Metric Time Unit

After reading the law naming the metric units, I noticed a pattern:

• The meter is 1/10,000,000 the distance from the North Pole to the equator.
• The stere is one cubic meter of wood, or a kiloliter. 
• The liter is 1/1000 cubic meter, or a cubic decimeter. 
• The are is 100 square meters, or ten meters squared. 
• The gram is the weight of one milliliter, or a cubic centimeter, of ice water at sea level. 
• The franc was worth five grams of silver alloy, or the weight of  five cubic centimeters of water’s worth of silver alloy. 

Notice that all the other units are based on the meter. That’s why it’s called the metric system. So, if there was a metric time unit, what might it be? As it happens, a pendulum one meter long takes about one second to swing from from one extreme to the other, 1.0032 second at sea level, to be exact. Which is almost exactly what the metric time unit is now! In fact, I recall reading that it was proposed that the meter be the length of a pendulum that swings in one second. That length would actually be 994 millimeters. 

So I guess the metric second really is metric, after all!

14 Ventôse year CCXXXI @ 9^h 45^m 34^s PMT