| Show old OId measurement units as remodeled by french the english units of measurement have evolved gradually from the simple standards used by the english peasants and artisans a thousand years ago prior to the french revolution in fact the standards of all nations were based on the rude units developed by primitive peoples writes dr thomas M beckin beck in the chicago tribune in 1790 the french government appointed a commission to place the weights and measures of france on a decimal basis this step involved the discarding of the old units and the adoption of new ones As there was nothing sacred about the tolse and the and the rest of the old units the commission could arbitrarily have chosen any stick and stone in france to be the new standards of length and weight in actual practice however it is if desirable to have such standards based on certain known and indestructible quantities so that if all yardsticks and weights in the land were destroyed in some catastrophe they could soon be reproduced for the measurement of lengthy length the commission chose the most F destructible thing available betl earth the unit of length the meter was defined as one ten millionth oi of the distance from the equator to the north pole along the meridian passing through paris ten meters were defined as a decameter meters as a hectometer and 1000 meters as a kilometer among the sub multiples a meter was defined as 10 decimeters deci meters centimeters and 1000 millimeters mili meters the new units of area and volume were the squares and cubes of these lengths |
