Assembly nixes council on metric system

CARSON CITY -- Assembly members had a bit of fun Thursday before voting unanimously to abolish a 30-year-old law requiring the state to establish an advisory council on the metric system.

"I don't think we need any discussion" about Assembly Bill 451, quipped Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas. "The two-liter bottle of Coke still will be located on the shelves of a grocery store near you."

Metric system?

While most of the population is too young to remember, there was a concerted effort more than 30 years ago to do away with yards and quarts and switch to meters and liters.

Members of the Legislative Commission last year agreed to draw up a bill to abolish a 1970s law requiring the state to appoint a council on the metric system. The bill was part of a worldwide movement to establish metrics as the common form of measurement.

The council on metrics has not met in 25 years.

Former football star and President Gerald Ford wanted America to begin looking at 100-yard-long football fields as 91.44 meters.

But another president and football player, Ronald Reagan, did not like the metric system. He disbanded federal efforts to establish the metric system in 1982.

Now the United States, Liberia and Myanmar are the only countries in the world not on metrics.

Of course, that hasn't stopped Americans from revering swimmer Michael Phelps for winning every race of every conceivable metric length, or from buying two-liter Coke bottles.

Contact Capital Bureau Chief Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3901.