Metric System

Convert everything to the same unit. Let's use mm. There are 1000 mm in 1 m, so 17 m = 17000 mm. There are 10 mm in 1 cm, so 17040000 cm = 170400000 mm.

Now compare them:

• 17000 mm
• 170400000 mm
• 17400000005 mm

The last one: 17400000005 mm is the greatest.

In a word, stubbornness. On an official level, the United States converted to SI units in the late 18th century, and since 1959, by law, an inch is exactly 25.4 millimeters. In the late 1970's, President Jimmy Carter tried to push the country to adopt SI units in everyday life, but the backlash against conversion, most especially the backlash against the detailsof conversion, was exploited by President Ronald Reagan, who rolled back all of Carter's metrification initiatives. Those meters and liters and key-low-grams were just unamerican.

Instead of teaching that an inch is about 2½ cm and a liter is a little more than a quart, schools taught that an inch is 2.54 cm and a liter is 33.814 fluid ounces.

Also, apparently it is very important for a mile to be exactly divisible by eleven (480 feet). ANOTHER VIEWPOINT: I think it is fundamentally an 'emotive/cultural' issue with them.History is that early Amercans emanated primarily from Britain as they continued to use the Brit. System. Changing to Metrication is a very major task because it affects so many businesses in a way that costs them a lot of money to make the change . In Australia the plan to change to Metric was worked on for several years before they started to force the community to start using it. It was a brilliant plan and it worked perfectly with no serious problems or consequences whatever. The key part of the plan was to change over 1 unit at a time over a period of about 10 years (I think it was 10) the first change was MONEY,then came LENGTH , then came WEIGHT then things like volume ,density, pressure, etc followed slowly. Land area was the last of all. Americans are an innovative people and they like to lead the rest of the world. They are a very proud nation and do not take easily to being told what to do by other nations . They do not like to copy. They like to lead. They, as a nation, have a tendency to like to be DIFFERENT. they even changed the magnitude of the British gallon, pint, and ounce. They introduced their own standard SCREW THREADS.they have a thread known as SAE, course and fine. These threads were used in industry and especially in Automobiles until at least the 1960's as I recall. When the rest of the world went metric, the American Auto. Industry followed suit, and started putting metric screws into car parts. My private view of USA is that they would feel humiliated if they were told to start using the system of measurement used by nations whom they think are inferior to USA. I also think that there would be powerful protests from a large percentage of proud Americans, if the nations leaders tried to force Metrication upon their nation. Let's be honest about this . Most people regardless of their origins, dislike change of any sort. We are moved out of our comfort zone when we are forced to deal with a major change of some kind or other.

The year presupposed by the question is not really correct.

During the early years of the French Revolution, the leaders of the French revolutionary Assemblée Constituante decided that rather than standardising the size of the existing units, they would introduce a completely new system based on the principles of logic and natural phenomena.

Initially France attempted to work with other countries towards the adoption of a common set of units of measure. Among the supporters of such an international system of units was Thomas Jefferson who, in 1790, presented a document Plan for Establishing Uniformity in the Coinage, Weights, and Measures of the United States to congress in which he advocated a decimal system that used traditional names for units (such as ten inches per foot). The report was considered but not adopted by Congress. There was little support from other countries.

Then, France started the ball rolling by passing the law of 18 Germinal, Year III (7 April 1795) which defined five units of measure (including metre, litre and gram). France officially adopted the metric system on 10 December 1799 with conversion being mandatory first in Paris and then across the provinces.

There is none but sometimes you may find "myriad".

The SI system discourages all prefixes that are not thousand multipliers or dividers. However certain prefixes are so historically entrenched that they will not vanish soon. Some examples of 'unsupported' prefixes are: centimeter (hundredth) decimeter (tenth) decathelon (ten) hectoliter (hundred)