Essentially what you want is the history of the meter. If you google the word meter you will find what you want.

The following link, which is from a French website, does an excellent job of going into the history of the meter and other measurements:

http://histoire.du.metre.free.fr/en/index.htm

In a nutshell, various systems of weights and measures had been used throughout France and the world into the French Revolution. Each city or region might have its own unit of length, for instance, with a regional name and size. There was no uniformity. This diversity suited local commercial groups.

And remember, the French Revolution preached rationalism. Its underpinnings were the logical thinking of the philosophes, and it would overthrow such vestiges of irrationalism as the aristocracy and the clergy. The guillotine was the product of “rational” people.

These varying measurements grew irksome to just about everyone in commerce and politics and science.

Because Paris was the center of France, a unit of measurement close to what the Parisians were using, was chosen, the meter. Questions was: how to define it? The choice boiled down to defining it according to the swing of a pendulum versus a meridian of the earth’s surface. At first the politicians chose the pendulum, but later the scientists of the Academy of Science prevailed and chose the meridian measurement.

Consider too that the French tend to defer more to their Academies, such as the Academie Francaise, in setting standards in all sorts of categories, such as their language and the arts. The Americans, on the other hand, like to flaunt their individualism

The first World conflict is not so much robust an foremost occasion, it’s the main party in extremely-latest old beyond. The best war (because it was once as soon as identified) was once the seminal party of the twentieth Century. All different movements, the Russian Revolution, the 2nd World clash, the cold conflict, waft from it. It was the only occasion which made it absolutely impossible to reconstruct the field at the old dynastic method. To be extra unique, the fine war ended the ecu technological know-how in international historical past. Now no longer handiest had been the exceptional Continental Empires destroyed (the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, and the Ottoman-Turkish Empire), however the ones of England and France fatally weakened. Eventually powers outside of Europe, just like the U.S. And China, grew to be dominant in international affairs.

Another reference site (this one doesn’t explicitly indicate WHY either):

http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/origin.html

I would have to say because lack of measurement standards would wreak havoc and confusion, especially in wartime, especially across political lines. There was no sensible standards of any sort at the time, much less any globally applied standard.

Well, except for the US and England, I think we have this today in the form of the metric system. 🙂

Here you go: