MEASURE FOR MEASURE

14-05-2007

Following last week’s EU climbdown over the abolition of imperial measurements, a campaign is being launched to gain a posthumous pardon for Steve Thoburn, and the other “Metric Martyrs” who refused to bow to Brussels. The ideal moment for Pete Millington to explore the fascinating history of weights and measures.

Last week The Stirrer reported on a major victory for campaigners who have fought for several years against the total imposition of metric measurements over the traditional imperial system of Great Britain.

In a massive turn around, the EU’s industry commissioner, Gunter Verheugen announced that imperial measures could continue to be used on goods “indefinitely”.

The Stirrer paid tribute to the Sunderland based Metric Martyrs campaign who have campaigned for the continued use of the imperial system alongside the metric system for many years - and recalled the case of Wearside green grocer Steve Thoburn who was prosecuted for doing exactly this in 2000, subsequently dying of a heart attack soon after losing his appeal at the European Court of Human Rights.

The subject prompted me to relate a personal story on the message boards about a recent visit to a carpet warehouse in the West Midlands.

Sales staff there were not only still using the imperial system with complete openness and presumably obliviousness to the previous European directive, but when presented with my floor plan containing dimensions only in the metric system appeared to have no idea what a centimetre even was, let alone how it equated to an inch, a foot or a yard.

At the end of my anecdote I quipped that units of distance could just as well be measured in ‘adult hedgehogs’ as long as everyone agrees with the accuracy of the final job.

Developing the idea into it’s silliest scenario (as regular readers will know I am prone to do), one could develop a whole new system of measurement based around the dimensions of British mammals, with one hedgehog (20cm) being equivalent to two moles or four pygmy shrews, two hedgehogs making a rabbit, four a badger and ten moles making a fox.

I won’t even start on units of weight and volume for fear of upsetting the animal rights campaigners at the suggestion of throwing a sack full of pine martens into a bath of water in order to test out the level of liquid displacement.

However, perhaps this train of thought is not so silly as it sounds. An initial investigation into the science of weights and measures reveals both a fascinating history going back to the early evolution of human kind and subsequently an immense complexity of past and present units employed to measure, quantify and describe everything and anything in the known universe.

This has therefore prompted me to present here a very short miscellany of interesting trivia about the physical science of weights and measures.

My purpose though is not merely to entertain and inform, but to reinforce the more serious point that this subject is extremely complex and as much a part of the heritage of human kind as the discovery of fire and the carving out of the first wheel.

Not an issue then that should ever have been tampered with or legislated over by the bureaucrats in Brussels.

Did you know for instance that the origins of counting go back at least to around 35,000 BC? A baboon’s fibula from around this time, inscribed with 29 notches which are thought to represent the lunar cycle, was discovered in Swaziland, southern Africa.

Similar notched tools of measurement of about the same age, known as tally sticks and calendar sticks have been found in Moravia, Namibia and Zaire and are made from substances that range from wolf bone to quartz.

Both the Roman and Chinese counting systems are thought to have derived their first few digits from this simple ‘notch’ system of counting and measuring.

The cyclical movements of the sun, moon, planets and stars would have given our ancient ancestors a profound sense of systematic constancy in the universe around them.

The Sun, for instance, would most obviously have appeared to obey fixed rules and from about 3000 BC onwards we know that civilizations such as the Egyptians, Babylonians and Chinese were hard at work plotting and measuring time itself. Astronomy is said to have been the earliest true science.

Pythagoras (580-500BC) was one of the earliest known academics who turned philosophy into science. Obsessed with the essential importance of numbers, Pythagoras attempted to measure everything around him from the speed of planets to the pitch of his harp strings, from the angles of shapes such as triangles to the distance he himself was from the horizon.

On the basis of this last conjecture, he is credited with the suggestion that the earth is round.

And so the relationship between science and measurement developed hand-in-hand through centuries of time. Aristotle investigated the laws of motion and mathematics; Euclid set down the early laws of geometry some 300 years BC; Archimedes investigated the laws of hydrostatics by famously immersing himself in his over-flowing bath tub; Erastosthenes calculated the diameter of the earth and so the list goes on and on … almost… immeasurably!

But returning to our underlying theme of ‘weights and measures trivia’, it is interesting to note that this last scientist, Erastosthenes, worked out the diameter of the earth by studying the length of shadows cast by sports stadia such as Alexandria.

He is said to have worked out the length of an average stadium (equivalent to about 157.7 metres) and used this is a unit of scientific measurement which logically led to the calculation of the distance between the stadia at Alexandria and Syene as being equal to one fiftieth of the circumference of the earth (5000 stadia or about 800 kilometres).

But using sports stadia as units of distance is not the only case of the ridiculous leading to the sublime. Back in the 16th century, John Napier invented the very first computational aid known as logarithms using ivory bones carved with multiplication tables.

