Electric units, called "international", for current and resistance were introduced by the International Electrical Congress held in Chicago in 1893, and definitions of the "international" ampere and the "international" ohm were confirmed by the International Conference of London in 1908.

Although it was already obvious on the occasion of the 8th CGPM (1933) that there was a unanimous desire to replace those "international" units by so-called "absolute" units, the official decision to abolish them was only taken by the 9th CGPM (1948), which adopted the ampere for the unit of electric current, following a definition proposed by the CIPM (1946, Resolution 2; PV, 20, 129-137):

The ampere is that constant current which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length, of negligible circular cross-section, and placed 1 metre apart in vacuum, would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2 x 10^–7 newton per metre of length.

The expression "MKS unit of force" which occurs in the original text of 1946 has been replaced here by "newton", a name adopted for this unit by the 9th CGPM (1948, Resolution 7). Note that the effect of this definition is to fix the permeability of vacuum at exactly 4 x 10^–7 H · m^–1.