[BC] need a NON-technical explanation

[Donna Halper]

This may be an old-radio query, but I know some of you are hams so perhaps you can help me explain something.  I am finishing up my dissertation for my PhD after all these years (I always wanted a Doctorate, and you're never too old to study something new) and am struggling with how to explain in non-technical terms why radio stations of the 1920s moved away from using meters and embraced the term "kilocycles".  (I know they did it beginning in 1923, and it basically seems to have become fait accompli by around 1927.)  I believe hams still use meters, do they not? 

But to further confuse the neo-Luddites like me, today's radio receivers are in kilohertz-- I grew up with using "kc" and it all changed further at some point to "kHz", but I never understood that change either.  Soooo, if somebody could explain these changes and the reasons for them, in English that the average non-techie could understand, I'd be grateful.