Hooray for Being Different!!

The US, Burma and Liberia are the only countries in the world that have not officially adopted the metric system as the standard of measurement.

Many years ago USMA took a survey to determine which countries have officially adopted the metric system. According to that survey, the only other countries besides the U.S. that have not officially adopted the metric system are Liberia (in western Africa) and Burma (also known as Myanmar, in Southeast Asia). These two countries did not have an official policy of converting to metric at the time of the survey.

Most other countries have either used the metric system for many years, or have adopted the metric system within the last 30 or 40 years. (The story of the metric transition in several countries is given in detail farther down on this page.) Nearly every country in the world has taken steps to replace traditional measurements. And, use of the metric system in the U.S. is ever increasing as well, especially linked with the wider acceptance of global standards and global trade which are mostly in metric measurements. Just as English has become the global language of commerce, the metric system has become the global language of measurement. Thus the phrase heard more and more: "Speak in English, and Measure in Metric."

Jamaica was the most recent country to convert to the metric system, having done so in 1998.