Stan, Vliestra & all:
One of my students claimed that among the proposed "metre" lengths the
French considered, it >was James Watt's argumentation for the basic length
to be about a yard long that prevailed. In >other words, his arguments were
to make the French to select the 10,000,000 of the Earth's >quadrant,
rather than some other division. I have never been able to confirm this,
nor did I see a document confirming that James Watt was >active
(corresponding) with the "metric" committee.
Thanks for this info. I was not aware of this.
My contribution: The Metric Second (1973 April) touched this aspect, to the
extent that I suggested a minor correction 'required for the present Length
unit - Metre'.
If time unit, metric second (sm), and length unit - metre (m) were linked -
as I did during 1971-1973; as I modified during 1990's to
<http://www.brijvij.com/clockface-n-earth.doc>, there would NEVER have been
the dilema that SI-metric Units confront today.
It is therefore time that SI-units be granted a fresh look in totality,
rather than 'find evasive routes' to divert/delay the ongoing process to
Metrication/Decimalisation of Time of the Hour in relation to arc-length on
Earth surface - via 36% of SI-atomic second & '1/10^5th of arc-angle Pi/180
(1-degree).
Regards,
Brij Bhushan Vij
(MJD 2454138)/630+D-037 G (Tuesday, 2007 February 06 H16:19(decimal) IST
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From: "Martin Vlietstra" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
CC: "Mark Jason Dominus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [USMA:37926] Re: Was the metre invented in England
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2007 17:07:20 -0000
Was the metre invented in EnglandWikipedia reported that "He [James Watt]
was a member of the Batavian Society, and one of only eight Foreign
Associates of the French Academy of Sciences." Why would the French have
honoured him thus? Could it have been his work on an active "metric"
committee? I don't know the answer, but it is certainly a proposal that
cannot be dismissed out of hand.
----- Original Message -----
From: Stan Jakuba
To: U.S. Metric Association
Cc: Mark Jason Dominus
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2007 4:32 PM
Subject: [USMA:37925] Re: Was the metre invented in England
One of my students claimed that among the proposed "metre" lengths the
French considered, it was James Watt's argumentation for the basic length
to be about a yard long that prevailed. In other words, his arguments were
to make the French to select the 10,000,000 of the Earth's quadrant, rather
than some other division.
I have never been able to confirm this, nor did I see a document
confirming that James Watt was active (corresponding) with the "metric"
committee.
Stan Jakuba
----- Original Message -----
From: Pat Naughtin
To: U.S. Metric Association
Cc: Mark Jason Dominus
Sent: 07 Feb 04, Sunday 19:27
Subject: [USMA:37924] Was the metre invented in England
Dear All,
Was the metre, as the universal standard of measurement, invented in
England?
Recently, I discovered a web blog at
http://blog.plover.com/physics/meter.html that suggests that the metre was
invented in England 110 years before the French development of the metric
system.
It seems that John Wilkins was comfortable with a truly universal
measurement standard and on the idea of basing the standard on the
circumference of the earth. However, he ultimately plumped to let the
standard length be the length of a pendulum with a known period.
By the way, in about 1658, John Wilkins was the founding chairman, and
later secretary, of the Royal Society.
The details from Mark Dominus' blog are below.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216
Geelong, Australia
61 3 5241 2008
Pat Naughtin is manager of http://www.metricationmatters.com an
internet website that primarily focuses on the many issues, methods and
processes that individuals, groups, companies, and nations use when
upgrading to the metric system. You can contact Pat Naughtin at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fri, 03 Mar 2006
John Wilkins invents the meter
An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language
I'm continuing to read An Essay Towards a Real Character and a
Philosophical Language, the Right Reverend John Wilkins' 1668 book that
attempted to lay out a rational universal language.
In skimming over it, I noticed that Wilkins' language contained words
for units of measure: "line", "inch", "foot", "standard", "pearch",
"furlong", "mile", "league", and "degree". I thought oh, this was another
example of a foolish Englishman mistaking his own provincial notions for
universals. Wilkins' language has words for Judaism, Christianity, Islam;
everything else is under the category of paganism and false gods, and I
thought that the introduction of words for inches and feet was another case
like that one. But when I read the details, I realized that Wilkins had
been smarter than that.
