• xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    At the time when the metric system was created, imperial units weren’t standardized at all, so if centimeters lined up with one definition of inch, they wouldn’t line up with the many other definitions anyway.

    • tunetardis@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Point taken. Reading up on it on wikipedia, I love the the legal definition from 1814, wherein one inch = “three grains of sound ripe barley being taken out the middle of the ear, well dried, and laid end to end in a row”.