A TBEMENDOUS LOSS

Wairarapa Age, 1 April 1920, Page 3

A TBEMENDOUS LOSS

The great objection to the adoption of the metric system is well Btated by E. S. Mummert in a letter to the Scientifio American. He says:— "There are in the United States and Great Britain and other English speaking countries, millions if not billions of dollars' worth of machine tools and gauges built and graduated on the inch basis, and more millions of dollars' worth of jigs and special fixtures in machine-tool and tool builders' factories used to build standard tools to inch standards. These will all wear out some day and have to bo replaced; and if it were possible to replace them thus grdaually with metric system equipment the proposed change would not be so bad. But nothing of the sort is possible; you cannot go over to the metric system a little at time, you must go over all at once. This would involve the absolute abandonment of all this equipment; it would be a tremendous loss and a most impractical thing to do." Mr Mummert suggests that wo adopt the inch as one standard and decimalise it up and down. But the editor of the Scientifio American points out that it would not bring us nearer to international uniformity.