BY PAUL HETZLER

The good news is that Imperial forces are losing the battle for planetary dominance. The bad news is that we’re on their team. The British Imperial System of measurement, born in 1824, was an improvement at the time. But in 1965, the Brits chucked it in the dust bin, adopting the decimal-based metric system. Today, metric is universal in science and medicine. Of all the nations on planet Earth, only the U.S. still clings to old British measurements.

Being obsessed with the levy and collection of taxes, the British monarchy was never a slouch at taking stock of things. Mostly other people’s things. Tenth-century Saxon King Edgar the Peaceable supposedly had a royal bushel made for the kingdom, choosing its dimensions. It makes sense he got to decide. After all, measuring stuff is what rulers are for.

Prior to the British Imperial system, the Magna Carta weighed in on units. In 1215, it set standards for things like the “…width of russet and haberject, namely two ells [elbows] within the selvedges,” requiring cloth to be two forearms wide. In the Middle Ages, a rod, equal to 5.5 yards, was calibrated to “the length of the left feet of 16 men lined up heel to toe as they emerged from church.” I assume feet fresh from church ensured an honest measure.

Over the years, it must have occurred to someone that feet and forearms come in different lengths. And that it was confusing to have four different kinds of gallons whose capacities varied by what they were intended to hold. So, enter the British Imperial System. It designated a single gallon measure, but kept the 12-ounce or Troy pound for gold and silver, along with the 16-ounce avoirdupois pound we use for everything else.

Although the U.S. Customary System of weights and measures followed the old-time British units in our country’s early days, we did not revise it when the Brits upgraded to the Imperial System. Consequently, we wound up with “Queen Anne’s wine gallon” (231 cubic inches), 17 percent smaller than an Imperial gallon. Our bushel (2,150.42 cubic inches) is three percent smaller than their bushel, and our ton came up short as well. I chalk it up to unresolved motherland issues from back when we were a colony.

For those of us not math-minded, the U.S. Customary system is an imperial pain. If 16 ounces, or oz., make a lb. or pound, I need a calculator to find how many oz. there are in, say, 3.71 lbs. But first, I get distracted by the point that when I read “oz.” or “lb.,” in my head they sound like “Oz” (as in, the Wizard of) and “lib,” respectively. It makes me wonder if I’m pronouncing the units right, and if it bothers other people, too, and if we could find better abbreviations. No wonder I can’t do computations.

In the 1790s, French people got all excited about a new way to measure stuff – some of them really lost their heads over it. I suppose it might have been the French Revolution, which was raging at the time, that got them wound-up. Amid the chaos, scientists were able to sneak the metric system, a more rational structure, into French law by 1799. When the dust settled, the French had a new republic. By comparison, a novel scheme of weights and measures probably wasn’t a big deal.

The metric system uses a base of 10, rather than a base of 12, 16, 64, 280, or whatever, depending on what’s being measured, that we use. Metric is simpler. I can tell you that 31,000 meters, at 1,000 meters per kilometer, is equal to 31 km. But ask me to multiply 31 miles by 5,280 feet, and I’ll get back to you tomorrow.

The metric system is governed by an international conference that maintains standards for the meter, kilogram, ampere, degree Kelvin, and other base units in the Système international d’unités or SI. According to the heart surgeon who repaired my mitral valve years ago, the plastic ring that keeps my valve in the proper shape is marked “32 mm.” If it read “fifteen-sixteenths of a barleycorn,” I wouldn’t trust it. Not all barleycorns are equal in length.

Science speaks metric. Bugs are measured in millimeters, reagents in milliliters, and wildlife weights in kilograms. NASA lost its pricey Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999 when a contractor failed to use metric units, and thousands of hospital patients die each year in the U.S. when their weights are recorded in pounds, because medications are prescribed in milligrams per kilogram. I hope we soon break free from a measurement system that’s so inefficient; it was rejected by the very people who made it. Some of our exports are still measured in drams, grains, short tons and long tons. It seems advantageous to sell goods in a way the rest of the world can easily understand.

Admittedly, some changes will take time. But if I ever score a Troy ounce of gold or silver, I won’t complain about the units.