The Origins of the Metric System

Adapted from The U.S. Metric Associations article, The Origin of the Metric System The original article can be found, in its entirety at http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/origin.html Copyright 2004-2006, U.S. Metric Association (USMA), Inc. All rights reserved. Web hosting courtesy of Colorado State University. Website maintained by USMA Webmaster. Updated: 2006-01-10

Most historians agree that Gabriel Mouton is the founding father of the metric system. He proposed a decimal system of measurement in 1670. Mouton based it on a nautical mile the length of one minute of arc of a great circle of the Earth. Duplicating the standard length would be a problem. A pendulum that swung in one second cycles would be fairly easy to reproduce. He hoped that the pendulum would facilitate the widespread distribution of uniform standards. He proposed the swing-length of a pendulum with a length of about 25 cm. Over the years, his work was revised and improved by a number of French scientists. The political sponsor of weights and measures reform in the French Revolutionary National Assembly was the Bishop of Autun. Under his guidance, the French Academy appointed committees to carry out the work of developing a usable system of weights and measures. One of the committees recommended a decimalized measurement system based upon a length related to the size of the earth. In 1790, in the midst of the French Revolution, the National Assembly of France requested the French Academy of Sciences to deduce an invariable standard for all the measures and all the weights. The Commission appointed by the Academy created a system that was, at once, simple and scientific. The unit of length was to be a portion of the Earth's circumference. Measures for capacity (volume) and mass were to be derived from the unit of length. By doing this, they related the basic units of the system to each other and to nature. Furthermore, larger and smaller units were created by multiplying or dividing the basic units by powers of 10. This feature provided a great convenience to users of the system. There was no longer a need for calculations such as dividing by 16 (to convert ounces to pounds) or by 12 (to convert inches to feet). Similar calculations in the metric system could be performed simply by shifting the decimal point. Thus, the metric system is a decimal (base 10) system. The Commission assigned the name metre (in the U.S. spelled meter) to the unit of length. This name was derived from the Greek word, metron, meaning a measure. The physical standard representing the meter was to be constructed so that it would equal one

ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator along the meridian running through France and Spain. A surveying team under the direction of two men, Pierre-Francois-Andre Mechain and JeanBaptiste-Joseph Delambre, spent 6 years measuring the arc that the earth made along the line between Dunkirk in France on the English Channel and Barcelona in Spain. The surveyors were harassed and even were jailed, at times. Apparently, some of the citizens and area officials resented their presence and felt they were up to no good. In the end, they were able to calculate a distance for the meter that has not changed since then. It was later found that the earth was not a perfect sphere. Delambre and Mechain had not properly accounted for the earth's flattening at the poles. Despite this, their meter remains the invariable standard for the metric system. However, the official definition of the meter has changed several times to improve the accuracy of its measurement. Once the meter had been defined, scientists were able to determine the other units. The initial metric unit of mass, the gram, was defined as the mass of one cubic centimeter a cube that is 0.01 meter on each side of water. For capacity, the litre (spelled liter in the U.S.) was defined as the volume of a cubic decimeter a cube 0.1 meter on each side. After the units were determined, the metric system underwent many periods of favor and disfavor in France. Napoleon once banned its use. However, the metric system was officially adopted by the French government on 7 April 1795. A scientific conference was held from 1798 to 1799 to validate the metric system's foundation and to design prototype standards. There were representatives from the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Spain, and Italy. Permanent standards for the meter and the kilogram were made from platinum. These standards became official in France by an act of 10 December 1799. Although the metric system was not accepted with enthusiasm at first, adoption by other nations occurred steadily after France made its use compulsory in 1840. Because the metric system is standardized and is base 10, the metric system is well suited for scientific and engineering work. It is not surprising that the rapid spread of the system coincided with the Industrial Revolution. In the United States, by Act of Congress in 1866, it became lawful throughout the United States of America to employ the weights and measures of the metric system in all contracts, dealings or court proceedings. In other words, the official unit of measurement of the United States has been the Meter for over 150 years. In fact, it wasn't until 1893 that the units of the inch-pound system were finally officially defined in terms of metric measurements.