The United Kingdom for example, only started its journey toward the metric system in the 1970s, after the reality of its geopolitics changed radically; the U.K. not only lost its empire but also ...

Boris Johnson's government is eyeing a move to allow shop stalls and supermarkets to use only imperial units in all transactions, ditching a metric requirement from when the U.K. was in the EU.

“I use the analogy of an iceberg,” she says. On the surface are U.S. imperial units, but many industries already use metric measurements, including food labels, car speedometers, and thermometers.