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An archival event during Dutch
metrication:
The Old Archive of Nijmegen grew slowly through the
years, decades and centuries. The condition under which it was stored around
1830 was abysmal: it was stored in what was called the Trash Attic; an
_expression_ that shows the low regard for records at that time.
Then a civil servant and two city sweeps were
assigned to reduce that archive. In the course of some years about 8500 Dutch
pounds of records were destroyed. People nowadays tend to think that must
be somewhat more than 4 metric tons. However, 'Dutch pound' was the official
designation for kilogram in the 19th century, all authorities had to use the
official measuring units, so this means that no less than 8500 kg or records
went to the dogs. We will never know how many archival treasures were being
lost. Problably many 'difficult to
read records' were earmarked for destruction and carted off to their doom.
But very often those are the most precious ones.
Now such wanton destruction is unthinkable; we have
a state of the art strongroom, fireproof, secure, with 16 km (a pure
co-incidence) of mobile shelving. We converted from fixed to mobile shelving
recently, this caused a lot of inconvenience, as it made records and other
materials inaccessible for a time.
The old unit names can still confuse people
nowaday. A law suit about land for instance involving 19th
century deeds: land measured in Dutch ells. Errors have been made during court
cases as people thought that a 'Dutch ell' was about 70 cm; however, before
metrication the ell was used only for cloth and in the 19th century the
'Dutch ell' was the offical name for the metre. 100 ells was therefore not 70 m,
but 100 m.
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