Tom Lehrer Quotes
Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if you don't use your .
Based on his and most other scientists recommendations the United States finally changed officially to the metric system in the 1970s. Congress passed laws, Executive Orders were issued, the Department of Education provided materials, and schools put it in their curricula. However, America never changed. The difficulty of making the change was not imaginary, but real. The government could not do it, because the majority of the people did not want it done.
This quotation is interesting for 3 reasons. First, it demonstrates that in 1816 the nation still did not have a standard system of weights and measures. Second, note the very polite and politic manner that Madison told the Congress to get busy and do their job. Third, here is Madison talking about a decimal based system. The English system was unique in Europe and all the other countries led by France used a metric system based on 10. Americans, despite the hostility then towed England, there was little support for a metric system. Madison and other leaders, who knew the metric system to be far superior felt that it was more important to have any standard system of weights and measures and so no one held out for a metric system which never was accepted by Americans who were not scientists or worldwide manufacturers.
Thomas Andrew Lehrer is a retired American musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician, having lectured on mathematics and musical theater. He is best known for the pithy and humorous songs that he recorded in the 1950s and 1960s. His songs often parodied popular musical forms, though he usually created original melodies when doing so. A notable exception is "The Elements", in which he set the names of the chemical elements to the tune of the "Major-General's Song" from Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance.
