It was not all that long ago that a unit of grain could differ almost from one village to the next. This worked in a smaller, pre-industrial world, or at least it worked well enough. In a world of cross-border trade and empirical scientific practice, it was no longer tenable.

The Scientific Revolution brought about a new approach to science based on increasingly quantitative observations. An epistemological debate emerged about how we could measure nature, and hence comprehend it. There were many questions that needed answering – such as how to measure previously unmeasured quantities like heat – but perhaps the most important was the question of standardisation. The Scottish engineer James Watt proposed a standard decimal measurement system in 1783 in the hope of removing barriers to collaboration with European scientists.

“The science practitioners, especially in chemistry, were turning towards more quantifiable measures and methods,” says Emma Prevignano...