Legend has it that Galilei Galileo worked out the laws of motion by dropping cannon balls off the Leaning Tower of Pisa; Pascal worked out the laws of atmospheric pressure by making his brother-in-law run up and down a local mountain; Robert Boyle, the founder of modern chemistry, is remembered in a famous painting by Joseph Wright, measuring the properties of air by imprisoning his pet cockatiel in a vacuum sealed air jar (also the origin of Monty Python’s ‘dead parrot’ sketch perhaps?); Christian Doppler based his laws of sound velocity on the study of a steam engine pulling a truck-load of Austrian trumpeters (ouch!); and not forgetting our very own Sir Isaac Newton who worked out the laws of gravitation by doing keepy-uppies with Granny Smiths.

Measurement always involves comparison and the measurement of any physical quantity therefore always entails comparing it with an agreed and clearly defined standard. The first units of weight and length were probably crude measurements of parts of the human body:

A duel at twenty paces; kept at arm’s length; head above the rest; and the rule of thumb, being points in case.

But that’s where the fun and games really start. Here’s some strange but true facts about weights and measures:

The metric system is not new and dates back to Revolutionary France in 1799. It is based on an unchanging physical unit equivalent to 1 ten millionth of a quadrant of the earth’s meridian passing though Paris. More commonly known as one metre.

The metric system was first introduced to Britain in 1897 but it wasn’t until 1965 that the Board of Trade declared the intention to switch from imperial to metric within ten years. Whilst this happened to a large degree, early concessions were made for fruit and vegetables, pints and drams of alcohol and the good old British mile.

The North Americans have never embraced the metric system and continue to use their own version of the Imperial system known as US Customary Units. The yard for example is only used in sport, whilst the American ton and the gallon are considerably different to the English units of the same name.

Imperial system loyalists all know that 12 inches make a foot and that 16 ounces make a pound. But did you know that 10 chains make a furlong or that 100 fathoms make 1 cable length?

Or did you know that 2 gallons make a peck and 4 pecks make a bushel? Most of us remember that 14 pounds make a stone, but what’s not so easy to recall is that 437.5 grains make an ounce.

Did you know that hertz measure frequency, newtons measure force, watts measure power and ohms measure electric resistance? Yes of course you did, but perhaps not that a tesla measures magnetic flux density or becquerels measure radioactive activity. In these days of weird atmospheric conditions we’d all be as well to learn a few of these.

And whilst you’re at it, here’s some more homework for you (and there will be a test next Monday morning).

The hand used for measuring horses is 4 inches, the biblical cubit is 18 inches, whilst the link (used by surveyors) is 7.92 inches. For those of a gentle nature, a nip of beer is a quarter of a pint but if you want to get really slaughtered, try ordering an anker of beer which is 10 gallons.

A tot of whisky isn’t just a quaint expression, a tot is a third of a gill, the same quantity as a noggin of rum in actual fact. Two bottles of champagne? That one we should all know is a magnum, but would you know how to order four bottles? Well that’s a jeroboam and if you’re having a real big celebration then why not go for a Nebuchadnezzar (20 bottles)?

Did you know that the Scandinavians are the only countries apart from the UK that use different men’s shoe sizes to the rest of Europe or that a UK gallon of salt water is a different weight to a UK gallon of tap water?

An Imperial bushel of wheat in the UK weighs 60lb. But don’t be confused when buying a bushel of oats which weighs 39lb. Simple enough? A bushel of rye is 56lb, a bushel of rice is 45lb and a bushel of linseed is 52lb. Don’t even go there on American bushels, they are totally different again.

Well we could go on and on and on. Well maybe just a little…

Do you know how to define horse- power? Do you know how many erg make a joule? As the whole world goes to war over petroleum, have you even the faintest idea how many hectoliters are in a US barrel? How fast is 10 knots? How many mm is a Royal sized piece of paper and how many sheets are there in a ream?

But if you’re starting to think that perhaps metric units could be easier to remember than imperial, think again. Would you for instance know what a yocto-metre is? Or how many angstroms make up a nanometer? Or how many sextillion Kelvin units of temperature or candela units of luminosity are given off by the sun every 24 hours?

There is however another dimension to all of this and that has to do, in my view, with the beauty of linguistic expression. For instance, does it really matter if you are getting a kilogram or 2.2 pounds of onions, if it’s the same weight in reality?

Or whether it’s 10 miles to Wolverhampton as opposed to 16 kilometers? Maybe not, but a noggin of rum and a Nebuchadnezzar of Bucks Fizz sure as hell sound good to me compared to the same amount of plonk in millilitres!

And finally, as if to foil my new system of measurement units based on the average length of a selection of our favorite British mammals, someone’s already beaten me to it…

…a mole is apparently a unit of substance.

In which case, hopefully there’s a good few moles to my latest Stirrer article.

So please be upstanding and raise a tot, a nip or a large in memory of Steve Thoburn and in celebration with our friends in the north….

Vive le difference!

To sign the petition to win a posthumous pardon for Steve Thoburn, click here http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/metricmartyrs/