Besides spelling reform, another passion of Melvil Dewey's which wasn't adopted by the United States was the Metric System.
"I ... decided that the world needed just one measure for length, one for capacity, and one for weight, and that they should all be in simple decimals like our money. I was puzzling over the names to give the new measures when I read that John A. Kasson of Iowa had passed in Congress a bill legalizing the metric system. I looked it up at once, found that it met my plan ideally and the next week went to our village lyceum and gave a talk on the great merit of international weights and measures. From that day I became a metric apostle.” -- http://independent.academia.edu/DeweyDownload
With 10 alive it takes 6 to lynch
Deadline: (expired on 2013-08-05 22:23:44)
"I ... decided that the world needed just one measure for length, one for capacity, and one for weight, and that they should all be in simple decimals like our money. I was puzzling over the names to give the new measures when I read that John A. Kasson of Iowa had passed in Congress a bill legalizing the metric system. I looked it up at once, found that it met my plan ideally and the next week went to our village lyceum and gave a talk on the great merit of international weights and measures. From that day I became a metric apostle.” -- http://independent.academia.edu/DeweyDownload
With 10 alive it takes 6 to lynch
Deadline: (expired on 2013-08-05 22:23:44)
