Title: Re: [USMA:33098] Re: French foot
Dear Han,
Sorry for the delay in replying to you, but it took me a while to dig out another reference to decimal measures in England before 1066. I knew that I had seen it, but it took a little time to find it.
This reference is 'The Romance of Weights and Measures', by Keith Gordon Irwin, Illustrated by Johannes Troyer (The Viking Press, New York 1964).
Keith Gordon Irwin quotes from the work of the Stonehenge and Egyptian pyramid scholar, William Matthew Flinders Petrie, (see previous correspondence below) to support his view that England had a decimal system of measures prior to the French invasion of 1066. It seems that it was the French who introduced the foot, the yard, and the mile to England at that time.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin ASM (NSAA), LCAMS (USMA)*
PO Box 305, Belmont, Geelong, Australia
Phone 61 3 5241 2008
Pat Naughtin is the editor of the free online monthly newsletter, 'Metrication matters'. You can subscribe by going to http://www.metricationmatters.com and clicking on 'Newsletter'.
* Pat is the editor of the 'Numbers and measurement' chapter of the Australian Government Publishing Service 'Style manual – for writers, editors and printers', he is an Accredited Speaking Member (ASM) with the National Speakers Association of Australia, and a Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist (LCAMS) with the United States Metric Association.
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on 2005-06-04 18.49, Han Maenen at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 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>
>
