Comment on What has he done to deserve this?
sparkle@lemm.ee 3 months agoof an approximation of a Roman foot in metric*
The Roman foot was between approximately 0.96 and 0.99 British imperial/US customary feet. The modern foot is defined as exactly 0.3048 meters, by international agreement.
Omgpwnies@lemmy.world 3 months ago
The really neat thing about those changes to the meter is that it didn’t really change how long a meter was (-ish), it changed the precision of that definition, as well as the ability to reproduce an exact meter, reducing the need for a specific piece of material to define the meter (which changes length based on environment). Now, an exact standard meter can be reproduced independently in any lab with the proper equipment.
Bgugi@lemmy.world 3 months ago
What’s especially wild is that the kilogram was still an artifact in 2019! Every single calibrated weight in the world, big and small… They all could be traced back to a single metal chunk in a french vault.