The metre originated in the French Revolution

Historical achievement & pre-metric chaos

• Commenters are impressed the original meridian-based metre is only ~0.2 mm “off,” given 1790s tools, political turmoil, hand-crafted instruments, and difficult surveying logistics.
• Pre-metric France is described as a patchwork of local units: same names, different actual sizes, sometimes varying by village.
• A key revolutionary outcome was not just a new unit, but a nationally consistent system traceable to a standard, unlike earlier local “weights and measures.”

Metric vs imperial / US customary

• Strong pro-metric sentiment: a single, coherent SI system simplifies science, engineering, and international trade by avoiding arbitrary conversion factors between length, volume, energy, etc.
• Several note the US uses “US customary,” not British Imperial, and that the two diverged after 1776, especially on gallons, pints, and hundredweights.
• Others defend customary units as practical and “human scale” (feet, cups, Fahrenheit), especially for trades, cooking, and informal estimation, arguing familiarity matters more than abstract elegance.
• Several point out that inches, Fahrenheit, and even US “thou/mil” are now defined via SI anyway.

Number bases & divisibility

• There is extended debate over base‑10 vs alternatives (12, 8, 16, 60).
• Critics of decimal emphasize that 10 has few factors; 12/60 allow more exact divisions (2,3,4,5,6, etc.), which is handy for layout, drafting, and “nice” ratios.
• Others reply that any base is arbitrary, fractions work fine, and the major benefit is aligning measurement prefixes with the already‑dominant decimal numeral system.

Revolutionary calendar & decimal time

• People discuss France’s 10‑hour day, 100‑minute hours, 100‑second minutes and 10‑day weeks, and note serious social side‑effects from disrupting Sunday and rest patterns.
• Some argue most people ignored the calendar and kept Sunday practice; others say church closures and dechristianisation were real but regionally varied.
• Modern analogs (gradian angles, Soviet calendars, Swatch “Internet Time,” USPS decimal minutes) are cited as curiosities that never displaced conventional time.

SI quirks: kilogram, liter, definitions

• Multiple comments dislike that the kilogram, not the gram, is the SI base unit, causing derived units (newton, pascal) to be kg-based. It’s seen as a historical artifact of using a 1 kg prototype mass.
• Others note the liter is just 1 dm³ and that m³ and liters coexist for different scales.
• The 1983 metre redefinition via the speed of light is defended as locking the metre to a physical constant while numerically matching the older standard.

Everyday experiences & aesthetics

• Users report metric being vastly easier for tasks like room layout and IKEA furniture planning; US-localized sites that force inches are described as frustrating.
• Some craftsmen and at least one historical artisan are said to find metric “rigid” or “ugly,” preferring older systems for intuitive division and proportions.
• Counterpoint: you can still choose aesthetically pleasing or highly divisible dimensions (e.g., 60 cm, ISO 216 paper) within metric; the unit system doesn’t forbid beauty.

Speculative historical links & φ

• One long subthread proposes that the metre is deeply related to ancient φ‑based body measures and Egyptian cubits, with geometric constructions linking φ, π/6, and pre-metric spans.
• Others question the historical evidence, suggesting these patterns may be retrospective numerology rather than actual design intent, but acknowledge the ideas are intellectually intriguing.