Samuel Wesley Stratton

“ The setting up of a system of measures is fraught with many difficulties. The selection, determination, construction, and copying of the standard furnish peculiar problems. The chief considerations affecting the selection of a standard are its relation to a recognized physical constant and the relative ease with which these standards may be determined. In the case of the unit of length, two constants have been favored, a fractional part of a terrestrial meridian, and the length of a seconds pendulum in a given locality. ”

“ In the United States the power of regulating weights and measures was vested in Congress, but as that body has not attempted to exercise its authority, except in regard to standards for the collection of customs and internal revenue, the several States have been obliged to fix their own standards and prescribe penalties for the violation of their statutory provisions on this subject. Inspectors are usually appointed with power to visit places of business where either weights or measures are used, in order to detect and prosecute violations of the law. ”

“ This centrifugal tendency produces the earth's oblateness and causes a variation in the intensity of gravitation from one latitude to another. Thus a stone is actually heavier in Boston than in New York. This change in gravitation cannot be measured by a balance because the weights at each end of the balance are changed alike, but it is apparent in the motion of a clock; for a pendulum regulated to beat seconds in Washington is found to go too fast when taken to a higher latitude, and to lose time when carried nearer to the equator ”

“ Measurement of time has been simplified by nature, which furnished the aboriginal, as well as the modern, standard, the diurnal rotation of the earth upon its axis. A measure of distance was easily furnished in the day's journey, as the Indian of the West indicates distance by the number of repetitions of the sign meaning from sunrise to sunset. ”

“ Before man had developed beyond the savage state he felt the need of some methods of measurement. So old is the idea that there is found in Josephus the statement that Cain invented weights and measures. ”

“ In England, we find Henry I. establishing the yard as the distance from the point of his nose to the end of his thumb, and Parliament seriously establishing standards of length and weight according to grains of wheat or barley. Doubtless, few people realize that shoes are still numbered according to the length of a grain of barley, in a system of numeration by thirteens. We have, as example of other units from the dimensions of the body, the ‘fathom’ (faethm, the embrace) , the length of the two arms from tip to tip ”

“ In England as well as elsewhere in Europe two pound-units have prevailed from mediæval times, a light pound for weighing articles of high value and a heavy pound for weighing articles of low value. Many of the lighter pounds used in the Latin States are variations of the old Roman standards, others are of Saxon origin, and still others of more recent date. The Italian pounds have varied from 300 to 350 grams, the average being about the weight of the old Roman pound of 325.8 grams. ”

“ England and America will adopt the metric system at nearly the same time; neither alone can get along without it.
Early in the thirteenth century it was enacted under Henry III. that there should be uniformity in the weights and measures throughout the realm, and a little later it was determined that measures of capacity should be based upon weights. Soon afterwards weights were established upon the weight of grains of wheat, as follows: 32 wheat grains = 1 penny (pennyweight) ; 20 pence = 1 ounce; 12 ounces = 1 pound; 8 pounds = 1 gallon; 8 gallons = 1 London bushel ”

“ It might appear surprising that the length of the cubit should have remained rather constant so long in Egypt, but where such important buildings were constructed and such continuity of dynasties was maintained, it should not be surprising that the unit or standard of length should have remained constant, inasmuch as the standards would naturally be handed down from dynasty to dynasty, and indeed, if destroyed, could easily be recovered from the dimensions of existing buildings, just as to-day it would be possible to restore the foot from the dimensions and descriptions of existing structures. ”

“ At the present day, in some parts of China, the first step toward building a house is making a measuring stick, according to which all materials are purchased and the dimensions determined. This method suffices for simple exchange.
Standards of quantity or weight seem to have developed in a still more arbitrary manner. The cuneiform tablets of Babylon tell of ‘vessels’ of oil and ‘skins’ of wine, the volume being as arbitrary as the ‘jar’ or ‘amphora’ of the Romans. For dry produce the term often means simply a heap, large or small. ”

“ In addition to these niceties, there are others connected with the manipulation, such as the parallelism of the knife-edges, their bluntness, the amplitude of the oscillation, and the stability of the support, so that altogether the exact measurement of the length of the seconds pendulum is a matter of very great difficulty. ”

“ These are made of an alloy of platinum with 10 per cent. of iridium. April 5, 1893, the Treasury Department adopted meter No. 27 and kilogram No. 20 as the standards of the country, and since that time all measures are standardized against these, following the law of 1866 which defined the ratio of the yard to the meter as 3600 to 3937, and the ratio of the pound to the kilogram as 1 to 2.2046. For the history and derivation of the meter and kilogram, see Metric System. ”