Back in the 70s, when I was in high school, there was a movement to convert the United States to metric. Children were taught the metric system in school and things started appearing on store shelves in metric units. Unfortunately, the idea was not very popular and eventually the idea was scrapped. It's a shame, really, since it would make things easier in many ways, recipes being a good example. The only legacy of those days still remaining is supermarket packaging with both US Standard and Metric measurements listed.