Pretend you are scientist in the pre MKS system days, with knowledge of Newton's laws. Units of meters for length, kilograms for mass, and seconds for time have been proposed. What units would force be measured in? Would it be appropriate to give the units for force the shortcut name ``newton''? Could you have, alternatively, chosen units for other quantities than length, mass, and seconds as fundamental, and derived units for the remaining quantities? Could you have chosen the speed of sound as one of your basic units and selected it as equal to one and dimensionless? If so, and time in seconds was another basic unit, what units would length have?