Dennis also relayed a horror story one surveyor sent him: A contractor from a state that uses the U.S. foot planned a building in the glide path of a major airport in a state that uses the international foot. The U.S. foot “sounds very patriotic, very American,” he said in a webinar. Since 1893, the official definition of a foot is based on the meter. “We are metric,” Dennis says. In 1893, the U.S. government defined a foot as 1,200 meters divided by 3,937.

Source: International New York Times December 14, 2019 13:30 UTC