In the "Star Wars" canon, the Galactic Empire is a constitutional monarchy that replaced the Galactic Republic after the dissolution of the Senate during the Clone Wars. It expanded its territory over a period 19 years prior to the destruction of the first death star. At its peak it covered over a billion systems with 12 million worlds that contained intelligent life. It was in charge of 69 million colonies. During this period of expansion, the Galactic Empire expanded its territory in all directions, built super structures the size of moons, created weapons capable of destroying planets, perfected clone technology, built up the largest army and navy ever to exist in the history of the Empire, but one feat is above all others. It got every colony on a standardized system of measurement.

Standardization of measurements is directly related to the efficiency of civilization. To understand the size of this feat, it is important to look at our standardization efforts. In 1869 when the Pacific Railroad was completed it traveled through over 8,000 cities each with their own local time. Shortly after that, time zones were established in the United States. It wasn’t until 1928 the Earth started using International Time to coordinate global commerce. Even with all this progress we currently still have 39 time zones on Earth. Our other largest standardization effort has been the metric system. In the 1790’s France became the first country to implement the metric system. The U.S. tried to begin the process of standardization in 1975, but it is one of the last three countries to adopt the metric system.

All of our efforts to standardize have been greatly aided by all of us living on the same planet. All of our units of time are the same because they are based on the movements of celestial bodies. In multiple planets, you would have to choose which one was the standard. The one unit of measure that is easily interchanged between planets would be light years. That is provided Einstein was right and the speed of light is constant. The problem is this unit of distance requires the speed of light be multiplied by a unit of time, which is subjective to the planet. This problem is also in many other of our measures. For instance, meters was originally based on one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator. The liter is one one-thousandth of a cubic meter. Grams itself is derivative of a cubic meter of water's weight on earth. Newtons are the amount of force required to move 1 kg of something 1 meter per second per second. The mole is based on the number of atoms in 12 grams of carbon-12. Celsius is derived from the freezing point and boiling point of water. The underlying forces and constants wouldn’t change, but the units could vary by the characteristics of the planets, and trying to convert between them could cause disastrous crashes or everyday problems with intergalactic contract law.

Over the course of the Galactic Empire's rule, to have pulled off the mega projects it routinely finishes, it would have to have standardized these measures. That means around 12 million possible systems of measurement from planets of combined into one. May the force of economics be with you.

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