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Historical units

I mostly associate units like inches, yards and pounds to history or historical settings (and fantasy). I believe this is the same for the rest of the "metric" world. They just sound archaic compared to the commonly used metric units.

But in fact, metric system is oldest of the three major unit systems used around the world today. Dating back to the times of French revolution in 1790s it's actually three decades older than both the imperial system defined in 1824 and the U.S. customary system from 1832.

Of course the latest official revision of the metric system was defined in 1960 when it was refined as the current SI system. And of course both the U.S. customary units and the imperial system are both based on systems used for thousands of years by Romans, Saxons and other prior cultures.