Measurement

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Measurement
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JOHN QUINCY ADAMS - Report to the Congress, 1821

• Weights and measures may be ranked among the
  necessaries of life to every individual of human
  society. They enter into the economical
  arrangements and daily concerns of every family.
  They are necessary to every occupation of human
  industry to the distribution and security of
  every species of property to every transaction
  of trade and commerce to the labors of the
  husbandman to the ingenuity of the artificer to
  the studies of the philosopher to the researches
  of the antiquarian to the navigation of the
  mariner, and the marches of the soldier to all
  the exchanges of peace, and all the operations of
  war.

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Standards

• A standard is something that is used as a
  comparison for measuring.
• The standard must be available for everyone to
  use when checking measurements. This means a
  standard should be something in nature that is
  the same all over the earth.
• The standard must never vary.
• Source http//www.howe.k12.ok.us/jimaskew/ps/pme
  tric.htm

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• In all traditional measuring systems, short
  distance units are based on the dimensions of the
  human body.

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English Customary Units

• Inch
• Foot
• Yard
• Fathom

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In Anglo-Saxon England (before the Norman
conquest of 1066) the inch (ynce) was defined to
be the length of 3 barleycorns, the foot 36
barleycorns and the yard 108.
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Longer Distances

• Rod 5.5 yards (16.5 feet).
• Furlong (fuhrlang) 40 rods the length of the
  traditional furrow (fuhr) as plowed by ox teams
  on Saxon farms.
• Mile 8 furlongs

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Area

• 1 acre size field a farmer could plow in 1 day
• 1 square mile 640 acres

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Weight

• Grain weight of a single barleycorn
• Roman pound of 12 ounces troy pound 5760
  grains. Used for precious metals
  pharmaceuticals. Each ounce 480 grains.
• English pound of 16 ounces avoirdupois pound
  7000 grains. Each ounce 437.5 grains.

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Larger Weights

• American hundredweight 100 lbs
• British hundredweight 112 lbs
• 1 ton 20 hundredweights
• So American short ton 2000 lbs
• British long ton 2240 lbs

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Volume (British)

• Until 18th century, standard containers were
  defined by specifying the weight of a particular
  substance, such as wheat or beer, that they could
  carry.
• Gallon was originally the volume of 8 lbs of
  wheat.
• Gallon 4 quarts 8 pints
• 2 Gallons 1 peck. 4 pecks 1 bushel

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Volume (British)

• 1824 Imperial gallon 277.42 cubic inches (10
  pounds of water)

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Volume (American)

• Dry commodities 1 gallon 1/8 th of a bushel.
  Corn gallon holds 268.8 cubic inches
• Liquid commodities Wine gallon holds 231
  cubic inches
• Note the dry units are about 1/6 larger than the
  corresponding liquid units.

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Fluid Ounces

• Roughly equal to the volume of one ounce of
  water.
• To accomplish this in the different systems, the
  smaller U.S. pint is divided into 16 fluid
  ounces, and the larger British pint is divided
  into 20 fluid ounces.

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• Congress never established this traditional
  system, or any other system, as the mandatory
  system of weights and measures for the United
  States. In 1832, Congress directed the Treasury
  Department to standardize the measures used by
  customs officials at U.S. ports.

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• Since 1875 the United States has subscribed to
  the International System of Weights and Measures,
  the official version of the metric system.
• One yard equals exactly 0.9144 meter and an
  avoirdupois pound equals exactly 0.453 592 37
  kilograms.

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• In 1901, Congress established the National
  Bureau of Standards (NBS), now known as the
  National Institute of Standards and Technology
  (NIST), to support technical standards for
  American industry and commerce.

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The Metric System
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1585 Simon Stevin

• Introduced the use of decimals in mathematics in
  Europe. Predicted that the universal introduction
  of decimal coinage, measures and weights would
  only be a matter of time.

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1670 Gabriel Mouton

• First to propose the decimal system of
  measurement based on the size of the earth. Also
  suggested a standard linear measurement, which he
  called the mille, based on the length of the arc
  of one degree of longitude on the Earth's surface
  and divided decimally.

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1790 - Jefferson

• Proposed a decimal-based measurement system for
  the United States.
• Didnt come up with the prefix idea and his
  system had too many names.

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1792 U.S. Mint

• Produced worlds first decimal currency (one
  dollar 100 cents)

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1790 French Academy of Sciences created the
metric system

• The unit of length was to be a portion of the
  Earth's circumference.
• Measures for capacity (volume) and mass were to
  be derived from the unit of length, thus relating
  the basic units of the system to each other and
  to nature.
• Larger and smaller multiples of each unit were to
  be created by multiplying or dividing the basic
  units by 10 and its powers.

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Length

• The unit of length was named the meter.
• The meter was to equal one ten-millionth of the
  distance from the North Pole to the equator along
  the meridian running near Dunkirk in France and
  Barcelona in Spain.

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Mass

• The initial metric unit of mass, the gram, was
  defined as the mass of one cubic centimeter (a
  cube that is 0.01 meter on each side) of water at
  its temperature of maximum density.

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Volume

• The cubic decimeter (a cube 0. 1 meter on each
  side) was chosen as the unit for capacity. The
  fluid volume measurement for the cubic decimeter
  was given the name "liter."

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Important Dates

• 1795 France adopts metric system
• 1889 U.S. receives prototype meter and kilogram
• 1954 Initial development of SI system
• 1960 Meter redefined in terms of wavelength of
  light
• 1983 Meter redefined in terms of speed of light