thumb|right|upright=1.5|Countries which have officially adopted the metric system. Only three nations have not officially adopted the International System of Units as their primary or sole system of measurement: Burma, Liberia, and the United States. The metric system is an international decimalised system of measurement, first adopted by France in 1791, that is the common system of measuring units used by most of the world. It exists in several variations, with different choices of fundamental units, though the choice of base units does not affect its day-to-day use. Over the last two centuries, different variants have been considered the metric system. Since the 1960s the International System of Units ("Système International d'Unités" in French, hence "SI") has been the internationally recognised standard metric system. Metric units are widely used around the world for personal, commercial and scientific purposes. A standard set of prefixes in powers of ten may be used to derive larger and smaller units from the base units.
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