Captain History wrote:
Roman Empire?
Those guys in Italy who invented the mile. Or did you think the British invented it?
But there were standardized measurements. Learn some history then come back and maybe we can have an enlightened conversation.
And those degenerate romans, after inventing the mile (thousand paces in their comical language), pound (libra, or lb.), ounces, feet, inches, etc, inflicted their useless, confusing system on most of Europe.
Then their empire collapsed, leaving each of their former territories to standardize their own units as they saw fit, every one of them differently. British people, for example, heard that Napoleon was 5 foot 2 and figured he was short, not understanding (even to this day) that 5 foot 2 in French measurements was 5 foot 7 in British, which was tall for the time.
A thousand years of divergent evolution created a crazy quilt of degenerate roman-based systems in many different countries. You can't have international track competitions without a global standard, so you can thank the metric system for the existence of world class professional athletics. And guess who you can thank for the metric system? That's right, L'Empereur himself. Napoleon conquered Europe and made them adopt metric. Only Britain continued the traditions of the degenerate, slave-buggering romans and their so-called "thousand paces."
ok, history lesson's over.