The Quincy, M.E. Metric System Poster

In many episodes of Quincy, M.E. there is a subtle reminder of the United States' complicated relationship with the Metric System.

When I was young it seemed that the United States was going to switch to the Metric System. Not only was my school equipped with US Customary Units measuring devices and materials, but right next to them were metric ones. We were expected to learn both at the same time, and while it was a little inconvenient and slightly confusing to my young brain, I enjoyed it. It was exciting—the metric system seemed like it was going to change everything around me. I was seeing evidence of it everywhere, and I really got a kick out of it.

The United States government was a fairly early adopter of the Metric System and, over the years, has flirted with switching to it completely. My brush with it came via the Metric Conversion Act, which was signed into law by President Ford in late 1975. This act established an independent board that worked toward educating the public on a voluntary adoption of the system. Unfortunately, in 1982, President Reagan abolished the Metric Board, and slowly but surely, evidence of that big push faded away.

You can still find traces of it if you look at items on eBay from this period, but you can also see it in films and television shows from the era. It’s never obvious. Very few plotlines hinge on weights and measures, but if you start looking, examples begin to pop up.

Measuring my McDonald’s Gift Card on my McMetrics Ruler. It is exactly some amount of metrics across.

I have always been a fan of the TV show Quincy, M.E. Jack Klugman does an amazing job playing the titular medical examiner, and the show shined some much-needed light on the coroner system and its place in public health and criminal investigation. The show tried to be authentic in how it portrayed the science and even hired people with a background in medical examination as regulars. They also made the lab on the show look like a real, functioning lab.

The equipment looks slightly dated nowadays, but much of it was cutting-edge at the time and fun to look at, but that’s not what I have become obsessed with over the years. No, the thing I couldn’t take my eyes off of, that hung on the wall in many scenes of the show, was a giant, colorful Metric System Poster. It was there for up until about the last season. I am not sure why they replaced it with a periodic table, but I missed seeing this familiar splash of color.

Always lurking in the background.

It was a very clever bit of set dressing. Quincy took place during the educational push by the Metric Board, but to most Americans, the Metric System was unfamiliar. It seemed complicated and scientific—something professors or scientists might use. The poster was large, but the wall it’s placed on was usually far enough in the background that you might not notice it. When you did though, it made you think: This is a place where smart, scientific stuff is happening. This Quincy must know what he is doing.

I can’t say when I first noticed the poster. Probably at some point in the 1990s while watching the show in late night reruns. At first, I tried to think about how big it must be, and I would try to make out exactly what it said. Eventually, I started to wonder: Where did it come from? Were they common? How could I get one?

Despite appearing in dozens of episodes of the show, the quality of the recording and the placement of the poster made it difficult to read. So after trying to get a decent screenshot and enlarge it with mediocre results, I took to the internet to try and get some more information. What I was able to find was much better—the actual poster.

It was hard to tell from the show, but I can confirm this is one big poster. It is 45x29 inches—or should I say 114.3 x 73.66 cm. So over a meter across! When you see it up close, you can see that not only is it colorful and eye-catching, perfect for background on television, but also very useful and easy to understand. You get an illustrated explanation of seven base metric units:

• Meter (length)

• Kilogram (mass)

• Second (time)

• Ampere (electric current)

• Kelvin (temperature)

• Mole (amount of substance)

• Candela (luminous intensity)

They also include two supplementary units: radian (plane angle) and steradian (solid angle), a short history of the metric system in the United States, yard and meter comparisons, common conversions, and a list of multiples and prefixes. Everything you would need to get started, understand, and start using the metric system.

Also an Army Recruiting Poster?

Being able to see it up close, I discovered that it was distributed by the U.S. Department of Commerce National Bureau of Standards in 1972. So this poster predates the Metric Conversion Act. They offered a few metric publications that you could send away for, ranging in price from 30 cents to $3. This poster might be titled National Bureau of Standards Special Publication 304 and would have run you about 55 cents—which is significantly less than people charge today for a copy.

I have seen it online for as little as $10 to well over $100. As usual, condition matters, but it really seems to be more about what the seller thinks it’s worth. This is a very specialized item and would certainly make an interesting statement piece on the wall, but the people who would want it are very niche. Maybe a narrow group of Quincy fans who have taken a shine to it, metric enthusiasts who enjoy a large, refreshing reminder on their wall, or perhaps people who appreciate its design aesthetic. I might put myself into all three groups.

Finding this poster and learning more about it has been a fun little journey. It started as just something in the background of a TV show I liked, but the more I looked into it, the more interesting it became. It’s a piece of a time when it really seemed like the metric system was going to take over in the U.S., and you can still see traces of that push if you know where to look. It also says something about how changes that seem inevitable can quietly fade away, leaving only small reminders behind. The U.S. still hasn’t fully switched to metric, and maybe it never will, but for a brief moment, it felt like a real possibility. That moment may be long gone, but thanks to Quincy, M.E., a little piece of it is still hanging on.