Metric at I On Timeline
Metric at I On Timeline
Metric at I On Timeline
John Wilkins recognised, in 1668, that creating a new, universal measure that was
derived from nature was the only way to replace local measures without local disputes.
Wilkins’ universal measure is now the basis of the modern metric system.
The quantification of land, goods, building materials, and the system for recording the
figures are now much easier, more accurate and more precise. This applies to all human
activities such as trade, construction, agriculture and ownership.
It is intended that this timeline will give you information about the important dates and
events in the development of The International System of Units (SI), and also a feel for
the life and times at various stages in the history of the metric system and of the SI.
This timeline includes some experiences with the metric system from many nations, but
with more details from Australia, the United Kingdom (UK), France and the United
States of America (USA). The Australian experience is included as a successful example
of metrication, and the UK is included as an unsuccessful example of metric conversion,
despite the fact that the concept for a 'universal measure' first arose in England. France
and the USA are included because they are respectively the first and last nations on Earth
to legally adopt, promote, and widely use the metric system.
Because of the metric system, the whole world is now able to communicate through
common ways of measuring. We can share the same perceptions of space, dimensions,
and mass. As an example, when two farmers from two different countries met, they used
to find it hard to understand each other when the conversation touched upon miles,
arpents, chis, ells, or toises, for each would have different magnitudes in mind, but they
understand each other without difficulty when talking of metres, litres, or kilograms.
15 000 000 000 before the Common Era (BCE)
The metric system has given us simple methods to handle very large numbers, very small
numbers, and all of the other numbers in between. Here is the biggest example.
The 'Big bang' theory of the Universe is based on the observation that all the stars and
galaxies in the Universe seem to be moving away from each other. If you calculate their
speeds of separation, you can calculate that the Universe might have begun with a 'Big
Bang' 15 000 000 000 years ago. We observe the speeds using light, so 15 000 000 000
light years in each direction indicates that we are at the centre of a sphere with a radius of
15 000 000 000 light-years; it follows that the diameter is 30 000 000 000 light-years.
As light travels nearly 9 500 000 000 000 kilometres in a year, this means that the
diameter of the Universe is approximately:
30 000 000 000 years multiplied by 9 500 000 000 000 kilometres per year
which equals 285 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 kilometres
This is a very large number and before the metric system was developed, people – even
scientists and mathematicians – had difficulty saying or writing such big numbers.
These days we simply say that the diameter of the Universe is about 285 yottametres.
Note:
According to NASA (http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html):
We now know (as of 2013) that the universe is flat with only a 0.4% margin of error.
This suggests that the Universe is infinite in extent; however, since the Universe has
a finite age, we can only observe a finite volume of the Universe. All we can truly
conclude is that the Universe is much larger than the volume we can directly observe.
The calculation above (written prior to 2008)
has been left in as a demonstration of the use of SI for large numbers. Editor
4 500 000 000 BCE
The Earth formed as part of the solar system.
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Although the grain was the earliest and most ancient unit of mass, it persists as the
smallest unit in the apothecary, avoirdupois, Tower, and troy measuring methods. The
grains might be the same but the ounces differ; for example, the Troy pound was divided
into 12 Troy ounces while the Avoirdupois pound was divided into 16 ounces.
The early unit was a grain of wheat or barley used to weigh precious metals like silver and
gold. Because of this connection with gold and silver, the same mass words were often
used as units of both mass and money. You can see this practice in the UK where the
word pound is still used as a measure of mass and of money.
Volume (or capacity)
When it was necessary to compare the capacities of containers such as gourds, or clay
vessels, they were filled with small plant seeds that were then counted to measure the
volume. One interesting measure was the Egyptian 'hon' that had the volume of a cubic
palm and corresponded to one mina of water; this corresponds to a modern litre, and can
be thought of as measuring 1 hand by 1 hand by 1 hand, where a hand is 100 millimetres.
Time
Time was measured by counting the periods of the sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies.
It was assumed that these were consistent in length until better methods showed that
days, months, and years all varied in length. In any case they worked well enough to
decide when the next market day was to take place or when was the best time to plant
next year's crops.
