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    History of Measurement

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    Ronald
    The earliest recorded systems of weights and measures originated between the 4th and 3rd millennium BC in ancient civilizations like Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and possibly Elam. Early standard units varied between communities and regions and related to different fields like agriculture, construction, and trade. With growing importance of trade, standardized weights and measures became critical. Starting in the 18th century, more precise and uniform systems developed internationally, motivated in part by the development of electricity.

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    History of Measurement

    Uploaded by

    Ronald
    49 views2 pages
    The earliest recorded systems of weights and measures originated between the 4th and 3rd millennium BC in ancient civilizations like Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and possibly Elam. Early standard units varied between communities and regions and related to different fields like agriculture, construction, and trade. With growing importance of trade, standardized weights and measures became critical. Starting in the 18th century, more precise and uniform systems developed internationally, motivated in part by the development of electricity.

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    The earliest recorded systems of weights and measures originated between the 4th and 3rd millennium BC in ancient civilizations like Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and possibly Elam. Early standard units varied between communities and regions and related to different fields like agriculture, construction, and trade. With growing importance of trade, standardized weights and measures became critical. Starting in the 18th century, more precise and uniform systems developed internationally, motivated in part by the development of electricity.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    49 views2 pages

    History of Measurement

    Uploaded by

    Ronald
    The earliest recorded systems of weights and measures originated between the 4th and 3rd millennium BC in ancient civilizations like Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and possibly Elam. Early standard units varied between communities and regions and related to different fields like agriculture, construction, and trade. With growing importance of trade, standardized weights and measures became critical. Starting in the 18th century, more precise and uniform systems developed internationally, motivated in part by the development of electricity.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    History of measurement

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    Detail of a cubit rod in the Museo Egizio of Turin

    The earliest recorded systems of weights and measures originate in the 3rd or 4th
    millennium BC. Even the very earliest civilizations needed measurement for purposes of
    agriculture, construction and trade. Early standard units might only have applied to a
    single community or small region, with every area developing its own standards for
    lengths, areas, volumes and masses. Often such systems were closely tied to one field
    of use, so that volume measures used, for example, for dry grains were unrelated to
    those for liquids, with neither bearing any particular relationship to units of length used
    for measuring cloth or land. With development of manufacturing technologies, and the
    growing importance of trade between communities and ultimately across the Earth,
    standardized weights and measures became critical. Starting in the 18th century,
    modernized, simplified and uniform systems of weights and measures were developed,
    with the fundamental units defined by ever more precise methods in the science
    of metrology. The discovery and application of electricity was one factor motivating the
    development of standardized internationally applicable units.

    Contents

     1Sources of information
     2Earliest known measurement systems
     3History of units
    o 3.1Units of length
    o 3.2Units of mass
    o 3.3Units of time and angle
     4Forerunners of the metric system
     5Metric conversion
     6References
     7Further reading

    Sources of information[edit]
    ‹ The template below (Unreferenced section) is being considered for merging. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus. ›
    This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this
    section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be
    challenged and removed. (September 2021)  (Learn how and when to remove this
    template message)

    The comparison of the dimensions of buildings with the descriptions of contemporary


    writers is another source of information. An interesting example of this is the
    comparison of the dimensions of the Greek Parthenon with the description given
    by Plutarch from which a fairly accurate idea of the size of the Attic foot is obtained.
    Because of the comparative volume of artifacts and documentation, we know much
    more about the state-sanctioned measures of large, advanced societies than we do
    about those of smaller societies or about the informal measures that often coexisted
    with official ones throughout history. In some cases, we have only plausible theories
    and we must sometimes select the interpretation to be given to the evidence.
    It is possible to group official measurement systems for large societies into historical
    systems that are relatively stable over time, including: the Babylonian system, the
    Egyptian system, the Phileterian system of the Ptolemaic age, the Olympic system of
    Greece, the Roman system, the British system, and the metric system.

    Earliest known measurement systems[edit]


    ‹ The template below (Unreferenced section) is being considered for merging. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus. ›
    This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this
    section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be
    challenged and removed. (September 2021)  (Learn how and when to remove this
    template message)

    The earliest known uniform systems of weights and measures seem all to have been
    created at some time in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC among the ancient peoples
    of Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, and perhaps also Elam (in Iran) as well.
    Early Babylonian and Egyptian records and the Hebrew Bible indicate that length was
    first measured with the forearm, hand, or finger and that time was measured by the
    periods of the sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies. When it was necessary to
    compare the capacities of containers such as gourds or clay or metal vessels, they were
    filled with plant seeds which were then counted to measure the volumes. When means
    for weighing were invented, seeds and stones served as standards. For instance,
    the carat, still used as a unit for gems, was derived from the carob seed.

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