The French were the first to define the length of a meter by using an alluminium/platinum alloy bar of a meter length at 25 degrees Celsius. This however is very inaccurate for quantum measurements, as the length of the bar would change two much depending on how you hold it. A better measurement found in 1983 is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in 1/229,792,458ths of a second. (For those of us with a decent knowledge of relativity that measurement is taken in the rest frame). Crazy I know but at least this way any body in a good physics lab can reproduce this distance without the use of some silly French rod.