what is a meter

A meter is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI) . It is defined as the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. The meter was originally defined in 1791 by the French National Assembly as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle, passing through Paris. The etymological roots of the word "meter" can be traced to the Greek verb μετρέω (metreo) (to measure, count or compare) and noun μέτρον (metron) (a measure) . The meter is the standard unit of length measurement in the metric system.