Don’t raise unruly people in extreme cold weather

Chapter 716: Unified Weights and Measures

The reforms implemented by Perfectot brought good results, which naturally further elevated her reputation throughout the empire.

However, this kind of exaltation does not mean unlimited flattery of Perfecto, even though she is now the regent of the empire, which in a sense is closer to a dictator, and she has the final say in the entire empire.

Not that others didn't want to flatter Perfecto and kiss her ass.

Although Perfect was not the benevolent ruler of Tongliao who claimed to be the "benefactor of the motherland", she still liked to hear good words if someone praised her.

The reason why those who praised her did not praise Perfect infinitely was mainly because she had already been praised very highly in the past. Considering the current level of literature and art in the Victoria Empire, it was impossible to think of higher-level words of praise.

'Without a regent, the empire would be in darkness forever', this kind of high-level flattery was still too advanced for the media of the Victoria Empire.

After all, Perfect was a genius girl known as the Pearl of Langdon, the world's top alchemist, the only holder of the Philosopher's Stone, the inventor of fantasy alchemy, who had developed and built the North from scratch in three years, saved the empire in the doomsday winter, and was a brave warrior who had killed gods and dragons...

In a sense, Perfect is already one of the world's top legendary figures. Even if you take out a small fragment of her life experience and achievements, it would be something that ordinary people would never be able to achieve in their lifetime.

However, Perfect accomplished something in just three years that many ordinary people might not be able to accomplish in their entire lives. This is really unbelievable.

Even Perfect herself was surprised at how much she had achieved in just three years.

If all this was not achieved by her own efforts, she would even suspect that she was reading a cool novel, even though there might not be many cool elements in it.

Sometimes Perfect would wonder how she managed to do all this. After all, although it was true that she was a perfect life form, this "perfection" did not mean that she had an extra head than others.

Perfection in alchemy refers to achieving the most stable and harmonious state, not to enhancing one's intelligence by nine times or strength by ten times.

Perfect was indeed smarter than others, but her intelligence did not make her inhuman.

The same goes for her physical fitness. Although she can easily break through the limits of the human body and become an extraordinary knight if she wants, Perfect's basic physical fitness is actually not that exaggerated.

To be more precise, as a 'perfect life form', Perfect's essence should be within the scope of 'human', being able to do everything.

The reason she didn't do it was not because she couldn't do it, but because she didn't try.

Likewise, when Perfecto sets out to do something, her talents are sufficient to ensure that she does it to the best of her ability.

Especially since her soul is that of a time traveler, and she possesses knowledge that is two hundred years ahead of her time.

From this point of view, Perfect is a real dimensionality reduction blow to people of this era.

It also makes the geniuses of this era sigh how lucky they are to be born in the same era as her, but they also feel unfortunate because they were born in the same era as her.

However, with the development of the flying battleship project and the implementation of the Empire's five-year economic development plan, people suddenly discovered that Perfectoct seemed to be more powerful and terrifying than they had imagined.

The genius of Perfecto was fully recognized throughout the empire.

But when Perfecto put forward a proposal at a regular cabinet meeting calling for the establishment of a unified national measurement unit, people still felt that they could hardly keep up with the genius's ideas.

"Regent, is this proposal really necessary?" A cabinet official looked through Perfecto's proposal with a puzzled expression.

The cabinet official had been recently promoted to fill the vacant royalist seat, but he clearly did not understand why Perfecto had concocted such a proposal.

This is also the attitude of a considerable number of cabinet members when faced with Perfectcot's proposal. They believe that this matter is completely unnecessary.

Many people even think that this is just a trivial matter and is not worth discussing at the cabinet meeting.

"Necessary? It seems that you simply cannot realize the significance of unified weights and measures to the empire." Facing the cabinet member's doubts, Perfect showed an indescribable expression.

Perfect anticipated that cabinet members would be unable to see the significance of establishing uniform production standards.

After all, it is understandable that cabinet members of this era lack awareness of this kind of thing, and Perfect took this into full consideration when writing this proposal.

In fact, even if Perfect asked the same question to Europeans in the 19th century in the original world, their answers would probably be the same as those of Victoria's cabinet members. Is this really necessary?
The reason why there are such counterintuitive cognition and doubts is that the Europeans in the original world only unified the measurement units in the 19th century.

Even when the French came up with the international metric system, the British were still singing the opposite tune and using the imperial system.

Europeans began to unify weights and measures during the Napoleonic period in the late 18th century, because Napoleon was conquering Europe at the time and the chaotic measurement units of European countries made him feel very inconvenient.

At that time, European countries also followed France's footsteps and gradually began to unify their respective weights and measures. Then, under the promotion of France, the international metric system was established and circulated across Europe.

In this regard, a certain great Eastern country had already achieved it more than 200 years BC, which was 2,000 years ahead of the Europeans.

In fact, the world is also facing the problem of differences, that is, the countries in the old world are all using their own units of measurement, which is very inconvenient in international trade.

Originally, all of this would have been solved with the development of the Industrial Revolution. After all, a country having only one set of units was too complicated to use.

Especially when some countries even have a mess of their own domestic measurement units, with different regions using different measurement units and they cannot even unify their own measurement units.

