Greek word "metron," which means "a measurement," which is just super literal and precise and exactly what the French
Enlightenment was all about. - [Announcer] Now, here's
what it's all about. The meter. - So now you have this meter, and if you divide this into
a hundred smaller units, you have a centimeter. Centimeter. So put a thousand of these side by side, and you get yourself a kilometer. A kilometer. - The best part about the metric system is the time it saves in computation. - Wait a minute. I can do this. It's all about tens. So if this measurement
was ten million of these, divide that by a thousand, you
get ten thousand kilometers. (upbeat trumpet music) Okay, so this is ten thousand kilometers. (upbeat trumpet music) One-fourth of the earth's circumference. (upbeat trumpet music) Four of these should be... (upbeat trumpet music) Forty thousand kilometers! (upbeat music) The earth's circumference
is 40,000 kilometers! Wait, what? No, I don't want miles. Come on, what? It should be 40,000. What's this extra 75
kilometers doing here? Well, it turns out that one
of these French astronomers actually made an error
in his calculations, making the final meter
about 0.2 millimeters shorter than it should have been. The guy quickly discovered
this, like in the middle of it, but he didn't tell anyone because support for this new system
was already really tenuous, and he didn't want anyone to have any more doubt or skepticism. So it turns out the metric
system isn't literally perfect. Take that! Finding this measurement
was the hardest part. Now that they have it,
they were able to build an entire system purely based off of this. Let me show you. Okay, so now we want a unit for volume. Let's build a hypothetical cube that is 10 centimeters on all sides. Fill it up with liquid,
and you have a liter. One liter. And from there, you can do the same thing that we did with meters. Centiliters, kiloliters, you name it. It's all tens, which
makes it so much easier to convert between these
different measurements. It's a lot easier than barley corns. Okay, so now we have a liter,
which is a volume thing. Let's use this to make a
unit for mass, AKA weight. (keyboard typing) I know they're different, but it's like, the earth's gravity makes
weight and mass the same when you're on Earth, blah, blah, blah. I get it, commenters. I see you. I see you typing right now. Back off. You fill this liter with water,
and now you have a kilogram. Divide that by 1000, and you have a gram. Add 1000 kilograms together,
and you have a metric ton. I mean, it's simple. It's tens, it's hundreds, it's thousands. - [Announcer] Now, many
calculations are merely a matter of moving the
decimal point, not the pencil. - Okay, so now they have all these units that are scientific and standardized and founded on concepts
of exact measurements. And this is really the first
time that humans ever had this. The Frenchmen all looked at
each other and were like, "Good work, guys, we did
it. The coffee helped. "This is great. What should we call it?" And they settled on... ♪ The metric system ♪ ♪ The metric system ♪ - Okay, cool, great system. But why don't I use the metric system? What happened? Well, that has to do with pirates and international politics. So France is like, this
system works pretty damn well. We're impressed with ourselves. We should tell the rest
of the world posthaste. So it's the late 1700's, and France going around country by country with a literal meter stick, being like, "Hey guys, look what we invented. "It's pegged to the earth. "It's literally like we
measured this entire thing, "and you should adopt it
because it's really precise. "It's gonna make international
trade way more efficient." And people were like, "oh, this is cool, but
we're a little skeptical." And meanwhile, in France, they
were still kind of skeptical. The current leader at the
time was this guy, Napoleon. We've all heard about him.
And he was super into it. He's like, "metric is awesome." You know what else he was into? Making sure everyone liked him. So when he saw that the French
public wasn't super jazzed about uprooting what was working for them for hundreds of years, he decided not to enforce metric by law. So France ended up in this
weird limbo for thirty years, and meanwhile the US is
looking from across the ocean, and they're like, "dude,
metric, it's a total fad. "There's no way. Napoleon is wishy-washy. "There's no way this is
actually gonna stick. "Let's hold off on the whole metric thing "and just industrialize
with our very silly system "that is built on, like, people's feet." - The metric system is
the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hog's head, and that's the way I likes it! - But we'll get back
to the US in a minute, because there's still hope. In the meantime, France
finally gets fully on board, and successfully sells
not only their public on the metric system, but the world. They're like, "come on, guys. "We sent two dudes out to do trigonometry "with their golden telescopes "for like seven years for this shit! "Trust me, you don't want
to do that on your own. "Adopt the system." It was a tough sell at first
to get people to switch, but eventually, they did. It started with Belgium,
then the Netherlands, then Luxembourg, then Algeria, a French colony, 20 years later. And then it kind of snowballed from there, partly because countries
realized how rational it was, but partly because Europe was taking over the world at this time, and bringing their values and language and systems to every corner
of the globe forcibly. Ah, yes. Colonialism will make it
into every one of my videos. Okay, but what about the USA? Well, France had some beef
with the US at this point. It's kind of a long story.
