For 130 years the kilogram was not a formula but an object.
A platinum-iridium cylinder from 1889, kept under three glass bells in a vault near Paris, set the world's weights until 2019, when the kilogram was redefined via Planck's constant.
More amazing facts
- 1888 · 1896 · 1901 Alfred Nobel read his own obituary eight years before he died.
- 1889 The Eiffel Tower opened in spring 1889, and in June van Gogh painted The Starry Night at the Saint-Rémy asylum.
- 1889 Nintendo is as old as the Eiffel Tower: it was founded in Kyoto on 23 September 1889 to make hanafuda playing cards, the same year the tower opened.
- 1889 · 1893 The Ferris wheel was America's answer to the Eiffel Tower.
- 1889 · 1890 Reporter Nellie Bly went round the world in 72 days, beating Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg.
- 1889 · 1900 The matryoshka is younger than the Eiffel Tower.