Metric System

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The Metric System was devised by French scientists during the French Revolution of the 1790s. Its purpose was to replace the chaotic collections of units that were in use at that time in Europe. Prior to its introduction it was common for units of length, land area, and weight to vary not only from country to country, but from different regions within a certain country. Over the years the confusion grew. Merchants, scientists, and educated people throughout Europe realized that a uniform system was needed, and it was then that this radical change was considered.
The Metric System has many advantages. First off there is only one single unit defined for each quantity which now make up the International System of Units (SI ). Larger and smaller units are created by adding prefixes to the names of the defined units. These prefixes denote powers of ten, which makes it easier so that metric units are always divided into tens, hundreds, or thousands. The original prefixes included milli-for 1/1000, centi-for 1/100, deci-for 1/10, deka-for 10, hecto-for 100, and kilo-for 1000.
The Metric Units were defined in a rather complicated process where the Earth became the actual measuring stick. A quadrant of the Earth was surveyed from Dunkirk to Barcelona along the meridian that passes through Paris. The distance from the pole to the Equator was divided into ten million parts to constitute the meter. Therefore a meter was said to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole. The liter was said to be the volume of one cubic decimeter and the kilogram was to be the weight of one liter of pure water. The units never turned out quite like this because scientific methods of the time were not quite up to the task of measuring these quantities precisely, however the actual metric units come very close to the design.
The Metric System was first proposed in 1791. It was adopted by the French Revolutionary Assembly in 1795 an...