Search results
Ancient Greek philosophers
- Discussion of the concepts of heaviness (weight) and lightness (levity) date back to the ancient Greek philosophers. These were typically viewed as inherent properties of objects. Plato described weight as the natural tendency of objects to seek their kin.
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Weight
Ancient Greek philosophers thought weight derived from centrifugal forces whereas Romans thinkers believed weight resulted from a natural tendency of objects to fall.
News about Weight loss, experimental, Novo Nordisk
News about Dave Bautista, weight loss, health concerns
Also in the news
People also ask
What is the history of Weights and measures?
Where did weight come from?
Did medieval weights reorganize?
When was the first uniform weight system created?
- Overview
- The English system
- The United States Customary System
Out of the welter of medieval weights and measures emerged several national systems, reformed and reorganized many times over the centuries; ultimately nearly all of these systems were replaced by the metric system. In Britain and in its American colonies, however, the altered medieval system survived.
By the time of Magna Carta (1215), abuses of weights and measures were so common that a clause was inserted in the charter to correct those on grain and wine, demanding a common measure for both. A few years later a royal ordinance entitled “Assize of Weights and Measures” defined a broad list of units and standards so successfully that it remained in force for several centuries thereafter. A standard yard, “the Iron Yard of our Lord the King,” was prescribed for the realm, divided into the traditional 3 feet, each of 12 inches, “neither more nor less.” The perch (later the rod) was defined as 5.5 yards or 16.5 feet. The inch was subdivided for instructional purposes into 3 barley corns.
The furlong (a “furrow long”) was eventually standardized as an eighth of a mile and the acre (from an Anglo-Saxon word) as an area 4 rods wide by 40 long. There were many other units standardized during this period.
The influence of the Champagne fairs may be seen in the separate English pounds for troy weight, perhaps from Troyes, one of the principal fair cities, and avoirdupois weight, the term used at the fairs for goods that had to be weighed—sugar, salt, alum, dyes, grain. The troy pound, for weighing gold and silver bullion, and the apothecaries’ weight for drugs contained only 12 troy ounces.
A multiple of the English pound was the stone, which added a fresh element of confusion to the system by equaling neither 12 nor 16 but 14 pounds, among dozens of other pounds, depending on the products involved. The sacks of raw wool, which were medieval England’s principal export, weighed 26 stone, or 364 pounds; large standards, weighing 91 pounds, or one-fourth of a sack, were employed in wool weighing. The sets of standards, which were sent out from London to the provincial towns, were usually of bronze or brass. Discrepancies crept into the system, and in 1496, following a Parliamentary inquiry, new standards were made and sent out, a procedure repeated in 1588 under Queen Elizabeth I. Reissues of standards were common throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period in all European countries.
No major revision occurred for nearly 200 years after Elizabeth’s time, but several refinements and redefinitions were added. Edmund Gunter, a 17th-century mathematician, conceived the idea of taking the acre’s breadth (4 perches or 22 yards), calling it a chain, and dividing it into 100 links. In 1701 the corn bushel in dry measure was defined as “any round measure with a plain and even bottom, being 18.5 inches wide throughout and 8 inches deep.” Similarly, in 1707 the wine gallon was defined as a round measure having an even bottom and containing 231 cubic inches; however, the ale gallon was retained at 282 cubic inches. There were also a corn gallon and an older, slightly smaller wine gallon. There were many other attempts made at standardization besides these, but it was not until the 19th century that a major overhaul occurred.
Out of the welter of medieval weights and measures emerged several national systems, reformed and reorganized many times over the centuries; ultimately nearly all of these systems were replaced by the metric system. In Britain and in its American colonies, however, the altered medieval system survived.
By the time of Magna Carta (1215), abuses of weights and measures were so common that a clause was inserted in the charter to correct those on grain and wine, demanding a common measure for both. A few years later a royal ordinance entitled “Assize of Weights and Measures” defined a broad list of units and standards so successfully that it remained in force for several centuries thereafter. A standard yard, “the Iron Yard of our Lord the King,” was prescribed for the realm, divided into the traditional 3 feet, each of 12 inches, “neither more nor less.” The perch (later the rod) was defined as 5.5 yards or 16.5 feet. The inch was subdivided for instructional purposes into 3 barley corns.
The furlong (a “furrow long”) was eventually standardized as an eighth of a mile and the acre (from an Anglo-Saxon word) as an area 4 rods wide by 40 long. There were many other units standardized during this period.
The influence of the Champagne fairs may be seen in the separate English pounds for troy weight, perhaps from Troyes, one of the principal fair cities, and avoirdupois weight, the term used at the fairs for goods that had to be weighed—sugar, salt, alum, dyes, grain. The troy pound, for weighing gold and silver bullion, and the apothecaries’ weight for drugs contained only 12 troy ounces.
