Paris - Unit measures

This document provides a summary of most of the units of measurement to be found in use in the world today. It is handy to be able to translate "new" units into the ones you are familiar with and for this purpose, we have listed the appropriate conversion factors needed to change a unit of measure into another one.

Based on a few years old survey, the only other countries that have not officially adopted the metric system are Liberia (in western Africa) and Myanmar (also known as Burma, in southeast Asia). These two countries did not have an official policy of converting to metric, at least 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 years. Although there is some controversy about how to define whether a country is metric, the fact remains that among countries with non-metric usage the U.S. is the only significant holdout .

Use of the metric system is ever growing, especially linked with the wider acceptance of global standards which are mostly in metric measurements. In the 1970s, most British Commonwealth nations changed from the Imperial system of units to the metric system.