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A marine storm speaks again of history, or the tragic case of a helpful botanist in the Caribbean.
In 1793, the United States used the units of measure of the English and Dutch colonial empires as a newborn state, since the measure had just come out. Not only was it a mathematical nightmare, but it also crippled interstate commerce at the federal level, leaving American leaders immediately faced with an important decision: which unit system to use?
Thomas Jefferson made a quick decision. The United States had particularly good relations with France, where the metric system was introduced at the time. One thing was missing, a compelling presentation with shiny objects.
Bust of Joseph Dombey
Blessed by the French, Joseph Dombey, a revered botanist, set out for the New World with a meter-long copper rod under one arm and a kilogram copper cylinder under the other.
Dombey was an experienced sailor, but a metric wind blew in: a storm blew his ship into the Caribbean, and so we know that the Caribbean is a common occurrence of (khm … Jack Sparrow). Unexpectedly, pirates appeared and stormed the ship. Dombey disguised himself as a Spanish sailor, but somehow proved to be an aristocrat, so the pirates beat him to steal him and demanded a ransom for him. Unfortunately, the ransom was lost and Dombey eventually died as a prisoner. And the United States lagged behind the metric system.
The afterlife in the story is that, like rubbed businessmen, the pirates sold the late Dombey’s personal property, namely his ship and personal belongings. The unique copper standards thus became the property of the Ellicott family in Washington, DC, who donated them to the American Institute of Standards and Technology in 1952.
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