How The Metric System Affects History

I have no doubt that the French Revolution initiated the modern political era. It is effectively the "Big Bang" of the modern era. The revolution was against the monarchy and the church. The king and queen were overthrown and guillotined, and replaced by a republic. But it ended in the rule of Napoleon, who became the prototype of the modern dictator, although he had nothing to do with starting the revolution.

But why did this particular revolution turn out to be so important? 

One reason was certainly that Napoleon's conquests spread it's values across Europe. Napoleon's invasion of Russia was ultimately unsuccessful. But could he have imagined that, more than a century later, a virtual reenactment of the French Revolution would begin in the Romanov Dynasty capital of St. Petersburg that would topple them? 

Another reason was that the ideals of the French Revolution were uplifting and empowering. It basically said "We do not need a king and a pope to think for us, and tell us what to do, because we have our own reasoning to guide us". The anti-religious slant of the revolution fit with the coming era of secularism.

But there is a third reason why the French Revolution, and it's successor revolutions, have so dominated world history ever since. That reason is the Metric System that has pervaded the world. What the revolutionaries managed to do is to get the world using the measurement system that they created.

The French revolutionaries were obsessed with the number ten. They had a calendar with ten months and a week with ten days. There are still their clocks in museums that have a day with ten hours. None of these lasted but what did last is their measurement system, based on ten and water.

The Metric System centers around the meter, the basic unit of length. The revolutionary measures of time didn't last but the rest of the system is based on the meter. A meter was originally supposed to be one-ten millionth of the distance between the north pole and the equator, along the meridian that passes through Paris. The meter today is actually an arbitrary length.

Starting with the meter, units are formed from multiples of ten. Ten meters is a decameter, a hundred meters is a hectometer and, a thousand meters is a kilometer. A tenth of a meter is a decimeter and a hundredth of a meter is a centimeter. Obviously we tend to use some multiples more than others. The volume of a cubic decimeter is defined as a liter and the mass of a liter of water is defined as a kilogram. The mass of a cubic meter of water is defined as a metric ton. 

The Metric System has become the world's measurement system, and this is one of the things that ties the world to the French Revolution. A measurement system is like a language, and we are speaking the revolution's language. It is easy to see how history and politics go together with the Metric System in how slow the U.S. and Britain have been to adapt it. That is because Britain, unlike the French revolutionaries, kept their royals instead of putting them under the guillotine and the French monarchy had been America's first ally and helped it to gain independence.