Wilkins recognizes that what is needed is a truly universal
measurement standard. He discusses a number of ways of doing this and
rejects them. One of these is the idea of basing the standard on the
circumference of the earth, but he thinks this is too difficult and
inconvenient to be practical.
But he settles on a method that he says was suggested by Christopher
Wren, which is to base the length standard on the time standard (as is done
today) and let the standard length be the length of a pendulum with a known
period. Pendulums are extremely reliable time standards, and their period
depends only their length and on the local effect of gravity. Gravity
varies only a very little bit over the surface of the earth. So it was a
reasonable thing to try.
Wilkins directed that a pendulum be set up with the heaviest, densest
possible spherical bob at the end of lightest, most flexible possible cord,
and the the length of the cord be adjusted until the period of the pendulum
was as close to one second as possible. So far so good. But here is where I
am stumped. Wilkins did not simply take the standard length as the length
from the fulcrum to the center of the bob. Instead:
...which being done, there are given these two Lengths, viz. of the
String, and of the Radius of the Ball, to which a third Proportional must
be found out; which must be as the length of the String from the point of
Suspension to the Centre of the Ball is to the Radius of the Ball, so must
the said Radius be to this third which being so found, let two fifths of
this third Proportional be set off from the Centre downwards, and that will
give the Measure desired.
Wilkins is saying, effectively: let d be the distance from the point
of suspension to the center of the bob, and r be the radius of the bob, and
let x by such that d/r = r/x. Then d+(0.4)x is the standard unit of
measurement.
Huh? Why 0.4? Why does r come into it? Why not just use d? Huh?
These guys weren't stupid, and there must be something going on here
that I don't understand. Can any of the physics experts out there help me
figure out what is going on here?
Anyway, the main point of this note is to point out an extraordinary
coincidence. Wilkins says that if you follow his instructions above, the
standard unit of measurement "will prove to be . . . 39 Inches and a
quarter". In other words, almost exactly one meter.
I bet someone out there is thinking that this explains the oddity of
the 0.4 and the other stuff I don't understand: Wilkins was adjusting his
definition to make his standard unit come out to exactly one meter, just as
we do today. (The modern meter is defined as the distance traveled by light
in 1/299,792,458 of a second. Why 299,792,458? Because that's how long it
happens to take light to travel one meter.) But no, that isn't it.
Remember, Wilkins is writing this in 1668. The meter wasn't invented for
another 110 years.
Having defined the meter, which he called the "Standard", Wilkins then
went on to define smaller and larger units, each differing from the
standard by a factor that was a power of 10. So when Wilkins puts words for
"inch" and "foot" into his universal language, he isn't putting in words
for the common inch and foot, but rather the units that are respectively
1/100 and 1/10 the size of the Standard. His "inch" is actually a
centimeter, and his "mile" is a kilometer, to within a fraction of a
percent.
Wilkins also defined units of volume and weight measure. A cubic
Standard was called a "bushel", and he had a "quart" (1/100 bushel,
approximately 10 liters) and a "pint" (approximately one liter). For weight
he defined the "hundred" as the weight of a bushel of distilled rainwater;
this almost precisely the same as the original definition of the gram. A
"pound" is then 1/100 hundred, or about ten kilograms. I don't understand
why Wilkins' names are all off by a factor of ten; you'd think he would
have wanted to make the quart be a millibushel, which would have been very
close to a common quart, and the pound be the weight of a cubic foot of
water (about a kilogram) instead of ten cubic feet of water (ten
kilograms). But I've read this section over several times, and I'm pretty
sure I didn't misunderstand.
Wilkins also based a decimal currency on his units of volume: a
"talent" of gold or silver was a cubic standard. Talents were then divided
by tens into hundreds, pounds, angels, shillings, pennies, and farthings. A
silver penny was therefore 10-5 cubic Standard of silver. Once again, his
scale seems off. A cubic Standard of silver weighs about 10.4 metric
tonnes. Wilkins' silver penny is about is nearly ten cubic centimeters of
metal, weighing 104 grams (about 3.5 troy ounces), and his farthing is 10.4
grams. A gold penny is about 191 grams, or more than six ounces of gold.
For all its flaws, however, this is the earliest proposal I am aware of for
a fully decimal system of weights and measures, predating the metric
system, as I said, by about 110 years.
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