Why did the US, in spite of rarely using metric over imperial units, do so for units regarding electricity?

by Zechuchit

I think the title says it all. I realize that by and large, the United States doesn’t use the metric system outside of scientific use, but somehow it seems that even consumer-facing electricity-related products measure in units like volts, amps, Watts, and ohms. If you buy a lightbulb, phone charger, or even look at an electric bill, it seems to not use imperial measurements. Now, I realize there are some closely related exceptions (gas bills, horsepower for cars), but somehow electric has stayed out of this. Any reason?

Platypuskeeper

Not much to say here; Imperial units are a system of units for length, area, volume and mass established in the UK in 1824. They do not include electrical units and never have. Nor is the horsepower an Imperial unit. (the 'metric horsepower' exists as a DIN standard but is not an SI unit)

The United States doesn't use Imperial Units (the US was independent before 1824), it uses United States Customary Units. Those units were all similar in value but defined differently from Imperial Units. This was partially rectified when the International Inch and International Avoirdupois Pound were adopted in 1959, but the measures of volume remain different; a US gallon is not an Imperial gallon. Nor did the US adopt the stone as a unit of weight.

Besides the US never having adopted the Imperial System, the Imperial system doesn't include electrical units. Standardized units of electricity didn't exist at the time the Imperial Units were created, and such units (Watt, Volt etc) were not proposed until the second half of the 19th century, at which point in time metric units (or rather the metric-derived centimeter-gram-second units) dominated scientific use even in Britain. In fact, the standards for the aformentioned Volt and Watt units were proposed by Englishmen, and both James Clerk Maxwell and Lord Kelvin, two of the most significant pioneers of electricity in Britain (or anywhere) had put their names and weight behind the CGS system as well. There was never any serious attempt to develop non-metric units for electricity. So I'm unsure what Imperial Units of electricity you're imagining would be used in the place of the current CGS-derived ones.