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The United States customary system developed from English units that were in use in the British Empire before the U.S. became an independent country. The United Kingdom's system of measures evolved by 1824 to create the imperial system (with imperial units ), which was officially adopted in 1826, changing the definitions of some of its units.
The units of cubic length (the cubic inch, cubic foot, cubic mile, etc.) are the same in the imperial and US customary systems, but they differ in their specific units of volume (the bushel, gallon, fluid ounce, etc.). The US customary system has one set of units for fluids and another set for dry goods.
The US Customary system of units was developed and used in the United States after the American Revolution, based on a subset of the English units used in the Thirteen Colonies; it is the predominant system of units in the United States and in U.S. territories (except for Puerto Rico and Guam, where the metric system, which was introduced when ...
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A shampoo label from the U.S. that shows a round metric quantity taking secondary status in parentheses next to non-integer U.S. customary quantity. Metrication is the process of introducing the International System of Units, also known as SI units or the metric system, to replace a jurisdiction's traditional measuring units.
US customary units, however, are still the main system of measurement in the United States. While some steps towards metrication have been made (mainly in the late 1960s and early 1970s), the customary units have a strong hold due to the vast industrial infrastructure and commercial development.
The Metric Conversion Act of 1975 is an Act of Congress that was signed into law by U.S. President Gerald Ford on December 23, 1975. [1] It declared the metric system "the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce", but permitted the use of United States customary units in all activities.
The United States mandated the acceptance of the metric system in 1866 for commercial and legal proceedings, without displacing their customary units. [90] The non-mandatory nature of the adoption of the SI has resulted in a much slower pace of adoption in the US than in other countries.