(Now there are no THs or PHs in Italian, only Ts and Fs.)

Roddy is correct in that John Wilkins did not include the prefixes with his original ‘universal measure’. He also did not include any reference to the word, ‘metre’ or to any of its derivatives (I think that ‘metre’ came from the translation of the English words, ‘universal measure’ into the Italian ‘metro catholico’, probably by Burratini in 1675).

However what John Wilkins did describe was a system that:

* was decimal

* was international

* had a standard length (of about 997 millimetres)

* used measures based on a ‘Natural Standard’ that could be reproduced in any nation of the world.

* was intended to be related to time (as it is today)

* was coordinated so that the measures of length, area, volume, mass (he called it weight and based it on distilled rain water), and time could be all interrelated within one system.

* was based on a ‘Universal Measure’ (that became known as the metric system after ‘universal measure’ was translated into the Italian, ‘metro catholico’ by Burattini, seven years later, in 1675).

* was universal in that it was intended for all human activities.

I think that these are enough benefits and features to say that John Wilkins invented the metric system.

By the way, I think that the two metric prefixes (deci and centi) were first suggested by Prieur in the 1790s and that these were further developed by Van Swinden from the Netherlands before the contributions of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) in the mid-1800s.

Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
pat.naughtin@metricationmatters.com
http://www.metricationmatters.com