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Overview

In this article, we will talk about the metric system and its history. We will look at how it evolved from the earliest known measuring systems and will discuss what it is now, with a look at its extension, the SI system.

For our ancestors who lived in a world full of dangers, having a way to measure things in the natural environment was a window into understanding the natural phenomena, a way of making sense of their surroundings, and of obtaining some control over this environment. This is why people from early times invented and constantly improved various measuring systems. In the early days, just like today, having a measuring system was important for building shelter, sewing clothes, for daily activities like cooking, and of course, for trade. Many believe that the invention and adoption of the metric system and the International System of Units, the SI, is one of the greatest achievements in science and technology, and in the development of the human race.

Early Measuring Systems

Early measuring systems adopted familiar objects for measuring and comparing against. For example, many believe that the base 10 system is a direct result of the fact that we have 10 fingers and 10 toes. Our hands are always with us, so to speak, so from ancient times people used fingers to count. Yet we did not always use a base 10 system of units, and the metric system is a relatively recent invention. Systems of units developed independently in each region, and while there were some similarities across these systems, most of them were different enough to create difficulties in converting between these systems once trade developed among nations.

Early measurement systems were heavily dependent on the measurements of objects surrounding the people that developed these systems, and inconsistencies were in part a result of the size variation of these objects. For example, the length was based on the length of body parts, while volume and mass were based on the volume and mass of seeds and other small objects. Below we will look in more detail at these units.

Length

Length in Ancient Egypt was measured in cubits and then in royal cubits, a cubit being the length from the elbow to the tip of the extended middle finger. A royal cubit was thus the cubit but measured on the royal person, the pharaoh. A prototype was created based on this measurement, and it was publicly available so that the people could create their own prototypes. This, of course, was a rather arbitrary unit, which changed with each new succession. Ancient Babylonians used a similar system, with slightly different values for the smaller units.

The cubit was subdivided into smaller units such as palms, hands, feet, and digits, which were represented by the width of a palm, a hand, a foot, and a finger respectively. At this time some abstraction was made when agreeing how many digits are in a palm (4), a hand (5), and a cubit (28 in Egypt and 30 in Babylon), instead of measuring it out every time.

Mass

Weights, on the other hand, were based on the mass of an individual seed, grain, bean, or another similar object. A classic example of this is the unit of mass still in use, the carat, now used for measuring precious stones. It was originally based on the weight of a carob seed. Different regions often used these smaller units such as seeds, and the larger units which were often multiples of the smaller units. These larger units often had artifacts, which were standardized weights, generally made of stone. The value of these units varied from region to region, and each larger unit was often comprised of 60, 100, or another number of the smaller units. Since neither the value of the units nor the number of units that they were divided into were universal, there were confusions and disagreements when merchants from different regions traded with each other.

Volume

Initially, volume was also measured using these small items. For example, the volume of a container, like a jug or a cauldron, would be determined by the number of small items of relatively uniform size, for example, seeds, that fit into the container. Lack of standardization caused similar problems with the units for volume as with those for mass and length.

Evolution of Various Measuring Systems

Greeks built their measuring system on those of the Egyptians and the Babylonians, and Romans built theirs on the Greek system. These systems then spread across Europe through trade and conquest. We should mention that we are only discussing the major systems here, but there were many others, since every local area had a need for exchanging items, and thus for a measuring system. Some of these areas and local societies did not have a writing system or did not keep written records, and now we cannot trace what their measuring systems were.

There were many regional variations in the measuring systems due to their disjoint development and outside influences from different sources through trade and conquest. This variation was not only between countries, but within the country borders as well, often due to the local lords, rulers, and nobility resisting unification in order to preserve their power in the area. As travel, trade, industry, and the sciences developed, and as countries strove for unification within their borders, there came a need for a uniform system of measures.

As early as the 13th century, and possibly even earlier, scientists and philosophers discussed creating a unified measuring system. It was not until the French Revolution and subsequent colonization of various regions of the world by France and other European nations that adopted this new system, that the new measuring system was developed and adopted across the globe. This new system was the decimal metric system. It was a base-ten system, meaning that smaller units taken to the power of ten made up larger units. That is, a larger unit divided into ten smaller units, and these smaller units each divided into ten even smaller units, and so on.

As we can see, not all of the early measuring systems were base 10. The convenience of using a base 10 system is that our most commonly used numeral system is also base ten, therefore it is easy to convert between smaller and larger units. Many scientists believe that base ten is arbitrary and that we use it only because we have ten fingers, and that if we had a different number of fingers, our numeral system would have been different.