As for currency...oh, let's skip this topic. No one wants to calculate what kind of hell it is for a tiny place like Europe to use hundreds of different monetary units.

Although this problem does cause some inconvenience in currency and daily life, it is not a serious problem. But for industrial production, it is simply a nightmare.

Victoria itself has a unified unit of measurement, and the one who did this was the previous queen who had passed away.

As the empire gradually expanded, there were more and more colonies. Taking into account the trade between the colonies and the empire, the Queen issued a decree to unify the national measurement units, which allowed the Victoria Empire to have a unified standard measurement unit.

However, this is still a rather immature measurement system.

You're just a unit of volume, and there are 11 different units of measurement! Pints, quarts, gallons, bushels, cans, pecks, porters...

It's hard enough just counting all these units and figuring out how to convert them, not to mention that this is just the units used to measure liquids.

Not to mention, due to the lack of sufficiently precise standard units, there are differences between the standards used in different places and even in different factories.

During this period of time, Perfect was in charge of the construction of flying battleships in the factory, and he witnessed with his own eyes that under the same standard requirements, two different manufacturers could produce two completely different things.

At first she thought someone was cheating, but when she investigated, she found that the two manufacturers were using their own measuring tools, and the error between the two tools was surprisingly large.

Faced with this situation, Perfect had no choice but to get angry and order the two companies to send everything back for redoing.

The Royal Dockyard and its supporting downstream industries do have a set of common units that are roughly accurate. This is mainly because the downstream industries mainly provide services to the Royal Dockyard, and various issues have been worked out, which can ensure accurate measurement between different manufacturers.

It is for this reason that Perfectoct needs to promulgate the current decree on unified weights and measures so that all the confusing units can be unified. Only in this way can she make standard measurement unit prototypes and establish an effective unit system.

Only with unified units and standard measurement scales can the unified production standards that Perfectcot really wants to implement truly play its role.

However, although some people may not understand it, there is no problem if Perfect wants to implement this bill.

After all, this is not a bill that involves the political interests of all parties, and it was Perfectot who proposed the bill. She can completely rely on her own prestige to force the bill through.

Because of this, although the bill was not passed unanimously, the cabinet itself had no objection to it.

Perfect was also very satisfied with this. She believed that one should eat one bite at a time and do things one step at a time. It was enough as long as everything could be carried out according to her ideas. She did not pursue unrealistic efficiency.

It is ridiculous to expect to formulate national unified production standards when the general units are not yet accepted nationwide.

As for how to establish a unified unit of measurement, this is still Perfect's job.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to delegate tasks to others, but it’s highly likely that other people won’t do a good job.

The reason was that Victoria's original measurement unit had too large an error, and she had no idea about the original instrument used for calibration. It was difficult for others to fully understand Perfect's intentions, so how could they fulfill her requirements when their own work was arduous?

Moreover, she does not intend to continue using Victoria's current various strange units, but plans to follow the example of France in the original world and implement a brand new unit system.

Among them, the unit of measurement is the easiest to establish. One ten-thousandth of the length of the prime meridian is established as a meter, and then the meter is cut into one hundred equal parts and established as centimeters. In this way, a standard unit of length has a reference and standard.

However, measuring the prime meridian involves knowledge of astronomy and mathematics, which is something that even elementary school students can do in the original world, but in this world it can even be called an engineering project!
Faced with this situation, Perfect was not at all confident in handing this task over to other people.

After all, as an alchemist who can perform various precise operations, the huge role he can play at times like this is truly irreplaceable.

Especially when it comes to determining the unit of weight, the micro-manipulation of alchemy really plays a huge role.

Whether it is controlling the state of standard media to make it better conform to the standards, or making precise adjustments to details, alchemy is really easy to use.

One cubic meter of pure water at 4°C weighs one ton. This seemingly simple sentence actually involves three different units of measurement. If Perfect hadn't done this personally, I'm afraid there would have been a conflict between the three units.

The reason is simple: it depends on who anchors whom first.

However, when there are no established units of length and temperature, it is indeed difficult to quantify what one cubic meter and 4°C are.

Especially the latter, do you know about standard atmospheric pressure? The quantitative measurement of temperature is anchored by the change in the form of water under standard atmospheric pressure, which involves more related disciplines and measurement methods.

Without Perfect's knowledge, it would be a difficult task to bring together so many complex measurement experiments and ensure that they can coordinate and cooperate with each other.

After all, scientists of this era did not know specifically how to formulate new weights and measures.

If there was no Perfect, even if they had a clear goal, they would still need to confirm and calculate repeatedly before they could find a specific way to anchor it and anchor a target unit of measurement.

The same principle was true for Perfecto. She first calculated the length of the prime meridian, then divided it into ten thousand equal parts, confirmed the length of the meter, made a measuring prototype, and then tied other units together with the meter, thus establishing a whole new measurement system.

As for the original national measurement units, they will gradually be abandoned.

After all, it is really not useful and has no value or meaning.

When all measurement units are determined, the universal production standards based on standard units have a clear meaning, which can greatly improve the qualification rate of various parts required by Perfect, and the parts produced by different manufacturers can be smoothly used in common.

Before this, even the most common parts like bolts could come in at least seven or eight specifications, which made Perfectcot even more anxious.

(End of this chapter)