Dear Pat,
Thanks for this answer. I read about the 'yard and the hand' in W. Hallock
and H. Wade, Evolution of Weights and Measures and the Metric System, New
York 1906. I do not know on which page it was, but they too claim that the
Old-English weights and measures were largely decimal and they named the
'yard and the hand', which would have connected with the metric system, if
it had survived.
I think that the 'wand' survived for a time under the Normans, that when the
yard was established, the wand came to be known as the 'yard and the hand',
and then disappeared, either slowly or by being banned by law.
I also wonder how the Celts did their weighing and measuring before the
Germanic tribes arrived and
displaced the Celts.
Here sizes of fans are expressed in rounded metric sizes.
I think that fans were stated in hard inch-sizes for a long time, but that
they are now going to the nearest metric equivalent of their old sizes. Fans
stuck on processors or other chips are measured in millimetres.
The computer company Dell has started to give metric equivalents to inch
sizes for screens. Only 5 years to go....
I have voted for the EU constitution, which in my case was among other
motives, also a vote against groups like the TABD.
Best wishes,
Han
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pat Naughtin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 9:59 PM
Subject: [USMA:33088] Re: French foot
Dear Han,
Here is a quotation from Russ Rowlett's web page:
'When the Normans arrived, they brought back to England the Roman
tradition of a 12-inch foot. Although no single document on the subject
can be found, it appears that during the reign of Henry I (1100-1135) the
12-inch foot became official, and the royal government took steps to make
this foot length known. A 12-inch foot was inscribed on the base of a
column of St. Paul's Church in London, and measurements in this unit were
said to be "by the foot of St. Paul's" (de pedibus Sancti Pauli). Henry I
also appears to have ordered construction of 3-foot standards, which were
called "yards," thus establishing that unit for the first time in England.
William of Malmsebury wrote that the yard was "the measure of his [the
king's] own arm," thus launching the story that the yard was defined to be
the distance from the nose to the fingertip of Henry I. In fact, both the
foot and the yard were established on the basis of the Saxon ynce, the
foot being 36 barleycorns and the yard 108.'
For further details go to: http://www.unc.edu/%7Erowlett/units/custom.html
I have interspersed some other remarks below.
on 2005-06-04 03.13, Han Maenen at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I think that the pre-1066 Old English unit of 1007 mm was called the yard
and the hand.
The old English unit of 1007 millimetres was called a 'wand', I think, and
although the 'yard' was created to replace the wand the wand was still
used for some centuries because of its convenience as part of an old
English decimal system that included:
10 digits (base of long finger) about 20 millimetres
10 digits = 1 small span (span of thumb and forefinger) 200 millimetres
10 small spans = 1 armstretch (1 fathom from finger tip to finger tip) about
2 metres
10 fathoms = 1 chain about 20 metres
10 chains = 1 furlong about 200 metres
10 furlongs = 1 thus-hund of about 2000 metres
Clearly the measurements of early England were built around body parts. The
basic unit was the armstretch that is also called fathom (from the Danish
faedm). An armstretch refers to the spread of your outstretched arms from
tip to tip of your middle fingers.
As you know the human armstretch varies from person to person so the
official armstretch, had to be made a fixed size. This, somewhat above
average, armstretch could have been the fathom of some great warrior of
the
past and it probably was.
In the late 19th century, a metrologist, William Matthew Flinders Petrie
(known as Flinders Petrie or W. M. F. P) measured the lengths of fathoms,
rods, chains, and miles all over England and Europe carefully checking their
lengths. He found that the length of the official armstretch or fathom was
exactly the same in England, as it was in Scandinavia, early Holland, and
Germany. These official fathoms were all very close to 2 metres in length.
As William Matthew Flinders Petrie put it in the 11th edition (published
in 1910) of the Encyclopedia Britannica (Volume 28 pages 481/484), when he
likened it to the metric system of today: 'It is remarkable how near this
early decimal system is the double of the modern decimal system.
Other quotes from Petrie include:
'Unfortunately the old equivalent of the meter has now disappeared. . . .
Had it not been unhappily driven out by the 12-inch foot we should need but
a small change to place our measures in accord with the metre.'
'The basis of the present English land measures . . . are neither Roman or
Briton in origin'.
'We can restore the old English system of long measures from the
buildings, the statute-prohibitions, the, surviving chain and furlong, and
the old English mile shown by maps and itineraries.'
Too bad there was no BWMA in that era! The present-day BWMA hates
'foreign' metric units, but defends a set up that was imported long ago
from France, Italy (in the 18th century joined by Germany - Fahrenheit),
which destroyed a native Britsh system of units!!!!!
Agreed, but they sure are making up for lost opportunities in the 21st
century.
However, they surely would have fought just as hard when the units you
describe as 'a native British system of units' was imported with the Jutes,
Angles, Danes, and Saxons from the 8th century onwards.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin ASM (NSAA), LCAMS (USMA)*
PO Box 305, Belmont, Geelong, Australia
Phone 61 3 5241 2008
<snip>
