While the 95 percent of the world has converted to the metric system, the United States stuck with inches, feet, ounces, pounds, Fahrenheit, etc. Only two more countries accompany us in this resistance against adopting the International System of Units (SI): Liberia and Myanmar (Elliott-Gower). After more than 200 years, we are still “on the other side”. We need to fix it ASAP.
The very first opportunity to go metric was missed in the early 1800s, when “President Thomas Jefferson, an amateur scientist and mathematician, recognized the merits of metric, and there was a lot of pro-French, anti-British sentiment in the country”. Then, in nineteen century, the US government authorized the official use of metric measures, alongside British measures in 1866 and signed the Treaty of the Meter in 1875.

I am reading (yet another) Swedish detective novel translated into English at the moment, and I find that I'm thrown by some of the translation.

As you might guess, it's to do with the translation of the units of measurement from metric (I assume, but I'll get back to that) to imperial. First thing is, I have taken to the metric system like a duck to water, and faced with an imperial measurement like 3 feet, I will automatically convert it back to metric. And, efficient person that I sometimes am, I regret the time that the translator spent that I just had to undo.