>It appears that 'comfort' is the overriding factor. My daughter, who is 11, learned both in school. She prefers metric and cannot understand why we use the other at all when it is so confusing. Especially since almost all things displaying units of measurement now list it in both forms. She uses the 'wrong' side of the measuring cup even! :o) Of course her mother, who was raised using the English system (even though I learned the metric as well), gets a good laugh out of that one and still 'thinks' in the English units regardless. It's called 'programming' of another kind I believe. :o)
>
>Perhaps when her generation is their 30s so the majority of Americans understand the metric system as well as the English, the U.S. will finally convert and join the world standard.
One of the first stories which I heard when I came here was about the attempt, some time in sixties, to introduce kilometers on the roads. So the speed limit signs were rewritten into kilometers per hour - and most of the drivers kept reading them as if these were in miles.