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What’s the actual base of the oft-repeated claim that besides the US only Liberia and Myanmar had not officially/fully/completely/… adopted the metric system? For which definition of “not metric” is it or was it true, if any?

Examples

(Emphasis added.)

Wikipedia article Metrication:

Since 2006, three countries formally do not use the metric system as their main standard of measurement: the United States, Myanmar, and Liberia.[3]→CIA WFB

Wikipedia article Metric system:

[Map caption:] Countries which have not officially adopted the metric system (United States, Myanmar, and Liberia)

…

Many sources also cite Liberia and Myanmar as the only other countries not to have done so.

…

According to the US Central Intelligence Agency’s Factbook (2007), the International System of Units has been adopted as the official system of weights and measures by all nations in the world except for Myanmar (Burma), Liberia and the United States,[…] while the NIST has identified the United States as the only industrialised country where the metric system is not the predominant system of units.[75]

CIA World Factbook, Appendix G:

Note: At this time, only three countries – Burma, Liberia, and the US – have not adopted the International System of Units (SI, or metric system) as their official system of weights and measures. Although use of the metric system has been sanctioned by law in the US since 1866, it has been slow in displacing the American adaptation of the British Imperial System known as the US Customary System. The US is the only industrialized nation that does not mainly use the metric system in its commercial and standards activities, but there is increasing acceptance in science, medicine, government, and many sectors of industry.

CNN (2015-07):

Only three nations do not use the metric system today: Myanmar, Liberia and the United States. But calling America a nonmetric nation is somewhat of a misnomer. The United States has given more than an inch even though it might not have gone the whole nine yards.

…

Still, America is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not conduct business in metric weights and measures.

Many, many other references abound. This is an oft-repeated claim, e.g. it’s an anecdotal “fact” often told by teachers introducing the metric system to (US) students.

Status

The statement sounds unfounded to me and is almost always used to shame Americans by associating them with two exemplary “backwards” countries. The claim has been around a while, at least since the 1970s when the UK and Commonwealth countries formally converted, but the political and commercial situation in many countries (including those notorious three) has changed since, e.g. significantly in Myanmar in 2011.

Wikipedia article Metrication:

Some sources now identify Liberia as metric, and the government of Myanmar has stated that the country would metricate with a goal of completion by 2019.[6][7]

…

  1. ^ The Liberian government has begun transitioning from use of imperial units to the metric system. However, this change has been gradual, with government reports concurrently using both systems. … [50]
  2. ^ In June 2011, the Burmese government’s Ministry of Commerce began discussing proposals to reform the measurement system in Burma and adopt the metric system used by most of its trading partners. … [51][52][53][54]

Wikipedia article Metric system:

However, reports published since 2007 hold this is no longer true of Myanmar or Liberia.[76] An Agence France-Presse report from 2010 stated that Sierra Leone had passed a law to replace the imperial system with the metric system thereby aligning its system of measurement with that used by its Mano River Union (MRU) neighbours Guinea and Liberia. [According to the Agence France-Presse report (2010) Liberia was metric, but Sierra Leone was not metric—a statement that conflicted with the CIA statement (2007).][77] Reports from Myanmar suggest that the country is also planning to adopt the metric system.[78]

The US have signed the Metre Convention early on and metric units are legal for almost all purposes, although sometimes dual-labeling is required and customary-only is frequently encountered (e.g. on road signs).

Many “metric” countries, most notatbly the UK, have some remnants of traditional local or colonial systems of measurement. US dominance in some industries or markets has also forced their English units into places where they haven’t been used before, e.g. inch-based typographic points or screens nominally sized in inches per diagonal.

