The technology of assigning numbers to properties of the world — one of the oldest and most consequential cognitive tools in human history, the foundation of science, commerce, and administration, and a technology whose apparent neutrality conceals the power embedded in who measures, what gets measured, and how the results are used.
In 1795, the French revolutionary government introduced the metric system — a system of measurement based on natural constants (the metre defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator) rather than the arbitrary measures of individual kingdoms and trades. The existing units — feet, inches, pounds, acres, fathoms — were products of specific bodies, trades, and histories. The new system would be universal, rational, and for all people for all time. The project was both a scientific achievement and a political act: replacing the diverse local measures that encoded local power (the lord's foot, the merchant's pound) with a rational universal system that belonged to no one and everyone. Today, most of the world uses metric. The United States does not. That anomaly is itself a small political fact about the relationship between measurement and national identity.