What unit of measure was used before the metre...

[Externet]

What unit of measure was used when the distance from the pole to the equator was being measured to later define the metre ?

[fiveworlds]

Just a guess

 

1/(6214.94/10,000,000)=1609.025992205 etc

[Acme]

What unit of measure was used when the distance from the pole to the equator was being measured to later define the metre ?

Metre @ Wiki

Meridional definition

In 1668, Wilkins proposed using Christopher Wren's suggestion of a pendulum with a half-period of one second to measure a standard length that Christiaan Huygens had observed to be 38 Rijnland inches or 39 1⁄4 English inches (997 mm) in length.[3] In the 18th century, there were two favoured approaches to the definition of the standard unit of length. One approach followed Wilkins in defining the metre as the length of a pendulum with a half-period of one second, a 'seconds pendulum'. The other approach suggested defining the metre as one ten-millionth of the length of the Earth's meridian along a quadrant; that is, the distance from the Equator to the North Pole. In 1791, the French Academy of Sciences selected the meridional definition over the pendular definition because the force of gravity varies slightly over the surface of the Earth, which affects the period of a pendulum.

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[overtone]

They could have used what sailors used to measure distance: degrees of arc in the sky. But iirc they used an established French measures of distance - since they were French.

 

Since they were going to end up with a ratio, they didn't care what the units were.

 

There were hundreds of units of length and distance in use somewhere on the planet, and dozens in Europe.

[Sensei]

In ancient world the most common was foot length.

(calculation of Earth radius was done ~200 BC by Eratosthenes)