The Egyptians also discovered that, regardless of the season, the shortest shadow cast by
any fixed object – such as an obelisk – would always point towards the North. This line
pointing North became known as the mid-day line or meridian (from the Latin medius =
mid + dies = day). The meridian line always points in the same direction: toward the
North Pole in the northern hemisphere and toward the South Pole in the southern
hemisphere. The Egyptians also knew how to find the longest day (at the summer
solstice) and the shortest day (at the winter solstice). These points and other points
through the year were invaluable in predicting the seasons.
Variations
After archaeologists studied the evidence from all available sources, they decided that
there had been no consistent lengths, masses, volumes, or times over any long period of
Egyptian history. They found that all the measures changed more or less gradually as
time passed. These changes were quite complex because there were many modifying
influences.
Similarly, there had been common names like a cubit or a foot in several other nations
but these varied in length throughout history and they varied from country to country.
The earliest known units used to measure length by ancient peoples are the Egyptian
cubit, the Indus Valley units of length, and the Mesopotamian cubit.
Archaeologists now talk about the different measuring methods according to where they
come from rather than looking for non-existent consistencies. The common names for
groups of measurements that existed before the International System of Units (SI), the
modern metric system, are: Babylonian measures, Egyptian measures, Greek measures of
the Ptolemaic age, Olympic measures of Greece, Roman measures, British measures,
Chinese measures, Inca measures, and many others.
None of these old measures was ever fully organised into a coherent systems of
measurement so it is inaccurate to refer to any of them as a 'system' of measurement. The
metric system is the only system that has ever existed.
One interesting problem for traders was in the way different people chose to divide their
measures into small amounts. Many chose halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths and so
on; others chose thirds and two thirds; some chose twelfths and twentieths; and a fewer
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number chose to use decimal divisions. People near the centre of trade routes, such as
the Babylonians, had the problem of converting between all these different measures and
making sense of them all.
People from their West, such as the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans divided their
measures into halves, quarters, twelfths, and twentieths, while people from their East,
such as China and India, were more inclined at that time to use decimal numbers.
Eventually the Babylonians developed the idea of using a numbering system based on the
number 60 – a sexagesimal method of numbering. From there on the conversions were
relatively easier because the calculations to go from East traders to West traders used the
common denominator of 60. To make this even easier the Babylonians also developed a
mass and money method where there were 60 shekels in a mina and 60 minas in a talent.
We can also trace the division of the circle into 360 degrees and the day into hours,
minutes, and seconds back to the Babylonians use of sexagesimal numbers.
Biblical measures
The need for honest measurements goes back to prehistoric times and there is a lot of
uncertainty about its early history. However historical records have shown that all
nations throughout time have found the necessity for legislative control in weights and
measures. Many of these have been quoted in the Christian Bible.
Of course, the Bible is not the only reference to early metrology but it does highlight the
fact that there has been a need for some sort of control relative to weights and measures
for thousands of years. It follows that if there was a need for some sort of control
thousands of years ago when life was supposed to be simple, then it is hard to see that
today's measurement legislation is not absolutely necessary in our more complex society.
Most of us have access to the words used for ancient measures as these are used in the
Bible. Even though we know stories such as Noah measuring his ark in cubits, few of us
have any idea how the people of those ancient times measured.
The tables below give approximate amounts and distances, but Bible measuring words
changed their value from time to time and even from book to book within the Bible. Like
all other ancient measures, they varied through time in complex ways because of many
different modifying influences. The reason that I am using Bible measures is because the
words (although not their values) are familiar to many people. You will see that some of
the values are actually decimals where one measure is 10 times another.
The examples below show some biblical length measures and they are a clear
demonstration that people appreciated that there was a need for standards of weights
and measures for fair and just trading thousands of years ago.
Dry Measure cor or homer (10 ephahs) 200 litres Petrol drum
lethek (5 ephahs) 100 litres Refrigerator
ephah (10 omers) 20 litres Jerry can
seah (1/3 ephah) 7 litres Small plastic
bucket
omer (1/10 ephah) 2 litres Large kitchen jug
cab (1/18 ephah) 1 litre Small kitchen jug
Ancient measurers
The fact that measures varied from time to time and from place to place was not a big
impediment to ancient measurers. When people didn't travel much, this problem had
less importance. As now, the really important issue was that the measuring words meant
the same thing to everyone involved in a transaction or on a building site. This worked as
long as the traders understood what the measurement words meant – exactly enough for
their particular purpose. However, if the same people went to another town or another
building site, all of the measuring words might now have quite different meanings.
