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I believe that jedd was characterizing both non-metric systems, Elizabethan and before, as broken. That's true, but not for the reason that people usually thin
by JdeBP 6y ago
I believe that jedd was characterizing both non-metric systems, Elizabethan and before, as broken.
That's true, but not for the reason that people usually think.
The common misunderstanding of the history here is that the world went straight from measuring things with bodyparts to metric. It did not. Even if we count Charlemagne as having done that (which he didn't; he having received physical standards from Harun al-Rashid), there were nine centuries of mucking about between that and the invention of the metric system, during which time physical standards were used, lost, stolen, forged, damaged, cunningly altered, eroded, deformed, and replaced. Furthermore, people did various gymnastics to account for the results, such as changing the number of onces to the livre or to the marc.
England was one part of a wider world, and that world was a Hell of a mess.
Metric was not just decimalization, it was consolidation on a single standard, which was particularly pressing in 18th century France, by which time the Carolingian system had shattered into hundreds of thousands of different systems in France alone. (Lookup tables of the time also included conversion factors for towns in France's neighbours. The mess wasn't limited to France by any means.)
Modern stuff like the last few official users of the pint in the world not agreeing on how big it is, is in fact peanuts compared to the mess that the metric system replaced.
- saalweachter 6y agoIt's also worth noting the French-English angle here. The meter was basically the Parisian yard; the crazy definition of 1/10,000th the length of a quarter-circle running from the north pole to the equator through France was picked because (a) it gave something very close to the Parisian yard and (b) it gave an agreed upon standard for all of the hundreds of disjoint local variants of the yard, as you mention. So now that everyone has already adopted the meter, it's the standard, but if you're back in 18th-19th century England, which already had a well-standardized national system of measure, and here comes your long-time rival France with a new standard system of measure, derived from first principles, they say, perfectly rational, and it just coincidentally is the same as their old unit of measure, you're going to be a bit skeptical that you should abandon your units in favor of theirs.
- JdeBP 6y agoI was, though, addressing the idea that the old system was broken, not the politics of adoption of the new system. I haven't done the necessary research, but I expect that it wasn't as simple as only some Chauvinistic national rivalry. In the case of the United States, for example, the course of metrication was significantly altered by the weather. * https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/127534/28321 https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/127534/28321