International Holidays - Metric System Day

The international decimal system for measuring distance and weight was approved on the 18th Germinal, 3rd year of the French Republic. In modern chronology, the event falls on April 7, 1875, when the Metric Convention was signed by 17 countries, including the Russian Empire. The French government, by Decree of 1873, was the first to oblige citizens to use a new system of measures when conducting all types of commercial transactions. Platinum prototypes of the meter and kilogram were finally approved in 1799 and transferred to the National Archives of the country for storage. April 7 became a holiday - Metric Day. Weight began to be measured in kilograms instead of poods, pounds and other units, and length - in meters. Before this, distances were designated in feet, inches, miles and yards. The length of 1 meter was taken to be ten millionth of a quarter of the Parisian geographical meridian. Conversion downward or upward was reduced to dividing or multiplying the indicator by 10, similar to rearranging the decimal point in a decimal fraction. Therefore, fractions and multiples of a meter were called using the prefixes deci-, centi-, milli-, deca-, hecto- and kilo-. The French revolutionaries also aimed at bringing time and degrees in angles to a decimal system. According to the 1973 Convention, a minute should have been 100 seconds, and a right angle should have been 100 degrees instead of the traditional 90. Measuring time in other units would have led to a reform of the entire chronology system. It turned out to be difficult to construct a clock that would run at a speed of 10 thousand seconds per hour, so the innovation was abandoned. The decimal system was also removed from geometry. However, measuring length and weight in meters and kilograms caught on and over time became the reason for the annual celebration of Metric System Day. The development of science, technology and international cooperation led in the mid-twentieth century. to the emergence of private systems based on Metric. To streamline measurements, a common standard was adopted in 1960 - the International System of Units (SI). The main units in it were the kilogram, meter, second, ampere, mole, degree Kelvin (equal to 272.15 °C) and candela (a unit of luminous intensity). The SI standard approved the name and graphic designations of quantities, as well as a set of prefixes for them for shares and parts. The international system and its approval in 1960 expanded the possibilities for cooperation between different countries of the world, simplified the preparation of technical documentation, and led to uniformity in the indication of quantities on measuring instruments. However, the most important step in this direction is still considered to be the creation of the Metric system of measurement in 1875. In honor of this event, Metric System Day is celebrated on April 7.