If the measuring on a particular job is always done by one person, it doesn't make much
difference how accurate measuring sticks are, or even how long they are, as long as you
use the same stick each time. However, as soon as a job is assembled from a number of
articles that are made then stored, to be assembled by some one else later, standard
measures are required; that is, the measurements must mean the same thing to everyone.
Builders of the pyramids appear to have used a cubit to design and measure components
for their buildings, based on the distance from the elbow to the tip of the longest finger. A
cubit is very useful as it is readily available, convenient, and can't be mislaid, but it is not
a positively fixed dimension or a standard. It seems that pyramid builders needed to have
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a standard cubit as so many people were working on different parts of the same
construction, so they created a Royal cubit and they had the good sense to make it
7 palms (or 700 millimetres) long, so it wouldn't be confused with the common cubit
when it was used in constructing buildings or for surveying. Note that this is not the only
Royal cubit. There was a very old Royal cubit, about 520 millimetres long, made from
black marble and divided into 7 hands that were further sub-divided into four digits, and
then into fractional parts. The smallest division was just a little more than a millimetre.
Although the cubit is no longer used as a unit of measurement, it is still useful to get an
approximate length measurement without the need of a ruler or a measuring tape. For
many men, it is close to a convenient 500 millimetres (with your longest fingers placed
tip to tip your elbows are quite close to a metre apart).
Over long periods of time, the lengths, masses, and measuring containers drifted from
place to place. Many words for measuring methods travelled long distances, but often
they did not take their definitions with them. This was particularly true for the Roman
empire where the uncia, meaning a twelfth, became an ounce in Troy ounces in France, a
16th of a pound in Avoirdupois ounces in the UK, and an inch which was a twelfth of a
foot in the UK.
Another example occurs because the Roman soldiers did a lot of marching. As they
marched, they kept track of the distance they travelled by counting in lots of a thousand
paces – a mille in ancient Roman Latin. A Roman pace was the distance covered from the
time one foot touched the ground until that same foot touched the ground again, so a
thousand paces was quite close to 1500 metres or 1.5 kilometres. In England, they
borrowed the word, mille, and changed the word to 'mile'; it had many definitions over
the years. The definition of the current 'metric mile' is exactly 1.609 344 metres.
Then, as now, some people were prepared to use measuring confusion to gain
commercial advantages by cheating. For this reason, the early books of the Christian
Bible treat measurement almost as a running theme. Here are some examples about
measurements taken from the King James Version of the Bible:
Deuteronomy 25:13-14
Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small. Thou shalt not
have in thine house divers measures, a great and a small. Diverse weights and
diverse measures, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord.
Micah 6:11
Shall I count them pure with the wicked balances, and with the bag of deceitful
weights.
Exodus 16:36
Now an homer is the tenth part of an ephah. (This is one of the earliest mentions of
decimal divisions for measuring units.)
Leviticus 19:35-36
Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure.
Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have.
Isaiah 5:10
Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and the seed of an homer shall yield
an ephah.
Ezekiel 45
Ye shall have just balances, and a just ephah, and a just bath.
The ephah and the bath shall be of one measure, that the bath may contain the tenth
part of an homer, and the ephah the tenth part of an homer: the measure thereof
shall be after the homer. (Here's another decimal division but with two names this
time – bath for wet goods and ephah for dry goods.)
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Amos 8:5
Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? And the sabbath,
that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and
falsifying the balances by deceit?
Note: it is curious that the homer, at about 200 litres, is nearly the same size as the
standard 200 litre petrol and oil drum designed in Germany in the 1930s. The bath, at
one tenth of this amount, is equivalent to the small square-shaped fuel carrier that
became known in many English-speaking countries as the 'jerry-can' from its German
origins. For most of the 20th century, the 200 litre drum was known as a 44 gallon drum
in the UK and its colonies, and as the 55 gallon drum in the USA because of their gallons
of different sizes. A hin was about 4 litres and a shekel was about 12 grams.
4500 BCE
Alexander Thom, in Megalithic Sites in Britain, claims to have arrived at close
estimations of standard lengths used in the construction of many prehistoric sites in
Britain. He examined and carefully measured megalithic (big stone) sites in the UK and
Europe. Thom believed that the original builders had been quite competent surveyors
and builders who could build within a tolerance of a few millimetres. Thom's analysis of
300 sites led him to believe that there were standard lengths that he called a megalithic
yard and a megalithic rod. He estimated their lengths as:
1 megalithic yard in the UK was about 2.720 British Feet (829 millimetres) and
1 megalithic rod was about 2.5 megalithic yard or 6.8 British Feet
(2 073 millimetres).
