Following the war, which resulted in Napoleon III's exile, Germany and Italy, now unified nations, adopted the metric system as their national system of units, but with the prototype copy of the kilogram and metre under the control of the Third French Republic. In 1872 the new republican government reissued the invitations and in 1875 scientists from thirty European and American countries met in Paris. This same year, the International Association of Geodesy held its General Conference in Paris and decided the creation of an international geodetic standard for baselines' measurement calibrated against the metre.