Mesures usuelles

[1] In the five years immediately before the French First Republic introduced the metric system, every effort was made to make the citizens aware of the upcoming changes and to prepare them for it.

[2] Where the new system was in use, it was abused, with shopkeepers taking the opportunity to round prices up and to give smaller measures.

[2] Napoleon I, the French Emperor, disliked the inconvenience of surrendering the high factorability of traditional measures in the name of decimalisation, and recognised the difficulty of getting it accepted by the populace.

Products could be sold in shops under the old names and with the old relationships to one another, but with metric-based and slightly changed absolute sizes.

Napoleon's decree was eventually revoked during the reign of King Louis Philippe I by the loi du 4 juillet 1837 (law of 4 July 1837), which took effect on 1 January 1840, and reinstated the original metric system.