Is there like a master ruler? Who decided what a length a cm, mm and inch would be and why?
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So there USED to be a master ruler. And a master gram, and so on. The standard was invented by the French after the revolution to stop confusion and bad faith acting in business. I blank on why these exact lengths were picked, but they were, and master copies were made and kept under glass.
The problem with physical objects is, they decay. Atoms at a time, when kept well, but still decay. And the more industrial and scientific the metric system became, the more important it became for these standards to remain static.
One by one, mathematicians have found mathematical formulas that are tied to a basic universal fact rather than an object.
In the case of length, a meter is defined as the distance light can travel in a vacuum in 1/299792458 of a second.
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