Matthew, Here is my promised message. When Napoleon came to power in 1799 he allowed metrication to proceed, but there was much resistance to it, especially in the retail trades. According to Napoleon the metric system was tormenting the people for trifles. He also insisted in 1809 on the replacement of a map with a metric scale by one with an old scale. In his letters he almost always used old units. I have seen them in an archive. On 1812-02-12 he and the Minister of the Interior Montalivet made their move with the Imperial Decree on Weights and Measures and the later Resolution of March 28, which were full with contradictions and absurdities, which would have done the BWMA proud.. The Decree of February 12 stated in the first place that nothing would be changed regarding weights and measures. Then it stated that certain 'measuring instruments' woudl be allowed in the retail trades, accommodated to the needs of the people. This had been long in coming, talk about such changes had already been going on in 1904, and the supporters of the metric system fought it to the end, to no avail. A resolution of March 28 of the same year described the Systeme Usuel, or Customary Sytem. It was based on the old weights and measures of Paris, but with metric standards. This was the birth of a second hand metric system. The meter, the kilogran and the liter were the standards. The meter, however, was dived like the British yard. It was 3 feet or 36 inches. The aune or ell was 120 cm with a binary division. The double meter was the toise (roughly translated as fathom) Half a kilogram was a pound, divided in 16 ounces, the ounce wad divided in 8 gros (pennyweights) The liter was divided up to 1/16; as was the hectoliter. A new unit, the boisseau or bushel, 12.5 L, was also binary divided. Their use in trade was not compulsory. Shopkeepers were free to use the customary or the metric units. The real old units were banned. After the fall of Napleon in 1813 the existing situation was sanctioned in 1814, on July 4. Both systems were deemed legal, the metric and the secondhand metric ones. The chaos was so awful that yet another step was contemplated and then executed. Many shopkeepers had held on to their real old weights and measures and now cheating with old, metric and customary weights and measures was rife. In 1821 the use of the metric system in the retail shops was banned on February 21 in favour of the customary ones. It seemed that the metric system was doomed. Yet in the same year the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (The present Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) passed a law on August 21, wich decreed that metrication was to start in 1921. In Geneva, on the other hand, this reverse caused the collapse of an almost completed metrication. Geneva went metric for good much later, in 1876, as part of Switzerland. Yet, supporters of the metric system did not give up and worked silently within government circles and steadily to restore it. In 1821 they had their first succes: the verification of metric standards was recommenced. In 1825 the ban on the use ofmetric in the retail trades was revoked. Then, in 1836 and 1837, under an enlightened government, their day came. The campaign started in the autumn of 1836: do away with the Customary sytem and restore the metric system! The chaos has lasted too long. In the spring and early summer of 1837 hot debates raged within the two chambers of the French parliament. The supportersof the metric system opposed the supporters of the pure old units and those who wanted to keep Napoleons concoction. In both chambers the metric supporters won the day, leading to the law of 1837 July 4, which made France a metric nation from 1840 onwards and which marked the take-off of the metric system, the beginning of its spread through the world.
Yours, Han Historian of Dutch Metrication, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
