France is the birthplace of the modern metric system.
The system was created during the French Revolution and formally introduced in the 1790s. Scientists and government officials sought a uniform measurement system based on decimal relationships rather than the many local units then used across France.
The metre was initially linked to a fraction of Earth’s meridian, while the kilogram was connected to the mass of a volume of water. Although early measurements were not perfectly exact, the principles of decimal scaling and standardized units proved influential.
The metric system later developed into the International System of Units, or SI, used by science and most countries. The United Kingdom and the United States still use some customary units alongside metric measurements.