MetreIn 1793, the first definition was made for the metre: one ten-millionth of the northern quadrant of the Paris meridian (5,132,430 toises of Paris, from the north pole to the equator). The definition was tweaked based on a second measure made along the Dunkirk-Barcelona axis (5,130,740 toises of Paris) and made legal by the French National Assembly on 7 Apr 1795. The toise was six French feet, 76.74 English inches, a pre-metric measure, from Latin tendere, to stretch (implying the distance between fingertips of a man's arms stretched horizontally sideways, similar to the English fathom). In the Middle Ages, “the toise of Paris” was an iron bar with two tabs, fixed in a wall at the foot of the staircase of the Grand Châtelet in Paris.« |
