Why do we have multiple systems of measurement (e.g metric/imperial, Fahrenheit/celsius/kelvin)?
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For metric/imperial, many many years ago, we would measure distance and height by how many steps we took, how many of our hands, feet, or pretty much whatever was available at the time. Eventually someone wanted to have a standard form of measurement that everyone could use and they made the metric system. Unfortunately, not every country adopted this system.
Earlier, each country and sometimes each town had its own system. That still survives for some applications, for instance Troy ounces for precious metals which comes from the French town of Trois and which differs from the common avoirdupois weights In other areas of science, like temperature and light measurement different scientists hit upon their own standards for their work.
Over time, units with a better theoretical foundation have gradually been adopted, doing away with those that reference a particular lump of metal or those that require multiple environmental factors to be controlled.
Because 3 different men used natural phenomena as definitive points on separate temperature scales they each devised.
Fahrenheit chose an arbitrary scale where 32 was when water froze, and 212 when water boiled.
Celsius chose a scale where water freezing and boiling were precisely 100 measures (degrees) apart (at 0 and 100, respectively).
Kelvin chose his 0 to be where *all atomic vibration ceases*, also known as “absolute zero”.
It used to be that every place had its own system of measurement.
this lack of standardization made things like trade and taxes complicated.
When ever town has its own pound that is slightly different from all the other pounds and different substances are measured in different systems even in the same town, that is just a giant headache for everyone.
When the french revolution and the enlightenment came that was a good point to get rid of a all the crap and replace it with new systems of measurements that made sense.
Unfortunately some countries held out a bit longer and some pirates stole the standards when they were shipped over tot he US and so the US and its colonies and pseudo colonies like Liberia still use an older system.
Not though that the Us does not use the imperial system but rather their own modified version of the British imperial system where some units are the same but others are completely different from imperial.
Normally if it was just a single country that was the hold out that would not have mattered but the Us was lucky enough to become a dominant super power in the 20th century allowing them to get away with their own system when other smaller or poorer countries would have just converted long ago.
There have been several attempt to get the US to get on the same page as the rest of the world, but they all seem to fail.
At least in practice all US units are legally defined by reference to metric units and the US only uses their own stuff for some every days stuff like mass, length etc and not for things like voltage or similar things where even in the Us metric units are used.
Some other minor units like the special kind of pounds and ounces used to weigh precocious minerals or special kind of miles used measure distances at sea are also still in use mostly due to tradition.
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