2021-08-10: Nature published an extract of an article discussing the possibility of the US embracing the metric system, originally published in 1971. The full article contains a successful prophecy: "but even the adoption of externally designed units of measurement may become a patriotic challenge."

It ends with a paragraph about the British Metrication Board:

Whether the report now published will finally tip the scales in the United States in favour of conversion to metric is an open question, but there is no doubt that the report will do a good deal for the moral [sic] of the Metrication Board in the United Kingdom, recently much cast down by the apparent indifference of the Conservative Government. Indeed, the working group [of the NBS] declares that the British metrication programme should be regarded as a pilot for the conversion in the United States. Lord Ritchie-Calder, chairman of the Metrication Board, will no doubt be reminded once more that prophets are not highly regarded in their own countries.

An extract of the article published 2021-08-10

50 Years Ago

The National Bureau of Standards has predictably recommended that the United States should switch over to a metric system of measurement in the course of the next decade. In the report of the US Metric Study, which has occupied the bureau since the passing of the Metric Study Act by Congress in August 1968, the principal theme is that the metric system is for practical purposes unavoidable … The report … has the inelegant title A Metric America: A Decision whose Time has Come (US Government Printing Office, $2.50) … It remains to be seen what Congress will make of the report … and of the argument that metrication is historically necessary. Congress failed to respond to Jefferson’s commendation of the metric system as long ago as 1790, even before the definition of the metre. Since then, Congress has built up a long record of flirtation with bits and pieces of the metric system, especially at the turn of the century.

Nature 1971-08-13 (Click the link to go to a page where you can download the complete article. (PDF, 2 MB))