At the time Latin was as universal in Europe as English is today. The Eulers and Newtons and Descartes spoke latin, in fact you can read it, today: https://en.w

At the time Latin was as universal in Europe as English is today. The Eulers and Newtons and Descartes spoke latin, in fact you can read it, today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Pri... Later German became the language of the philosophers and scientists and English the language of the practical engineering. English was not or is not gradually becoming a universal language, but suddenly after the US of A won the WWII(and everybody else lost, for example British lost their empire). After the war the US banned all scientific knowledge in German, and forced the use of English. Remember they took half the scientists of Germany with them(that later created their space program), the other half were taken by the Russians. In (inland)Europe we used to measure height of a plane over ground in meters before and during WWII. Kilometers for horizontal distance. When (North)Americans won it became the ruler of the world and imposed horizontal distance in miles, and height in feet. I speak several languages because I love to travel and it is completely different when you speak the native language. It is not a good idea or polite to only speak one language thinking that people should talk your language because it is "universal", which usually means your country has intelligent nuclear weapons and drones that can draw any other country on their knees(or so you believe). What I mean is that any empire will end, like any other empire has ended in the past, and things change over time. I believe the Universal language of the future will be machines translating with small delay and helping people learn other languages much faster.