It is unlikely that the word, yard, was used at this time but other words for the same thing
might have been used in Europe. These included the French word, verge, and the Spanish
word, vara, that might have had similar lengths: 843 millimetres in Burgos and
756 millimetres in Madrid. Later the Spanish word, vara, was transported to America
where its values were nearer to 838 millimetres in Mexico and Peru, and 847 millimetres
in California and Texas.
Alexander Thom also explored the way that the measuring units, that he had renamed as
megalithic yards and megalithic rods, might be sub-divided. He formed the view that the
megalith builders used a small unit that he named a megalithic inch that was one fortieth
of a megalithic yard or one hundredth of a megalithic rod – a curiously decimal sub-
division. Thom wrote:
… there existed in Britain in Megalithic times a widespread knowledge of geometry.
We find designs drawn with the same conventions set out on the ground and
inscribed on rocks and stones …
Thom believed he could identify from these rock carvings that 40 of the small divisions
made one Megalithic Yard, and that 100 of them made a megalithic rod because:
… In both there is the same insistence on integral lengths. The linear unit that we
find on the rock designs is 0.816 inch (~ 20 millimetres) or exactly one-fortieth of the
Megalithic yard used in ground plans. The designer undoubtedly used a set of beam
compasses with the distance between the inscribing points advancing by units or half
units. This explains the preoccupation with integral lengths and the necessity of
using triangles with sides of integral length satisfying the Pythagorean theorem.
3400 BCE
In Egyptian writing (called hieroglyphics) a special symbol for the number 10 was used.
This was another early use of decimal numbers.
3100 to 2181 BCE
Construction of the pyramids began during the period in Egypt called the Old Kingdom.
Inscribed weights from that time suggest that there was a mass unit of 27 grams and
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another of half this mass at about 13 grams. These mass measures were called deben.
The standard measure for length in Egypt, based on surviving cubit rods, seems to be the
cubit of about 500 millimetres long. Larger measures were based on cubits. For example
a very large measure, called a river measure, seems to correspond to about 20 000 cubits
(~10 kilometres).
Measuring area at this time seemed to be based on decimal divisions. From Old Kingdom
written sources the main area measures were:
the tA (called a land-measure) = 10 x 10 cubits (about 25 square metres),
the xA (called a thousand) = 10 x 100 cubits (about 250 square metres), and
the setjat (called a xA-tA) = 100 x 100 cubits (about 2500 square metres).
For measuring volume or capacity, Egyptians used three main measures:
the hin (called a jar),
the heqat (called a barrel), and
the khar (called a sack).
The relationship between these was: 1 khar = 10 heqat and 1 heqat = 10 hin. Old
inscribed jars with hin measurements show that 1 hin is about 0.5 litres so 1 heqat would
be about 5 litres, and 1 khar about 50 litres.
3000 BCE
In very early times the people of ancient India are thought to have used length measures
such as the dhanus (or bow suggesting a length based on how far you could shoot an
arrow); the krosa (or cow-call suggesting a distance from which you could hear a cow);
and the jojana (or stage suggesting a distance of how far you would walk before taking a
rest break).
The peoples of Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and in Iran devised the earliest
known uniform weights and measures at about this time. Many different cubits of
different lengths were used. In addition, the cubit, the length from your elbow to the tip
of the middle finger, was divided in different ways. A common method was to say that the
span of your hand (from the tip of your thumb to the tip of your outstretched little finger)
was half a cubit, that the palm or width of your hand was one sixth of a cubit, and that the
width of your middle finger was one twenty-fourth of a cubit. Another method was to
divide the cubit into 7 hands, then into four digits (fingers), and then to divide the finger
sub-divisions into fractional parts.
Some historians suggest that the Babylonians had related the measures for length,
volume, and mass to each other. The basis of all these co-ordinated measures was a cube
with an edge one foot long. The cube, when filled with water, formed a volume of one
cubic foot. The water to fill the cube gave a unit of mass. There is some evidence for this
idea because the required mass of about 30 kilograms (called a talent) has been found
physically and referred to in historical literature. However, the volume measure is not so
easy to find; the Biblical bath or ephah at about 20 litres is too small.
