3. Metric system

"In year seven of the French Republic, one and indivisible, on the fourth of Messidor (June 22, 1799), at three o'clock in the afternoon, citizen Pierre Simon Laplace, one of the former Presidents of the National Institute of Sciences and Arts, replacing citizen Bougainville who was absent due to illness, citizen Louis Lefebvre Gineau, current President, citizen Antoine Monge, Secretary of the Institute (....), after presenting the metre standard and the kilogram standard, both made of platinum, went to the Archives of the Republic, to deposit the said two standards, each enclosed in a locked box...".

This is how the official materialization of the metric system, as created at the time of the French Revolution by a team of scientists from the Académie des Sciences: Borda, Lagrange, Laplace, Tillet, Lavoisier,...