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Many
measures
Many measures

The late eighteenth century was a time for revolutionary change in France: change in social and political structures, ... and a change to a single system of weights and measures.

Prior to this time and for a great deal after, all sorts of human activity were made more complicated by the existence of a large number of different scales for measuring based on scales other than 10. For example, in France there were nearly 400 ways of expressing the area of land. This situation applied in other countries as well. And a single unit could have a different size in different countries. This was all very confusing!
Too many feet!   In ancient Greece and Rome, the foot had different values:

Attic foot: 295.7 mm
Stalian foot: 275 mm		 Olympic foot: 320.5 mm
Roman foot: 296 mm		 Aeginetan foot: 330 mm
pes Drussianus: 333 mm

In modern times:          British: 304.8 mm                Canadian: 325.1 mm                                          Amsterdam: 283.1 mm        South African: 313.8 mm
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