Not gonna go into it. But what's important
to know is that the US was weirdly put in the
middle between this, like, frenemy bromance gone wrong
between France and England. So at first, America wasn't invited to the inner circle to
be introduced to metric, but as the world was adopting metric, France finally decided to send
a guy over to deliver this: a prototype of the almighty,
ultra-logical kilogram. Inviting the US to join
the rest of the world in this measurement revolution. There is hope for the USA to go metric. So this French ship is
sailing across the Atlantic with the kilogram onboard and a storm hits it and
blows it into the Caribbean, where it runs into a
group of British pirates. The British pirates capture
the emissary from France, they imprison him, and they try to gain ransom
from France for this guy. Well, they end up accidentally
killing the French guy, but they notice that he has a package, and the pirates are like, "Oh,
shit, this is addressed to "the US Secretary of
State Thomas Jefferson. "Us Brits are cool with the US right now, "so let's bring this over
to New York and deliver it." Super curious pirates. I like these guys. But when they get to New York, Thomas Jefferson isn't the
Secretary of State anymore. So they just hand it to the guy who is now the Secretary
of State, Edmund Randolph. And Randolph is like, "what the hell is this
weird hunk of copper?" So then he gives it to this
other guy, who just keeps it. So, yeah, thanks to
geopolitics and pirates, the US didn't get the kilo in time to convince them to maybe adopt France's new super-logical
system of measurement. Britain also refused for a long time, sticking with the system that was developed using some dude's foot, but eventually, they got on board, but not fully. They still dabble in
some old Imperial ways. But get this: they've changed
some of the Imperial things since the US became
independent, like their pint, which is like 25% bigger
than the pint here. They're both called the pint, but go get a pint of beer in the UK, and you're actually getting 4 ounces more than you would in the US. As if having one highly illogical, unreliable measuring system including feet and
teaspoons isn't bad enough, there are now two of them floating around that have the same names! It gets real bad when
you look at the ounce, which is a word that is used to define several different units of
mass, weight, or volume. Same word, bunch of different things. Okay, okay, but how hard can this be? This is my home turf. This
is my measurement system. (Pencil sharpening) I got this. So an ounce in the UK is
one-twentieth an Imperial pint. That seems nice and easy. That's one 160th of an
Imperial gallon, approximately. There's approximately 28.41 milliliters. Kind of gross. Okay, that's the Imperial
fluid ounce used in the UK. Okay, so then the US ounce is one-sixteenth of a US liquid pint, which is one 128th a liquid gallon, which is exactly
29.5735295625 milliliters, making it about 4.08% larger than the Imperial fluid
ounce used in the UK. Okay, but wait. This is
just the fluid ounce. What about the weight ounce? The one that came from, like, the seven thousand grains to be a pound. Okay, so seven thousand grains to a pound, and there's sixteen ounces to that pound, so that's 437.5 grains to an ounce. But if I want to convert the weight ounce to the fluid ounce, I just need to multiply the volume by 1.043176 times the density
of the ingredient or material so that we can easily switch between the fluid ounce and the weight ounce, and the pound with the 7000
grains, and sixteenth... There's, one-sixteenth
of a pound is the ounce. So grains are 437.5... Just convert it with
Google, and you've got it. Just super easy. (sighs) Yeah, that's where we're
at. It's a total mess. - [Interviewer] Do you know how many feet there are in a mile? - Three thousand something. - Every country on earth adopted the metric system eventually besides these three countries: the US, Myanmar, and Liberia. - The United States just
gave the rest of the world a big finger and said,
"(beep) your metric system!" - Over the years, the US has attempted really formally to go metric. Like, in the 70's and 80's,
there were all these debates and there were boards
created by the government to find a way to migrate over to metric. But, of course, Ronald
Reagan shut it down, because of, you know, the whole
