Change to Metric Costly, Confusing

* Re “County Conversion to Metric Requires a Feat of Diplomacy,” Oct. 12:

If Americans must now scrap our user-friendly foot and pound measurement system because metrics are now deemed more practical, we should also replace our hybrid, polyglot English language with the far more sensible Esperanto.

As a land surveyor, I’m aware that California’s lands have long since been surveyed, sectionalized, mapped, subdivided and deeded by foot units, the records of which will remain in full legal force forever.

Rather than replacing the foot in property transactions, metrication would simply create a preposterous dual system of unrelated measurement units that would never be reconciled.

The only proponents of a costly and counterproductive metric conversion appear to be bemused academics and such self-serving tax-supported public agencies as Caltrans and the city, county, state and federal departments that would benefit financially.

Because it’s the metrication of length and mass units that would provide them with job security, advancement and years of undemanding make-work, proponents never mention the rest of the metric package that would impact time, electrical current, temperature, light intensity and molecular substance.

If Americans now find our present inches, feet, ounces and pounds too confusing, wait until they’re coping with such metric prefixes as tera, giga, mega, kilo, hecto, deka, deci, centi, milli, micro, nano, pico, femto, atto and myria.

WILLIAM J. MCGEE

Tustin