Originally the meter was defined as the distance around the Earth, perpendicular to the equator, divided by 40 million. The French spent a while triangulating t

Originally the meter was defined as the distance around the Earth, perpendicular to the equator, divided by 40 million. The French spent a while triangulating the French countryside from North to South to calculate the Earth's curvature. Unfortunately it was assumed that the earth was a prolate spheroid, when actually it is oblate. This is one of the reasons it was reformulated. The East India Company triangulated most of the length of India, but it was tremendously expensive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Trigonometric_Survey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Trigonometric_Survey