government spending thing. This was an actual public debate. Like, this documentary I
keep showing was from a PSA trying to convince people
to get on board with metric. And then on the other side, in the 80's, there was this anti-metric group. Yes, anti-metric groups. That was a thing. They even hosted a gala,
where they featured the Most Beautiful Foot contest. Don't you just love American culture? We just love to stick it to people. Just look at us, being
individuals in our own ways. But this stuff actually matters, okay? In 1999, NASA sent a satellite to Mars, and it went off-course and burned up in the planet's atmosphere all because of a misconversion
between units of measure. One of the contractors
was using imperial units while NASA Ground was using metric, and it ended up costing
NASA 125 million dollars. But what's interesting is
that the US has kind of secretly quietly got on board with metric, but it's just sort of behind the scenes in boring sectors that none
of us really think about and that don't actually make it into all of our intuitions. It's like industry, or
the federal government. Or, like, nutrition labels. I don't look at nutrition
labels, but if I did, I would see grams and milligrams. And on liquid-based things,
I would see milliliters, because nutrition labels are in metric. It doesn't matter that I don't really know what a gram or a kilogram
or a milligram even is, but when I go to the pharmacy, the pharmacist gives me
my medicine in milligrams. Progress. (chews) So, yeah, it's pharmaceuticals, it's nutrition, it's film, it's tools, it's bicycles, it's running races. Oh, and for some reason, this
one highway sign in Arizona. For all of these efforts,
none of them have succeeded in getting metric into the brains of everyday people like me. And this is why I will
never use the metric system. I can't! I literally cannot. You don't realize how your
intuition is calibrated in certain systems of measurements until you try to change it. I started traveling in my early 20's, really for the first time abroad. And I saw them using metric, and I saw how easy it was
and how rational it was. And I made a commitment to myself. I'm like, I'm gonna change
from my imperial intuition to adopting metric. And I even swore, I'm going to teach my future children
metric from an early age. And since then, over a
decade, I have been trying. I look at this distance, and to me, oh, that's ten meters
away, not thirty feet. It feels like it's 20 degrees
Celsius outside right now, I would say. Oh, yeah, it's like five
kilometers down the road. Oh, I'm gonna pick up
two kilos of short rib to make the soup tonight. But my dirty little secret is that I've totally been faking it. Ten meters doesn't mean anything to me. What it means is thirty
feet divided by three. What I've really been
doing this whole time is intuitively estimating things
based on the system I know, which is pegged to farming
activities and body parts, and then doing the rough math based on the numbers I know
about converting to metric. Without those conversion numbers, I honestly cannot estimate
what fifty meters looks like. I can't grasp what running
five kilometers feels like. I don't know what
twenty-two centimeters is outside of the context
of a one-foot-long ruler that I know is thirty centimeters. And so I'll never use the metric system. I don't know how, and
I can't teach myself. I've tried. But then I had kids! There's hope. The next generation. I vowed to instill them
with metric intuition and found that it's
basically been impossible because everything they're exposed to at school, in math, on road
trips while we're driving, all of it is in feet and miles and cups and pints and teaspoons and tons. I mean, I try. I tell my kids measurements in meters, and my six-year-old will
literally respond with, "Well, how far is that in feet?" He is six. Like, this isn't happening. The ship has sailed on changing
to metric here in the US for everyday people. It'll likely never happen. I'm trapped in a system that was developed using people's body parts
and farming activities and King Henry's arm. - [Announcer] We interrupt this film to bring you a special
bulletin from Metric News. (jaunty big band music) As America moves toward the metric system, the last holdouts have been
seen finally switching over. Soon, it is predicted, the
whole world will be unified under this easier system of measurement.
