Why America still use Fahrenheit

Virtually every country on earth uses Celsius to measure temperature. But the US still uses Fahrenheit. The Celsius scale even looks simpler. It has freezing and boiling points at nice, zero and 100. Where Fahrenheit, it’s a bit of a mess.

Fahrenheit was really useful in the early 18th century. At the time, no one really had a consistent way to measure temperature. But then Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit a German scientist, came up with the Fahrenheit scale when he invented the mercury thermometer in 1714. 

To make the scale, the most popular theory is that he picked the temperature of an ice + water + salt mixture at the zero mark. He then put the freezing point of water, which is higher than a salt mixture, at 32ºF. And placed the average temperature of the human body at 96ºF. From there, he placed the boiling point of water at 212ºF. 

In 1724, Fahrenheit formalized that scale and was introduced into the British Royal Society, where his system was a big hit. As Britain conquered huge parts of the globe in the 18th and 19th centuries, it brought the Fahrenheit system and other Imperial measurements, such as feet and ounces along with them. And Fahrenheit became a standard system for the British Empire across the globe. 

In the meantime, the metric system was gaining popularity during the French Revolution. It was put in the place to unify the country at the national level. So by the second half of the 20th century, Celsius became popular in many parts of the world, when many English-speaking countries began using the metric system. Even America attempted to switch over. The change would have been good for the trade and scientific communications with the rest of the world. 

So, Congress passed a law, the 1975 Metric Conversion Act. Which led to the United States Metric Board that would educate people about the system. This created the only metric highway sign in the US-the Interstate 19 connecting Arizona to Mexico. But it didn’t go much further than that. 

Unlike UK, Canada or Australia, the law made the switch voluntary instead of mandatory. And of course people resisted the change, and the Metric Board couldn’t enforce the conversion. So, President Reagan ended up disbanding the board in 1982. 

The next nudge to metricate came when the metric system became the preferred measure for American trade and commerce in 1988. But nothing really stuck with the general public. Even though bizarre measurements like Feet and Fahrenheit aren’t doing them any favors. Students have to train for two sets of measurements, making science education even more difficult. And companies spend extra dollars producing two sets of products, one for the US and the other for metric. 

There’s also an argument for public health. According to the CDC, about 3 to 400 kids are brought to the ER due to unintentional medication overdose, every year. And conversion errors for dosage are to blame. America needs to switch to the metric system to match the rest of the world. But it’s still struggling to make that change. That’s because it’ll take a lot of time and money but there’s no financial proof that this will all be worth it. So unless that change is proven to be economically better, we’re not going to be using Celsius anytime soon.

Source: Fox