It's the holiday season, and time for the annual pilgrimage to grandma's farm. It takes a while to get there, for grandma lives 800 kilometers away, about 10 hours traveling at 80 kilometers per hour in the new Chevrolet.

Grandma's a tiny lady, about 1.52 meters tall, and weighs 44 kilos, at least that's her story. But nobody argues with her. Grandma has a 9mm Luger strapped to her ankle and she doesn't like smart-mouthed grandchildren.

It's been possible for years in America to shoot somebody in the metric system. Ever since NATO, the arms industry has supplied plenty of 5.56mm, 7.62mm, 9mm, 40mm and 81mm ammo designed to put holes of varying sizes in somebody's enemies.

But when it comes to grandma and her 80 hectares of corn, "metrication" seems to be about as popular around the country as hieroglyphics.

Still, in case you forgot or never knew, the United States has been voluntarily converting to the metric system since 1975.

According to two new reports compiled by the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology, federal agencies are "aroused" about the metric system. While it is difficult to imagine the federal government being "aroused" about anything, consider how metrics are creeping up on you: The General Services Administration has $1 billion worth of metric new construction, the latest Commerce report says. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing makes metric stamps and currency. NASA's new spaceships are supposed to be metric by 1998.

According to Commerce physicist Gary Carver, who ran the metric program for 21/2 years, a metric building doesn't have lower ceilings or otherwise feel any different from an "inch-pound" building.

For spaceships, metric applies to everything from engine parts to exhaust manifolds, he said.

Zealots contend that the metric system, introduced by the French Revolution, is superior to the inch-pound system because it only has a few units of measurement, and everything is divisible by 10.

Take the liter, the metric measure of volume. You can have liters, milliliters (1,000 to a liter), centiliters (100 to a liter) or whatever (you have to learn the prefixes).

In the inch-pound system you have quarts, pints (two to a quart), gallons (four quarts), fifths (five to a gallon), barrels (31 gallons for wine, 42 for crude oil), etc. In addition there are fluid ounces (32 per quart), which are different from regular ounces (16 to a pound).

Under the 1975 Metric Conversion Act, the government is not allowed to break legs or otherwise force people to go metric, so the idea is to use sweet reason.

This has worked with the automobile industry, in which everything is metric except wheel rims and sparkplug wrenches (don't ask, Carver doesn't know). This is because metric sells overseas, and inch-pound doesn't.

Computers are all metric (exports again), and the 31/2-inch floppy disk you use in your word processor is in reality a 90mm floppy disk. Most bottles are metric, or labeled both ways, except for 12-ounce soft drinks (who knows?) and milk cartons.

But although Commerce urges "the entire federal government to unite in a determination to lead the nation in joining the rest of the world - the metric world," it is an idea whose time apparently has not yet come.

Copyright © 2021, Sun Sentinel