2700 BCE
Babylonian astronomers had named the constellations and were able to use the angles
between constellations to predict the approximate start of the seasons.
2600 BCE
The most astounding of the ancient methods of measuring was the one that appeared in
the Indus Valley. The Indus Valley people achieved great accuracy in measuring length,
mass, volume, and time. Their measurements were extremely precise since their smallest
length division, which is marked on an ivory scale found in Lothal, was approximately
1.704 mm, the smallest division ever recorded on a scale of the Bronze Age.
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Engineers and traders from Harappa in the Indus Valley (now in the Sindh province of
Pakistan) used a combined binary and decimal division of measurement. This was based
around the number series: 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500. For
example, the Harappa masses for weighing were shaped as hexahedrons and were based
on the recurrence of multiples of the three value number series: 1, 2, 5 … This can be
made larger using 10, 20, 50 or smaller using 0.1, 0.2, 0.5. In this series, 1 is half of 2 and
5 is half of the starting number of the next group of three, 10, which in turn can be
divided by 2 in a binary way or by 5 or 10 in a decimal way. The series could then be
continued upwards or downwards as required: 0.005, 0.01, 0.02, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2,
5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500, 1000, 2000, 5000, …
Many nations now use this method for their decimal currencies. Australia has coins of 5,
10, 20, and 50 cents, 1 and 2 dollars, and then notes of 5, 10 20, 50, and 100 dollars.
It is interesting that the Harappan small unit of mass was about 30 grams and this value
persisted as the Roman uncia (meaning one twelfth of a Roman pondus). Later it became
the Italian onza; next it was the European and Ethiopian Maria Theresa ounce (a bit
more than 28 grams); and then as the current English avoirdupois ounce with its French
name. All of these are now generally included (and legally defined) either as the
international avoirdupois ounce of exactly 28.349 523 grams or the international troy
ounce of exactly 31.103 476 8 grams.
Lothal, in the modern state of Gujarat, was one of the most prominent cities of the
ancient Indus valley civilization and is one of India's most important archaeological sites.
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) excavated the Lothal site between 1955 and
1960. Here are some more samples from that site, to show the great accuracy in
measuring angle, length, mass, and time achieved by the people of the Indus Valley.
S. R. Rao in Lothal, Archaeological Survey of India (1985) writes:
A thick ring-like shell object found with four slits each in two margins served as a
compass to measure angles on plane surfaces or in the horizon in multiples of 40
degrees, up to 360 degrees. Such shell instruments were probably invented to
measure 8– 12 whole sections of the horizon and sky, explaining the slits on the lower
and upper margins. Archaeologists consider this as evidence that the Lothal experts
had achieved something 2,000 years before the Greeks: an 8– 12 fold division of
horizon and sky, as well as an instrument for measuring angles and perhaps the
position of stars, and for navigation.
S. R. Rao also writes about measuring lengths in Lothal that he regarded as the finest
ever recorded on a Bronze Age measuring scale.
An ivory scale from Lothal has the smallest-known decimal divisions in Indus
civilization. The scale is 6 millimetres thick, 15 mm broad and the available length is
128 mm, but only 27 graduations are visible over 46 mm, the distance between
graduation lines being 1.70 mm.
When writing about the measurement of mass in Lothal, S. R. Rao writes:
The Lothal craftsmen took care to ensure durability and accuracy of stone weights
(masses) by blunting edges before polishing.
Note that the people of Lothal were using decimal measuring methods more than 4 500
years ago.
2500 BCE
The great pyramid of Gizeh was built in Egypt. This pyramid was built using 440 royal
cubits (about 230 metres) along each side of the base.
The Harappan people, who flourished in the Punjab between 2500 BCE and 1700 BCE,
seem to have developed methods that used uniform weights and measures. These were
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based on decimal numbers with half values in between. The main series, that went 0.05,
0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500, looks a lot like the currencies of many
modern nations, such as Australia. When some Harappan scales for measuring length
were discovered during excavations they surprised the archaeologists with the accuracy
and the precision of their markings. For example, one scale had marks accurately placed
9.322 millimetres apart; 100 of these divisions added to a length of 932.2 millimetres or
just a little less than a modern metre. Another example was of a different scale where the
small division was 33.5 millimetres; 10 of these would make a rather large 'foot'; and 3 of
the feet would make a length of 1000.5 millimetres, about the length of a long stride and
almost the same length as the modern metre.
