Abstract
The origin of the metric system, and of its later version, the International System (Système International, SI) of units, goes back a long way into French history. Before that, the old French measures had presented two serious problems:
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units with the same name varied form one region to the next and had to be defined accordingly (e.g., pied de Paris)
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subdivisions were not decimal, which increased the complexity of commercial transactions
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© 2003 Springer-Verlag London
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Cardarelli, F. (2003). The International System of Units. In: Encyclopaedia of Scientific Units, Weights and Measures. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0003-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0003-4_2
Publisher Name: Springer, London
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Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-0003-4
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