Temperature

The French thermometer, called Centigrade (the proper term would have been centesimal), is on Celsius’s scale, of 100 degrees between the freezing and boiling points of water, under the normal atmospheric pressure, which for France is 760 millimetres = 29·92 inches.

Metric Measures of Time

These are dropped, officially, at present; but they may be re-established, for they were the essential part of the Republican system. Ardent republicans constantly claim their re-establishment, and sound republican newspapers, dated according to the republican calendar, take care that this shall not be forgotten. Scientific journals demand the re-establishment of decimal time and decimal degrees; for even to sell eggs or handkerchiefs by the dozen is a sin, and ought to be made a crime, against the decimal system.

Republican zeal, unable to reform the solar system, had to content itself with reviving the ancient Egyptian year of twelve equal months followed by five extra days, to be called Jours Sansculottides, and with instituting a new era. The extra day of leap-years made a sixth sansculottide; these years were therefore sextile, and the period of four years ending with leap-year was to be called a Franciade.

In justice to the authors of the Metric system, it must be said that they were not responsible for the Republican calendar; this was the work of a separate Committee, to whom the Convention handed over the work carried out by the Weights and Measures Committee of the Académie des Sciences. On August 1, 1793, it thanked the W. and M. Committee for their work, on the 6th it closed all the Academies, and soon after sent the great chemist Lavoisier, the principal member of the Committee, to prison and ultimately to the scaffold. Among the small number of real republicans who ruled France from Paris, there was much less enthusiasm for the metric system, intended to sweep away the memory of the old customs of weights and measures, than for the calendar, the essential part of which was a new era and the sweeping away of past superstitions, whether Pagan or Christian. In both cases one can see the power of a very small but enthusiastic, well-organised and violent minority of Jacobins against the large, but unorganised and terrorised, majority of the French people. In both cases we see the truth of Guizot’s saying: ‘Blind aversion for the past is full of falsehood and of ignorance.’[[54]]

The decree instituting the complete Republican system began by these words, characteristic of the times:

The French era begins with the foundation of the Republic, which was on 22nd September 1792 of the vulgar era, the day when the sun arrived at the true autumnal equinox, entering the sign of the Balance, at 9h. 18m. 30s. a.m., Paris Observatory time.

Thus (it continued) the heavens marked the equality of days and nights at the same moment that civil and moral equality was proclaimed by the representatives of the French people as the sacred foundation of its new government.

The month was divided into three decades and the days of the decimal week were numbered from one to ten.