Crissov
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    Is your question really 'is the USA a metric country?' You don't seem interested in Liberia. – Oddthinking Feb 20 '17 at 06:37
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    @Oddthinking No, I’m asking whether there is any definition of “metric” or “adoption of the metric system” for which the claim holds true that it applies to all countries of the world except for US, LR and MM. – Crissov Feb 20 '17 at 08:31
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    If your question is about the definition of a metric country, then it's off topic. – SIMEL Feb 20 '17 at 09:35
  • @SIMEL I think "What does the claim mean precisely, if it's defensibly true at all" is a possible answer to a broad class of on-topic questions. – Random832 Feb 20 '17 at 14:55
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    @Random832, The question uses a very popular claim, but doesn't give an example of it.So we have to guess not just what the OP means but also what did the original claim mean. If you would look at the wikipedia page for the topic, as in Skilvvz's answer, you would see that it has a description for all countries, explaining exactly at what stage of metric adoption they are. The question is bad because of all these reasons, it doesn't give a specific example for the claim, it's unclear and it's lazy (not even checking the wikipedia page). – SIMEL Feb 20 '17 at 15:07
  • I don't get what is being asked. Yes the US uses metric. Yes the US uses things other then metric. They are not exclusive. – coteyr Feb 20 '17 at 15:09
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    @SIMEL The original claim is very widely repeated (are you arguing it is not a notable claim?), and never contains any further context. Asking if there is a possible meaning of the claim that justifies considering it to be true (i.e. what is the lost context) seems reasonable and on-topic. – Random832 Feb 20 '17 at 15:27
  • @Random832, Googling the title of this question, the first result is the wikipedia page for Metric system, there, in the section Usage around the world the second sentence is: "According to the US Central Intelligence Agency's Factbook (2007), the International System of Units has been adopted as the official system of weights and measures by all nations in the world except for Myanmar (Burma), Liberia and the United States" with a link to the source. So, no, I don't think that the claim usually doesn't contain context. – SIMEL Feb 20 '17 at 15:34
  • The official definition of the inch is 2.54cm so you are indirectly using the metric system even when using your inch. – ch7kor Feb 20 '17 at 17:10
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    I don't understand why Liberians should be ashamed by comparing them to "backward" countries you've mention... –  Feb 20 '17 at 20:14
  • While certainly not a discussion of "official" status, nearly everything I do in life is inches, feet, miles, gallons, and pounds. I buy gallons of gasoline, pounds of bananas, my speed limits are given in miles per hour. I buy 8 foot lengths of 2x4. When I work on my Isuzu car, I reach for my metric sockets. If anything, I'd say the injection of metric into our lives is quite limited at best. – Cort Ammon Feb 20 '17 at 22:24
  • As long as you don't provide a reference to the statement there's no reason to assume that your statement is less unfounded or to believe that americans ought to be shamed. The fact that you might feel ashamed is not more of a (not too easy to deal with) interpretation of yours. How did this question 12 upvotes? – Kalle Richter Feb 20 '17 at 23:12
  • Based on the feedback, I have added an Examples section and quoted some doubts about the (present-day) truth of the statement from Wikipedia. The CIA seems to have not revised their WFB statement since at least 2007, @SIMEL. – Crissov Feb 21 '17 at 03:56
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    The perfect answer would be a _metrication score_ for countries, fully answered for all 200ish. It could cover indicators like road speed limit and distance signs, mountain height, car fuel efficiency, flight altitude of small domestic aircraft, weather forecast temperature, body temperature, human vs. animal body height and weight, blood pressure, beverages in pubs, beverages in vending machines, default office paper size, default screwhead, TV screen size, prepackaged bag of sugar or flour, loose meat sold at a butcher’s, marathon length, soccer penalty point distance to goal, clothing size… – Crissov Feb 21 '17 at 04:23
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    A proper answer to this question does not fit with this site. The answer is simple: Europe and Asia were devastated by WWII, but the US was not. To the contrary; the US prospered post WWII. Europe and western Asia bought US cars, US trucks, and US manufacturing equipment, all built according to US customary units. Myanmar and Liberia don't have a manufacturing base. They can use whatever units they want. On the flip side, the US has a massive manufacturing base, which means they are stuck with the units they used in the 1940s-1960s buildup to that huge base. – David Hammen Feb 21 '17 at 04:47
  • Now, that you've added the claim in the question, you also have the answer in it. The wikipedia articles are well sourced and have all the information that you need to answer that question. What you are suggesting as a "perfect answer" would constitute original research, which is not allowed here as an answer, and more over the scope of what you are proposing is so vast that not only it doesn't fit the format of this site, and more over, I personally find it rude of you to ask for such an extensive effort for free. – SIMEL Feb 21 '17 at 08:00
  • Burma....was Burma, always will be Burma...even has a Python named after it. To hell with what their military Junta wants it to be called. Other than that, Inches FTW. – NZKshatriya Feb 21 '17 at 23:58
  • @SIMEL I’m not expecting OR on SX or WP, but was hoping someone knew a reliable and verbose source that documented such research. Avery’s answer is close to that. Even the CIA WFB seems not truly reliable in this case. Wikipedia is documenting doubt about the claim, but is neither complete, coherent nor consistent in that. – Crissov Feb 24 '17 at 09:37