A multiple of the English pound was the stone, which added a fresh element of confusion to the system by equaling neither 12 nor 16 but 14 pounds, among dozens of other pounds, depending on the products involved. The sacks of raw wool, which were medieval England’s principal export, weighed 26 stone, or 364 pounds; large standards, weighing 91 pounds, or one-fourth of a sack, were employed in wool weighing. The sets of standards, which were sent out from London to the provincial towns, were usually of bronze or brass. Discrepancies crept into the system, and in 1496, following a Parliamentary inquiry, new standards were made and sent out, a procedure repeated in 1588 under Queen Elizabeth I. Reissues of standards were common throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period in all European countries.
No major revision occurred for nearly 200 years after Elizabeth’s time, but several refinements and redefinitions were added. Edmund Gunter, a 17th-century mathematician, conceived the idea of taking the acre’s breadth (4 perches or 22 yards), calling it a chain, and dividing it into 100 links. In 1701 the corn bushel in dry measure was defined as “any round measure with a plain and even bottom, being 18.5 inches wide throughout and 8 inches deep.” Similarly, in 1707 the wine gallon was defined as a round measure having an even bottom and containing 231 cubic inches; however, the ale gallon was retained at 282 cubic inches. There were also a corn gallon and an older, slightly smaller wine gallon. There were many other attempts made at standardization besides these, but it was not until the 19th century that a major overhaul occurred.
In his first message to Congress in 1790, George Washington drew attention to the need for “uniformity in currency, weights and measures.” Currency was settled in a decimal form, but the vast inertia of the English weights and measures system permeating industry and commerce and involving containers, measures, tools, and machines, as well as popular psychology, prevented the same approach from succeeding, though it was advocated by Thomas Jefferson. In these very years the metric system was coming into being in France, and in 1821 Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, in a famous report to Congress, called the metric system “worthy of acceptance…beyond a question.” Yet Adams admitted the impossibility of winning acceptance for it in the United States, until a future time
when the example of its benefits, long and practically enjoyed, shall acquire that ascendancy over the opinions of other nations which gives motion to the springs and direction to the wheels of the power.
Instead of adopting metric units, the United States tried to bring its system into closer harmony with the English, from which various deviations had developed; for example, the United States still used “Queen Anne’s gallon” of 231 cubic inches, which the British had discarded in 1824. Construction of standards was undertaken by the Office of Standard Weights and Measures, under the Treasury Department. The standard for the yard was one imported from London some years earlier, which guaranteed a close identity between the American and English yard; but Queen Anne’s gallon was retained. The avoirdupois pound, at 7,000 grains, exactly corresponded with the British, as did the troy pound at 5,760 grains; however, the U.S. bushel, at 2,150.42 cubic inches, again deviated from the British. The U.S. bushel was derived from the “Winchester bushel,” a surviving standard dating to the 15th century, which had been replaced in the British Act of 1824. It might be said that the U.S. gallon and bushel, smaller by about 17 percent and 3 percent, respectively, than the British, remain more truly medieval than their British counterparts.
At least the standards were fixed, however. From the mid-19th century, new states, as they were admitted to the union, were presented with sets of standards. Late in the century, pressure grew to enlarge the role of the Office of Standard Weights and Measures, which, by Act of Congress effective July 1, 1901, became the National Bureau of Standards (since 1988 the National Institute of Standards and Technology), part of the Commerce Department. Its functions, as defined by the Act of 1901, included, besides the construction of physical standards and cooperation in establishment of standard practices, such activities as developing methods for testing materials and structures; carrying out research in engineering, physical science, and mathematics; and compilation and publication of general scientific and technical data. One of the first acts of the bureau was to sponsor a national conference on weights and measures to coordinate standards among the states; one of the main functions of the annual conference became the updating of a model state law on weights and measures, which resulted in virtual uniformity in legislation.
History. Discussion of the concepts of heaviness (weight) and lightness (levity) date back to the ancient Greek philosophers. These were typically viewed as inherent properties of objects. Plato described weight as the natural tendency of objects to seek their kin.
The earliest recorded systems of weights and measures originate in the 3rd or 4th millennium BC. Even the very earliest civilizations needed measurement for purposes of agriculture, construction and trade.
Aug 13, 2024 · Metric system, international decimal system of weights and measures, based on the meter for length and the kilogram for mass, that was adopted in France in 1795 and is now used officially in almost all countries. The metric system was later extended as the International System of Units (SI).
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The concept of weight emerged in physics through the periods of Ancient Greece, the medieval world, the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, classical mechanics, and modern physics. Along the way, the knowledge and the method of knowledge construction...
Mar 9, 2016 · The chapter discusses different phases in the historiography of weights and measures: the “encyclopedic” history of weights and measures, the “social” history of measures, and a more recent “cultural” history of measurement.
