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| image: commons.wikimedia.org |
On this day in history, in 1791, the Metric System was proposed
for the first time to the Paris Academy of Sciences. The main features of this
system were to standardize a set of interrelated base units and prefixes in
powers of 10. The system was first developed for commercial use, but the
standardized unit size made it particularly suitable for science and
engineering.
In the late 1700s, most countries had their own systems of
measurement. There was no consistency in the magnitude of units or in the
relationships between multiples. The metric system was proposed as a
cross-cultural solution. The original plan has mostly succeeded, with only
three countries using different systems of measurement as the standard: the
United States, Myanmar, and Liberia.
The original metric system defined five units: the mètre for length, the are for area of land (100 square
meters), the stère for volume of
stacked firewood (1 meter cubed), the litre
for volume of liquid, and the gramme
for mass. Most of these are no longer in use, as they continued the trend for
having a separate base unit for related dimensions (such as the mètre and the are), but the term are
became hectare, which is still in use
today.
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| image: en.wikipedia.org |
France adopted the original metric system officially in
December of 1799. We owe its early spread and usage to Napoleon, as the areas
annexed by France at that time inherited the system.
Today even the US uses the SI units for science and
mathematics, though imperial units are much more commonplace outside of the
STEM fields. Mathematics is the most universal subject- numbers are the same
across cultures and borders, and having a unified system of measurements serves
only to facilitate communication.
For Americans like us at the Center, check out this XKCD comic about converting to the metric system.
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