Length Background

The two fundamental units of length are the foot in English units and the meter in Metric units.  The foot was originally defined as the length of the average person’s foot; however, due to its’ obvious inaccuracy, it was given a formal basis.  Today, the precise length of a foot is derived as .3048 meters and has been defined in terms of the Metric System since 1960.  The Metric System’s fundamental length unit of the meter was originally defined as the 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator along the meridian line passing through Paris.  Today, however, the length of a meter is given as 1,650,763 wavelengths of Krypton-86 orange light.