4^2 HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



their myopia many times beyond the cost of change in loss of business, in being 

 excluded from new markets, and will find themselves with a very burdensome in- 

 ventory of increasingly outmoded capital investments. 



CHAIRMAN MILLER AS FLOOR LEADER 



The resolution went through on a voice vote, and the Committee 

 of the Whole proceeded to debate the bill itself. In his leadoff remarks, 

 Chairman Miller indicated that since the first metric bill of Repre- 

 sentative Overton Brooks had been referred to the Science Committee 

 in 1959, Great Britain had started its 10-year conversion process and 

 14 other countries had converted to metric. When asked whether 

 Congress should authorize the study in the light of the deficit and 

 need to reduce expenditures, Miller responded: 



Of course, I may be wrong, but I have been around this game of politics for a 

 little more than 30 years. I was first elected to the California Legislature approxi- 

 mately 30 years ago. In all this period I have never seen the time when the finances 

 of the State or the Nation were ever just right to initiate any new thing. 



Miller added that the 67,000-member National Society of Professional 

 Engineers, plus many scientific organizations and individuals had 

 petitioned their support of the legislation. He read a letter from a 

 schoolchild in Minnesota: 



\h schoolteacher tells me that you have a simple way of handling fractions 

 called the metric system. Up with the metric system, down with the fractions. 



Among other supporters who spoke out for the legislation were 

 Conable (an alumnus of the committee), Ottinger (a future member of 

 the committee who had also introduced a metric study bill), Fulton, 

 Rumsfeld, Pelly, Roush, and Hechler. Roush lightened the debate by 

 sparring with Gross, who kept bringing up facetious issues like the 

 effect of the metric system on expressing the debt and deficit, or whether 

 the fact that Monaco was on the metric system actually aided in 

 assessing winnings from the gambling tables. Roush with mock serious- 

 ness bemoaned the effect of the metric system on literature, forcing the 

 abandonment of the "Half a league onward" in the "Charge of the 

 Light Brigade" as well as Robert Frost's "promises to keep and miles 

 to go before I sleep." 



Hechler sketched in the history of the metric system since Wash- 

 ington and Jefferson's time. He remarked that the United States should 

 have adopted the metric system in the early years of the Republic. 

 This prompted Representative Richard H. Ichord (Democrat of Mis- 

 souri), an expert on internal security matters, to explain: 



I think I can answer the question of the gentleman from West Virginia who 

 stated that he could not understand why the United States did not adopt the metric 

 system in the very beginning. I believe it was because the metric system was associated 



