ABSTRACT
The creation of the decimal metric system began during the eighteenth-century French revolution when two platinum standards, representing the metre and kilogram, were placed in the Archives de la République in Paris. Eminent scientists like Gauss and Weber then went on to promote the universal application of a standard system of measurement in the early nineteenth century. By the 1960s, the International System of Units (abbreviated to SI units from the French Le Système International d’Unités) was developed which incorporated six base units (the mole was added later) along with rules for the use of derived units and prefixes. The advantage of this unified system is that equations and calculations will produce answers in the appropriate SI unit. Unfortunately, they are not used universally.
