Every day we're constantly using measurements. We have ways of measuring distance, temperature, time, light, pressure, energy, basically everything.

Yet, why do we measure everything the way we do? Why is a second a second and why is a meter a meter. Learn

more about why our units of measurement are the way they are on this episode of

everything everywhere daily. Hello everyone and welcome to novel. This is your host Caleb Linville.

Put simply, novel explores interesting and complex ideas through fictional stories.

This first season, when the Mountains called,

explores questions like,

Is There an Afterlife?

How did the living confront death?

How do we confront the ineffable?

Does love exist beyond death?

Is life something we build?

Or does life build us?

Join us on this expedition of art and insight. Way back in the day, every locality it might have had its own unit of measure.

Some king or local official might have used their foot or arm as the basis for length, for example, and then everyone would just use that.

I've been to a few old European cities where they still have a metal bar hanging in the town square, which was the local unit of measure.

However, this system of local units of measure wasn't very effective as trade between places grew.

There was a need to standardize measurements, so everyone was on the same page.

This was actually one of the big policy changes which came from the French Revolution.

Not only did they propose a universal standard of measurement, but a decimalized system as well.

Here I'll refer you to my previous episode on why the United States is not on the metric system,

where I talk about some of the history of the metric system. Once they had a system in place for units such

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