The Metric System

Originally, units of the metric system were based on the artifacts for length and weight, just like in the earlier measuring systems. The metric system went through an evolution and its dependence on artifacts changed to dependence on natural phenomena and constants present in nature. For example, the unit for time, a second, was defined first as a specific fraction of the tropical year 1900. However, it was impossible to verify this constant through experimentation in all of the years that followed 1900, since it was not possible to measure this year once it finished. To address this problem the second was later redefined as a specific number of cycles of radiation emitted during a change of state of an atom of caesium-133. The unit for distance, a meter, was linked to the wavelength of light emitted by an atom of krypton-86, but later was redefined as the distance that light travels in a vacuum within a specified timeframe.

The metric system evolved into the International System of Units, or the SI, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. We should note that traditionally the metric system includes the units for mass, distance, and time, while SI is an extended system that includes more basic units, as we discuss below.

The SI

SI works with seven standard base units: kilogram (kg) for mass, second (s) for time, meter (m) for distance, candela (cd) for luminous intensity, mole (mol) for the amount of substance, ampere (A) for electric current, and kelvin (K) for temperature. All the other units are derived from these seven.

Only the kilogram is still dependent on an artifact, but the rest of the units depend on the constants found in nature and natural phenomena. This is convenient because the constants or the natural phenomena that these units are based on can be verified at any time, and there is no risk of lost or damaged artifacts, and no need to create duplicate artifacts to make them accessible across the globe. This eliminates errors associated with duplicating physical objects, thus ensuring more accuracy.

Metric Prefixes

In order to denote quantities that are either multiples or sub-multiples of base units, the SI uses prefixes with the base unit names. Below is a list of all the prefixes in use and the values that they refer to:

For example, 5 gigameters equal to 5,000,000,000 meters, while 3 microcandelas equal to 0.000003 candelas. It is interesting to note that even though the kilogram has a prefix, it is, in fact, a base unit. So the prefixes above are applied to the gram instead, treating the gram as if it is a base unit.

At the time of writing, most of the countries in the world have adopted SI with only three exceptions: the USA, Liberia, and Myanmar. Canada and the U.K. still use imperial units along with SI in some spheres, even though SI is the official system of units.

This article was written by Kateryna Yuri

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Metric Prefixes Converter

A metric prefix is a unit prefix that precedes a base unit of measurement to indicate a decimal multiple or fraction of the unit. Metric prefixes are sometimes called SI prefixes. Each prefix has a unique symbol that is added to the unit symbol. For example, the prefix mega- may be added to ton to indicate multiplication by one million; one megaton is equal to one million tons (1 Mt = 1,000,000 t). Likewise, the prefix milli- may be added to gram to indicate division by one thousand; one milligram is equal to one-thousandth of a gram (1 mg = 0.001 g). Metric prefixes are sometimes used with imperial and US customary units such as microinch and kilopound.

In accounting, finance, oil and gas, and several other industries, M is sometimes used for a thousand from mille, which is the Roman numeral for a thousand. MM is used for a million which is one thousand squared. MMM is used for a billion which is a thousand cubed. MM for one million can be seen in several traditional units such as MMBtu (one million BTU), MMcf (one million cubic feet). MMM for one billion is used in traditional units such as MMMBtu (one billion BTU), MMMcf (one billion cubic feet). However, in Roman numeration, MM actually means 2000, not one million and MMM — 3000, not one billion. Since the single letter M is now used commonly for one million because it is a metric prefix mega-, the use of MM or MMM is confusing and strongly discouraged.

Using the Metric Prefixes Converter Converter

This online unit converter allows quick and accurate conversion between many units of measure, from one system to another. The Unit Conversion page provides a solution for engineers, translators, and for anyone whose activities require working with quantities measured in different units.

You can use this online converter to convert between several hundred units (including metric, British and American) in 76 categories, or several thousand pairs including acceleration, area, electrical, energy, force, length, light, mass, mass flow, density, specific volume, power, pressure, stress, temperature, time, torque, velocity, viscosity, volume and capacity, volume flow, and more.
Note: Integers (numbers without a decimal period or exponent notation) are considered accurate up to 15 digits and the maximum number of digits after the decimal point is 10.

In this calculator, E notation is used to represent numbers that are too small or too large. E notation is an alternative format of the scientific notation a · 10^x. For example: 1,103,000 = 1.103 · 10⁶ = 1.103E+6. Here E (from exponent) represents “· 10^”, that is “times ten raised to the power of”. E-notation is commonly used in calculators and by scientists, mathematicians and engineers.

• Select the unit to convert from in the left box containing the list of units.
• Select the unit to convert to in the right box containing the list of units.
• Enter the value (for example, “15”) into the left From box.
• The result will appear in the Result box and in the To box.
• Alternatively, you can enter the value into the right To box and read the result of conversion in the From and Result boxes.

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