An attempt is made, by means of an allusive (rather than a systematic) historical account of the development of the subject, to exhibit the essentially unique character of the rationalized M.K.S.A. system of units. The establishment of this system involved one arbitrary decision—the determination to retain unaltered the size of the previously accepted unit of current. Thereafter, any choice of derived units, other than the choice actually made, would have destroyed the basic symmetry of the formulation.