2 Answers2

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From the Ph.D. thesis "The Social Life of Measures: Metrication in the United States and Mexico, 1789--2004":

As of today [September 2011] there are seven non-metric countries in the world: Liberia, Myanmar, United States, Independent State of Samoa, Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, and Marshall Islands. In the discussions about metrication it is widely assumed that there are only three non-metric countries (Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States), an unfounded assertion that has taken a life of its own and has been repeated thousands of times for more than a decade by academics and persons interested in the history of the metric system (me included).

You also seem to be asking whether metrication has completely eradicated non-metric units in countries outside these seven. The answer is no: there is no country in the world where non-metric units are completely banned from official use. All UN member states are part of the International Civil Aviation Organization, which currently requires all operators to be familiar with knots, nautical miles, and feet.

Additionally, the U.S. Metric Association states:

People like to think of a country as being “metric” or “non-metric,” but deciding which label to apply is difficult because it's not an either/or condition that switches on a particular date.

For example, it's often stated that the U.S. is a non-metric country. But while the U.S. is non-metric in some areas, such as road signs, speedometers, and weather reports, it's metric in many other areas, such as food quantity and nutrition labels, and car and machinery manufacturing, and athletes run 100-meter races.

Conversely, Canada is generally considered to be metric, and its road signs indeed are, yet it uses yards in its football games and typically uses feet and inches and pounds when describing a person's height and weight. Similarly, it's usually stated that the UK is a metric country, but its road signs are non-metric, just like the U.S.

So, beware of reading too much into the “metric” and “non-metric” labels when applied to entire countries. Even the question of whether a country is “officially” metric is harder to answer than you'd think. For example, officially, the U.S. has been metric since 1866, 1893, 1975, or 1988, depending on which official declaration you prefer to cite, and similar uncertainties apply to other countries.

Here's a blog with some more examples of non-metric and "soft metric" measurements in Britain.

