The Office of Inspector General (OIG) examined the Constellation Program’s draft request to reverse its 2-year-old decision to implement the metric system (also known as the International System of ...

In the 1790s, piracy of a ship carrying metric standards intended for then-U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson played a role in America's decision to not adopt the metric system. An oft-repeated ...

Every measurement we make, be it for length, time, temperature, or electric current, needs a standard unit so that results ...

Wondering why the United States measures things in inches and pounds? The answer will definitely surprise you All countries use the metric system to varying degrees. Most of the world has adopted the ...

This 1793 1-kilogram copper “grave,” one of only six produced, sits in the National Institute of Stands and Technology museum at Gaithersburg, Md. The proposal, conceived by a bunch of Parisian ...

Most of the world measures things using the metric system. Learn more about this standard of measurement and how it is getting more and more accurate.

Mathematician and author, the Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794) was an aristocrat who nevertheless embraced the early stage of the French Revolution. Even as the Jacobins hunted him down during the ...

Meters, kilograms, degrees Celsius. To most Americans, these units of measurement are little more than funny inconveniences on trips abroad. To scientists, they’re the very standards that allow for ...

An oft-repeated "weird fact" is the claim that, if not for the scourge of Caribbean piracy, the United States would have adopted the metric system in the 1790s, making it the country's standard system ...