What was the natural basis for the unit of length called the meter?

Only in 1668 was it accepted by the Englishman John Wilkins that the meter is the length of a pendulum with a half-period of 1 s (before that time there was no general standard for measuring length). Since March 1791, the meter has been determined through the length of the Paris meridian, establishing that the meter is one ten-millionth part of the distance from the northern equator to the Earth’s ellipsoid in longitude on which Paris lies.