Who, how and when decided to count to a second and was like “Yup. This is it. This is a second. This is how long a second is. Everybody on Earth will universally agree that this is how long a second is and use it regardless of culture, origin, intelligence or beliefs”?
In: 1035
We all just agreed. Just like the metric system, we agree a meter is a meter, a kilogram is a kilogram. Even places that don’t use the metric system, a foot is a specific fraction of a meter and a pound is a specific number of kilograms.
We also defined a second as a specific number of oscillations of a cesium atom, a meter as the distance light travels in a specific number of oscillations of a cesium atom, etc so you can determine these measurements anywhere in the universe.
The second was actually defined well before the other units in the metric system. When the metric system was created, they tried to make metric time, 10 hours in a day with 100 minutes with 100 seconds, but this didn’t catch on.
By “well before,” I mean the metric system was established in 1795, whereas the second was first conceived by the Babylonians (who used a base 12 counting system, hence 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes, and 60 seconds, as well as 360° in a circle). The first mechanical clocks were built on this system in the 14th century, and we could get an accurate measurement of a second by the late 16th century.
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