Everyone knows how to measure, for example, 1cm or 1 kg of something, but how did people decide how much length is going to be 1 cm or how much weight is going to be 1kg? And how did they make most of the world accept those measurements? Questions applies to other measurements aswell, these two were just examples.
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Napoleon!!
The metric system was invented during Revolutionary France, as a way to modernize and standardize units of measurement. While most old/local measurement systems were made to be practical for regular people (one mile is roughly 1,000 paces, one fathom is roughly the length of your outstretched arms, one foot is, well,), the metric system was always supposed to come from universal constants. So, a meter was defined as a particular fraction of the circumference of the earth, one kilogram is the mass of one liter of water, one calorie is the energy to heat one gram (also one cm^(3)) of water by one degree. It’s all very nice and tidy and makes for easy calculations.
Napoleon then went and conquered most of Europe, and modernized lots of things wherever he went. Legal codes, infrastructure, and the metric system. These things long outlived his reign, and in 1875 the International Bureau of Weights and Measures was founded in Paris to officially coordinate all these units. Until recently, the Bureau’s building held *the* official kilogram weight and meter length, that defined these units.
This also *happened* to be the height of French (and European) global power, and imperial powers spread these units to the countries they conquered/colonized. By the time decolonization happened, no one was going back. Same with the Gregorian calendar, the way we divide days into hours/minutes/seconds, and to a lesser extent the use of French and English as international languages of business.
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