NA TURE 



169 



THURSDAY, OCluLi.R 7, 1920. 



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The Metric System and International 

 Trade. 



N the year 1917, when the nation was in the 

 throes of war, a committee of the' Conjoint 

 Board of Scientific Societies arrived at certain con- 

 clusions on the question of the compulsory adop- 

 tion of the metric system in Great Britain, but, un- 

 fortunately for the committee, the publication of its 

 lindings has been delayed until the present time.^ 

 During the intervening' three years our attention has 

 Ijecn transferred from warlike to peaceful occupa- 

 tions, and the nation at large is now much more 

 alive to the necessity of improving our commercial 

 equipment for the impending vital struggle to re- 

 «-over and expand our overseas trade in order that 

 \vi' may "pay for the war." The committee appa- 

 rently appreciates this change in the general 

 atmosphere, and has accordingly published an 

 apologetic prefatory note, from which it inciden- 

 tally appears that the chief source of its evidence 

 was the "Report on Commercial and Industrial 

 Policy after the War." It may be recalled that 

 Lord Balfour of Burleigh, the chairman of that 

 o^mmittce, naively admitted afterwards, during a 



I House of Lords debate on decimal coinage, that 

 his committee had been so overloaded with other 



I • ■ ■■ m in ihc I'niied 



Kin^ I by ih« C-injoint 



Hoiktil ■.; ...*..;.;.^ ....,...- ...;.,. , -*.i.. .,.. :,... .vTity of (he Com- 



millM. . i'p. 7A (Luoduo : buard uf bcMiiii^ bocwlMS, Koyiil budvty, 

 B.d.) Price \M. 



NO. 2658, VOL. 106] 



possibly not received the attention it 

 deserved. 



Unfortunately, this preface will probably escape 

 general attention, because so many readers will 

 skip it, glance through the report, and really note 

 only the final "Recommendations," which are pub- 

 lished on p. 35 of the committee's report, and are 

 about as unsatisfactory as they could well be. 

 Hence we have the lay Press to-day stating that 

 British men of science have denounced the metric 

 system, whereas actually the report has not been 

 adopted by the Conjoint Board, and is issued 

 solely on the authority of the committee. More- 

 over, in par. 88 of the report the committee recog- 

 nises "the intrinsic superiority of the metric 

 system in scientific and technical work." 



One looks in vain for a note in these recom- 

 mendations to the effect tliat the metric system is 

 (a) already universally employed in science ; (6) the 

 practical basis of industry in many countries the 

 trade of which we seek ; (c) already legally recog- 

 nised throughout the civilised world ; and that ac- 

 cordingly, in the interests of the scientific permea- 

 tion of industry, as well as of the expansion of our 

 overseas trade, everything possible should be done 

 to encourage its use. Instead of this, we find the 

 committee recommending " that the British system 

 of units of weights and measures be retained in 

 general use in the United Kingdom," which is 

 tantamount to suggesting that British manufac- 

 turers engaged in world-wide trade must continue 

 indefinitely to employ two systems — the British for 

 home trade and the metric for overseas trade — 

 involving" an increasing volume of misunderstand- 

 ings and unnecessarily wasted time spent in con- 

 versions from one system to the other. If the 

 British manufacturer can, as he already does, sell 

 a portion of his output under metric description, 

 he can obviously sell the whole of it on that basis, 

 and he should clearly be encouraged to conduct 

 all his business in one language of quantity instead 

 of two. 



In par. 82 of the report the following construc- 

 tive sentence occurs : " In the opinion of the com- 

 mittee it would be to the advantage of British 

 industry if the manufacture of all machinery and 

 apparatus of new types were to be established as 

 a matter of course in the metric system ; and that 

 this practice should be directed and encouraged 

 by specification in this system for Government and 

 official work " ; and yet no reference is made to 

 this in their final "recommendations," which, in- 

 stead, include a plea for the continued use of 

 British units by Departments of State. 



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