It was platinum-iridum alloy, for your information - and nevertheless, that's MUCH more stable than the feet, inches and the arm length of the current king.
And you give me ONE good reason, just ONE why we SHOULDN'T use systems based on powers of ten and I'll shut up. But even if there was another system based on powers of two, eight or sixteen, it would yet be MUCH better than imperial, which's based on powers of fuck all. It's incoherent and stupid. If the metric system was created by "religion hating, guillotine making, nation leaders that didn't know anything about science", I wonder what you'd have to say about the imperial one that was created by absolutist-egocentric-embedded-with-divine-power-who-executed-by-axe-decapitation-or-vivissection-kings. Here's a new expression for you to google "argumentum ad hominem". Crawl back into your hole.