American/English Standard
Firstly and foremostly, the American Standard system of measurement, derived nearly entirely from the old English Standard, lacks the purpose in structure that the SI was designed for. From the origins of the English System to the units themselves, a lack of proper sense and organization prevails. In fact, according to Kenrick Vezina in his article “Distance and Area”, the English System was developed in several different places at once, utilizing the same names for units while setting different values for them and creating a hodgepodge of different measurements under the same name (par 2). This variety of values, though mostly eradicated over time, didn’t help the system at all in terms of organization. The measurements vary in erratic intervals, necessitating arbitrary numbers such as 3 and 12 to be centrally important numbers. Even further, these arbitrary numbers are derived from even more arbitrary sources. For example, according to the article “Units of Measurement”, “The foot was originally derived by the Romans from the length of a man’s stride” (par 2). However, in Robert Wolke’s “Metric System”, he states that an equally valid version of the foot was, in fact, a person’s foot (par 5). Even if only one version of the foot was to be considered, every person is different, which means that there could have been hundreds of versions of the same foot, and while such a measurement may have been appropriate when people lacked the tools to create more efficient systems of measurement, today’s society requires a more efficient system of measurement.
