METRIC SYSTEM CONVERSION WILL CHANGE HIGHWAY SIGNS

A Missouri Highway and Transportation Department task force is making plans for the Oct. 1, 1996, conversion to the metric system. That's when most federal agencies will require businesses and industries that deal with the federal government to use the metric system.

They include general contractors, road-builders and related suppliers because federal funds are involved in most highway construction projects.

Freeman McCullah, District 10 highway engineer at Sikeston, said the goal of the task force is to phase in the metric system with the least amount of confusion for those involved in highway construction.

"What it means is that we're going metric as far as our highways are concerned," said McCullah. "Contractors and anybody else that deals with the highway department will have to think metric after October 1996," he said.

McCullah said the conversion20will mean highway and mileage signs giving distances and speed limits in kilometers. It also will mean changes in how the department measures things, he said.

"Right now we measure in inches, feet, yards, cubic yards, gallons and acres of land," he said. "As I understand it, when we make the switch in 1996, we'll be measuring in meters, kilometers, cubic liters and hectares," he said.

The changeover, which is about three-and-one-half years away, will have the greatest impact on business and industry. The public will not be immediately affected, said the former head of the U.S. Department of Commerce's metric conversion office, G.T. Underwood.

Underwood, who is president of Intrx Associates of Annapolis, Md., and the American Metric Council, said the mandatory switch is a part of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988.

"This whole thing is grossly misunderstood," Underwood said in a recent telephone interview. "When the first law was passed in 197520to make the 10-year transition to the metric system, Congress failed to recognize the strong opposition it would encounter from the American public," he said. "Most of the opposition came from adults who learned the English measuring system of inches, feet, quarts, gallons and acres.

"As a result, the law was never fully implemented because it was an all-voluntary thing. Eventually, everything just came to a screeching halt the metric system was pretty well forgotten about..

Now it has surfaced again because of the 1988 trade act, which seeks to make the United States more competitive with the rest of the world. Since the entire world is on the metric system, with the exception of the United States, we are at a disadvantage when it comes to American-made products competing for world markets. Metric is the world language of industry, trade, and commerce. Most American-made products are not manufactured in metric; therefore, it is hard for us to compete."

Underwood said the 1988 act states the metric system should be the preferred system of weights and measures in world trade and commerce. "It does not say the metric system will become a part of our social system," he said.

"Congress felt the best way to make the change for business and industry was to have all federal agencies switch to the metric system," said Underwood. "That would encourage business and industry that deals with the agencies to convert their operations to the metric system.

"Some major American companies that deal in world trade and commerce, such as IBM and General Motors, have already switched to metric. But many others have not, and they are literally shut out of world trade markets," Underwood said.

"The law will not force any social change to the metric system in 1996. But, as a practical matter, it will certainly encourage more of us to think metric instead of inches and feet. I believe that as business and industry convert to the metric system, we'll see American society follow the trend. It may take 10 to 15 years, but there's no hurry. We'll still have the same size football fields and the same foot-long hot dogs."

Underwood said those who have been taught the metric system in school over the past 15 years are the most enthusiastic supporters of the metric system because they it is easier than the English system. "It's the adults who were taught the English units of measurement in school prior to the 1960s and 1970s that resent the change and think it's silly," he said.

Underwood said as more Americans use the metric system in the workplace, and because of the 1988 trade act, they'll discover it's much easier.

"We already use a form of the metric system in our money supply, which is based on units of 10. The metric system is also based on equal units of 10," he said.

"Most of us do not realize how much of our society is already converted to metric: We purchase 2-liter sodas in the grocery store; all American cars manufactured in the United States after 1990 now use the metric system; all cars now have speeds in miles per hour and kilometers per hour on the dashboard."

Carol Keen, mathematics teacher at Jackson High School, said the metric system has been taught in that school district in all grades since the late 1960s. But it is quickly forgotten or not used much by most of the students after they leave school, she said.

"The kids are exposed to the metric system while they're in school, but once they graduate they go back to the old system because that's what everybody else in our society uses," she said. "As an industrialized nation and supposedly a world leader, we are lagging behind by not converting to the metric system."