:: The Official brochure for the International System of Units, on page 141 of the English version, states that the 12th General Conference on Weights and Measures ( CGPM ) abrogated the former definition of the litre, the volume of 1 kg of water under specified conditions, and " declare [ d ] that the word'litre'may be employed as a special name for the cubic decimetre ".
12.
Four years later in 1799, an all-platinum standard, the " " Kilogramme des Archives " ", was fabricated with the objective that it would equal, as close as was scientifically feasible for the day, to the mass of cubic decimetre of water at 4 �C . The " kilogramme " was defined to be equal to the mass of the " Kilogramme des Archives " and this standard stood for the next ninety years.
13.
Although the decreed definition of the " kilogramme " specified water at 0 �C a highly stable temperature point the scientists tasked with producing the new practical realisation chose to redefine the standard and perform their measurements at the most stable density point : the temperature at which water reaches maximum density, which was measured at the time as 4 �C . They concluded that one cubic decimetre of water at its maximum density was equal to 99.92072 % of the mass of the provisional kilogram made earlier that year.
