Customary Units in The United States

Customary Units In The United States

United States customary units are a system of measurements commonly used in the United States. Many U.S. units are virtually identical to their imperial counterparts, but the U.S. customary system developed from English units used in the British Empire before the system of imperial units was standardized in 1824. Several numerical differences from the imperial system are present.

The vast majority of U.S. customary units have been defined in terms of the meter and the kilogram since the Mendenhall Order of 1893 (and, in practice, for many years before that date). These definitions were refined by the international yard and pound agreement of 1959.

According to the CIA Factbook, the United States is one of three countries (the others being Liberia and Burma/Myanmar) that has not adopted the International System of Units (SI) metric system as their official system of weights and measures. The U.S. does not primarily use SI units in its commercial activities, although they are standard in science, medicine, and government (including the U.S. Armed Forces), as well as many sectors of industry.

Read more about Customary Units In The United States:  History, Units of Length, Units of Area, Units of Capacity and Volume, Units of Mass, Cooking Measures, Units of Temperature, Other Units, Other Names For U.S. Customary Units

Famous quotes containing the words united states, customary, units, united and/or states:

    ... while one-half of the people of the United States are robbed of their inherent right of personal representation in this freest country on the face of the globe, it is idle for us to expect that the men who thus rob women will not rob each other as individuals, corporations and Government.
    Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)

    He who strays from the customary becomes a sacrifice to the extraordinary; he who keeps to the customary becomes its slave. He is condemned to perish in either case.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

    Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another—secret and passionate and intense—which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.
    Willa Cather (1873–1947)

    America—rather, the United States—seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, overfriendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The schnuckle among the nations of the world.
    Edna Ferber (1887–1968)

    If the Union is now dissolved it does not prove that the experiment of popular government is a failure.... But the experiment of uniting free states and slaveholding states in one nation is, perhaps, a failure.... There probably is an “irrepressible conflict” between freedom and slavery. It may as well be admitted, and our new relations may as be formed with that as an admitted fact.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)