Gregory J. Neumann wrote:
The meter is directly descended from a bad estimate of the distance from Paris to the north pole (that no westerner had yet visited, and would not for more than a century) imposed during a reign of terror by a group of fanatics whose real purpose was to totally destroy the "Old Order" in favor of a "Rational New Order".
The metric system was conceived by a group of scientists, commissioned by King Louis XVI of France to create a unified and rational system of measures. After the French Revolution, the new regime adopted the system rather than scrap it.
The metre was never based on the distance from Paris to the North Pole. It was based on the meridian measured from the equator to the North Pole.
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