Avery
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  • Could you please also quote the definition for “non-metric country” from that thesis? – Crissov Feb 20 '17 at 08:32
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    The paper gives many examples of metrication, such as banning the display of non-metric units in advertisements and on storefronts. But the author also admits that "that no measurement system is ever exclusive". – Avery Feb 20 '17 at 08:42
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    Not to mention that there's still many measurements that don't really have a metric alternative used anywhere in the world - date, time, angles... When was the last time you heard somebody say "Meet me in 3.5 kiloseconds"? :D Though depending on your definition, metric system might mean just "litre, meter, gram", in which case those wouldn't be counter-examples. In any case, it's a good food for thought - why don't we use decimals for hours, while feet are "awful"? :P – Luaan Feb 20 '17 at 13:01
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    Note that Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands were administered by the USA until 1986 and, since then, have been in compacts of free association with the US. – David Richerby Feb 20 '17 at 13:55
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    @DavidRicherby Yeah, I was about to comment the same thing. Those were U.S. territories until relatively recently and still have very strong ties to the U.S. I'm not sure what the deal is with Samoa, since it was part of New Zealand prior to independence, but it might be in order to keep the same units as nearby American Samoa (which remains part of the U.S.) – reirab Feb 20 '17 at 16:27
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    @Luaan Metric time was attempted after the (first) French revolution. Look up "decimal time" and the "French republican calendar". Angles and time are both based on sixty for similar reasons, apparently originating from the Babylonian system. – wberry Feb 20 '17 at 16:35
  • @wberry I know it was *attempted*. I'm just saying it isn't used even in "metric" countries. And the reasons why are quite similar to why people are hanging on to old measurements in other areas as well - 10 is a pretty bad base for a positional system. – Luaan Feb 20 '17 at 16:41
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    The cited author's frustration about this "*unfounded assertion*" is comical when you realize those four nations have the combined population of Tampa, Florida (the 53rd most populous city in the US). Regardless of the precision of the "only 3 countries" assertion, it just underscores that the US is an outlier. – Schwern Feb 20 '17 at 23:55
  • While it's true that pilots use imperial units worldwide, the average person in ex-USSR countries will never encounter non-metric units. Except when buying diamonds I suppose. – RomanSt Feb 21 '17 at 01:55
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    A simple definition: What kind of fasteners can you buy from your local hardware store? If you have to drive several tens of kilometers to buy US customary fasteners, you live in a metric country. If you have to drive several dozens of miles to buy metric fasteners, you live in a non-metric country. – David Hammen Feb 21 '17 at 03:47
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    As the ICAO was founded in the process of the [Chicago Convention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Convention_on_International_Civil_Aviation) in 1944 and the articles and annexes including `Annex 5 – Units of Measurement` have been at least heavily influenced by the U.S. Citing ICAO statutes to support a claim that the imperial system has world-wide official relevance is a flat-out tautology. ICAO's system of measurement is historic and only still in place due to U.S. significance in this field. Or, as my flight instructor used to say: "it'd be all metric if Germans had won the war." – the-wabbit Feb 21 '17 at 08:22
  • @the-wabbit I'm not sure what you thought I was attempting to demonstrate. – Avery Feb 21 '17 at 08:34
  • In Germany, non-metric is very rare, but there are a few things where we use non-metric (informally). TVs are often measured in inches, and at least informally I've heard pound used when going to the farmers market. – CodeMonkey Feb 21 '17 at 13:56
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    The French use "livre" informally to mean a pound weight, but it's a 500g "pound". Similarly the German Pfund. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass)#French_livre https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livre_(unit%C3%A9_de_masse)#La_livre_dans_les_diff.C3.A9rents_pays_d.27Europe – armb Feb 21 '17 at 17:38
  • I'll switch to the **metric system** as soon as they finish it with a metric clock and metric calendar. – Hannover Fist Feb 21 '17 at 21:30
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    @CodeMonkey If you're hearing "Pfund" in a German market that has nothing to do with an imperial pound (except if you run into US tourists). There were multiple Pfund definitions over the years in the area. The one that is still used to this day means 500g not the 453g and is also found in Austria. – Voo Feb 22 '17 at 07:43
  • @Voo that's true. Does that still count as metric? I thought metric was g, and derived quantifications of g mg, Kg etc. Pfund is not really a quantification, it contains the unit of g in this case. – CodeMonkey Feb 22 '17 at 07:59
  • The British Weights and Measures Association fights hard to preserve traditional inch/pound weights and measures in Britain. Feet and inches are widely used, especially for people's height, pounds/stone are used for people's weights, road signs are all in miles, and except that supermarkets only sell goods in metric sizes you'd hardly know the country is supposed to be metric. With Brexit, it's possible that manufacturers will have to reintroduce dual-marking of goods. – Ed999 Jan 29 '19 at 18:17
  • @DavidHammen : Well done. By your definition the UK is still reassuringly a non-metric country (_have to drive miles to buy a metric paperclip_). – Ed999 Jan 29 '19 at 18:29
  • @Ed999 - Fasteners (which apparently are called *fastenings* in the UK), not paperclips. Screws are fasteners, as are nuts and bolts. Putting a customary nut on a metric bolt or vice versa will lead to problems (pun intended). – David Hammen Jan 29 '19 at 20:48
  • The UK _invented_ industrialisation, designed and manufactured every aspect of the country in inches and ounces from plumbing to nuclear power, and did so for a hundred and fifty years: so you can imagine that there is only limited demand for products manufactured in metric sizes. Not much value trying to fix a pipe 5/8ths inches in diameter with one of the wrong size! There was no use of metric at all before 1973, and few goods were sold in it prior to 1997. Most people do know that a _meter_ is French for a _yard_, but that's about as far as understanding it goes. – Ed999 Jan 31 '19 at 04:34
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According to a well-sourced wikipedia article, those three countries are the only three that have "some adoption", whereas all the others have "partially complete" adoption (UK, Malaysia, Canada, Jamaica), "almost entirely complete" adoption (8 countries) or "complete" adoption (all the rest of the world).

