The first CEJ gauge block set in America was sold to Henry M. Leland at Cadillac Automobile Co. around 1908.

Ford bought the entire American company, CE Johansson Inc., that he had established 1918 in Poughkeepsie, New York and all the equipment was moved to Dearborn.

He received a number of awards and honors, including the large gold medal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, posthumously in 1943, shortly after his death in Eskilstuna.

When he started manufacturing gauge blocks in inch sizes in 1912, Johansson's compromise was to manufacture gauge blocks with a nominal size of 25.4 mm (with a reference temperature of 20 degrees Celsius or 68 degrees Fahrenheit), accurate to within a few parts per million of both official definitions.

[4] When the English-speaking nations jointly signed the International Yard and Pound Agreement of 1959, the inch was fixed at 25.4 mm worldwide, effectively endorsing what had already become common practice.