Actual poster from 1917 that made me laugh. A lot.

Also, those motherfuckers are measuring the weight of those balls in kilograms, aren’t they?

      • sparkle@lemm.ee
        0·
        3 months ago

        The calorie used to be the base unit, until we released in the 19th century “wait, heat isn’t a gas” and threw out caloric theory, and made the joule. Now the calorie is defined as 4.184 joules.

        • MewtwoLikesMemes@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Yes, you’re right.

          There have been multiple iterations of the “metric system” since it’s introduction in 1792–1795, most notably the original 1795 draft variant, then the CGS (Centimeter-Gram-Second) version, then the MKS (meter-kilogram-second) variant, with the most recent incarnation being the International System of Units (SI).

          That’s why there are plenty of metric units, but not all of them are SI units. :)

           

          Edit: Changed “1892–1895” to “1792–1795”. Lol, whoops.