In the dawn of the French Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen made people equal before the law. The establishment of the decimal metric system, during the same period - not by chance - made them equal in the measurement of things.
In France in 1788, the metrological power is a privilege of the feudal lords, intolerable for the people: every prince, duke or marquis, every count or viscount, every owner of a small piece of land, wants to have his own measure. From province to province, from village to village, sometimes even within the same city, the measures differ. This heterogeneity in units of measurement became the symbol of inequality, injustice, and arbitrary feudal power.
"The Measure of the World", a journey into the years of the revolution, analyzes the parallel paths of political and metrological equality and describes the intellectual and human adventure that accompanied them. An exciting narrative essay that describes how the "two measures and two weights" were abolished.