"Beyond Measure" [0], by James Vincent, is a good well researched read on the history of metrology. He doesn't mention the Dombey story. He does conclude [p. 265] that the ultimate reason that the imperial system stuck in the US and Great Britain (100 years after Dombey) was that these economies were dominant incumbents and didn't /need/ to change. Great Britain had metric and imperial in parallel. For the US, the switching cost was too high.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/07/beyond-measure...