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The whole reason why French invented the metric system was because they had similar mess of various local measurement units all over the place, which notably ma

• fanf2 6y ago
  England was better off than France in the 1700s: in England there were national standards for the various measures, but in France they were local and differed from place to place. This opened up all sorts of opportunities for arbitrage and petty fraud. American customary units are a simplified version of the old English measures: the main remnant of different measures for different goods in America is the Winchester bushel for volume of dry goods, and the Queen Anne wine gallon for volume of liquids. The main difference between US customary measures and non-metric British measures is due to the reform of volume measures in the 1800s, which abolished the various old bushels and gallons, and replaced them all with the imperial gallon. (America does not use imperial units.)
  • saalweachter 6y ago
    England also went stone crazy and redefined the hundredweight as an even 8 stone (112 lb), while changing the pint to 20oz, making a pint no longer a pound anywhere in the world.
• azepoi 6y ago
  It was a mess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Units_of_measurement_in_France_before_the_French_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Units_of_measurement_in_France... each town had variations https://fr.geneawiki.com/index.php?title=Fichier:Instruction_sur_les_mesures_r%C3%A9publicaines_et_les_mesures_anciennes_de_l%27Ain_-_Pages_32-33.JPG https://fr.geneawiki.com/index.php?title=Fichier:Instruction...
• kazen44 6y ago
  and the reason most of continental Europe started using metric was thanks to napoleon and the Napoleonic wars.