Metrication

Countries by current metrication status:

  • green: Complete
  • yellow: Almost Complete
  • orange: Partially Complete
  • red: Little Adoption

This is also confirmed by one of the wikipedia sources via a little searching.

Islands in a metric world

Crissov
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Sklivvz
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    The second picture is from 1975, is there anything more up to date? – SIMEL Feb 20 '17 at 12:41
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    I did not really check Wikipedia because articles there often fall victim to over-referencing with irrelevant, unavailable or -- worst of all -- circular dependent sources. The "3 non-metric countries" claim is found many times across WP, but I have never seen a primary source for that statement. – Crissov Feb 20 '17 at 15:07
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    Note that the Wikipedia article lists only 55 countries; fewer, actually, in light of the fact that "North German Confederation" and "South German states" have entries separate from "Germany." That leave several dozen present-day nations whose metric status is not specified by the article. What does seem to be valid is that the U.S., Liberia, and Myanmar are the only remaining non-metric countries (by the "some adoption" definition) with land areas large enough for their metrification-status encoding to be visible on a world map. – David K Feb 20 '17 at 19:40
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    https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/ – user253751 Feb 20 '17 at 23:14
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    Having lived in Belize, I can say with certainty that the color map is wrong in their case. Belize should absolutely be red in that map. – Fibericon Feb 21 '17 at 09:50
  • @immibis Also, Mercator-projections-that-make-me-cringe – gerrit Feb 21 '17 at 18:07
  • As of today, even the "completely metric" countries are not 100% metric. Things like dots per inch (DPI) on displays and sizes of screens have already been mentioned, but there's another everyday item that is not entirely described in metric dimensions: The automotive tire (e.g. 225/65R16). The so-called metric tire code contains the rim diameter in inches. Until this changes, you cannot say that you are 100% metric, can you? – Nassbirne Feb 21 '17 at 19:33
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    As an example of "partial adoption", take the UK's motorways: speed limits are *miles per hour* and signs showing distances to destinations are in *miles* while distances along the road (what used to be called "mileposts") are stated in *kilometres*. Service stations sell petrol in *litres* but (in the few cases where it is sold) draught beer in *pints* – Henry Aug 07 '17 at 16:28
  • In Britain, milk is still sold in pints, pubs still sell beer in pints, road signs are still in miles or yards - so are road traffic signs generally, such as height warnings (_low headroom: 6ft 6 inches_). Mileposts don't have miles any more, but going by in the car at 50 mph you'd be hard put to read the half-inch high lettering buried in the grass. If metric signs do appear, they tend to get _accidentally_ damaged or painted-out by over enthusiastic members of the public! – Ed999 Jan 31 '19 at 04:52