Archaeological measurements of Harappan building ruins show that the Harappan
length measures were accurately used in their building construction.
By about 2500 years ago, Greek sailors applied a deductive reasoning process to estimate
the speed of their ships. The ship's speed was determined by counting the number of oar
strokes in a time that was measured with a sand glass; the distance travelled over the
water was deduced from these figures. Later sailors threw a log tied to a knotted rope into
the water then counted the number of knots over a fixed distance. From this practice we
acquired the word knots, as a measure of speed, and the idea of a log book where the
speeds were recorded.
2175 BCE
In the ancient city of Gudea, a statue of the governor, Lagash the Prince of Sumer,
showed him with some plans and a ruler showing the size of various units. From this a
palm was about 100 mm, a cubit was about 500 mm, and so a double cubit was about the
length of a modern metre.
Sometime after this, the Babylonians devised a unit of mass based on a hand of about
100 mm. They built a cube (probably from clay) where each side had a length of one hand
(100 mm). This was known as a ka and it had a capacity very close to a modern litre. If
you filled a ka with water, it became an important unit of mass, called a great mina,
which had a mass quite close to the modern kilogram.
At this early stage, there were no standards, so units with the same name could vary in
amount from place to place and from time to time. The large cubit, for example, varied
from about 400 mm to about 700 mm. No doubt, much of this variation arose from
merchants who were somewhat less than honest.
Some of the variation in units also arose from taxation; there was a royal cubit and a
common cubit. The king, queen, or Pharaoh simply bought using the royal cubit and
subsequently sold using the common cubit – the difference between these two measures
was the amount of tax. In Egypt the common cubit was close to 500 mm, while the royal
cubit could be as much as 700 mm. Physical evidence still exists of these measures. The
ancient Egyptians also had a distance measure, an atour, which was equivalent to
10 000 m or 10 km, a curiously decimal number.
2150 BCE
During the reign of Naram-Sin the Akkadian Empire decided on a single official
measuring standard. This was based on a theoretical water container, called the royal
gur-cube or šarru kurru, that was 6 metres × 6 metres × 0.5 metre (or 18 cubic metres)
from which all other units were derived. The choice of the number 6 now seems strange
to us, but the Akkadian Empire at that time used both decimal numbers and other
numbers based on the number 6 and 60. Naram-Sin's measurement standard is now
regarded as the first rational measurement method in Mesopotamia. Following the
demise of the Akkadian Empire the rational measurement standards were not supported
and maintained. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Mesopotamian_units_of_measurement for details.
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our modern views about mathematics, science, and philosophy many of which are
routinely used in metrology.
332 BCE
The city of Alexandria was founded in Egypt.
330 BCE
The thirteen books of Euclid's Elements of Geometry were written in Alexandria.
300 BCE
Euclid wrote about the laws of reflection of light.
250 BCE
Archimedes of Syracuse (c 287/c 212) wrote that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
235 BCE
After Eratosthenes of Cyrene (276/194) became director of the library at Alexandria, he
gave a remarkably accurate estimate of the Earth's circumference. Eratosthenes wrote a
description of the known world in which he calculated the circumference of the Earth to
be about 250 000 stadion. Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the Earth using
basically the same idea as the French when they defined the length of the metre by
measuring the Earth in the 1790s.
Eratosthenes measured the Earth using the distance from Alexandria to Syene (now
Aswan on the Nile) in Egypt. He noticed that on the day of the summer solstice, sunlight
went straight down the shaft of a well in Syene, so the sun must be directly overhead at
Syene. He realised that at the same moment the sun was not overhead in Alexandria, to
the north of Syene, because the earth’s surface is curved. He went to Alexandria and
measured the shadow of an obelisk (a tall stone pillar) in the grounds of the Alexandria
library. Using the height of the obelisk and the length of its shadow, he calculated the
angle of the Sun at the summer solstice as 1/50 of a circle in Alexandria.
Previously, Eratosthenes also developed a 16 point wind rose that was the first to use the
word degree so he understood how to measure and to calculate using angles and he knew
that there are 360o in a circle. From the sun’s shadow, he worked out that Alexandria and
Syene were 7.2o apart from each other, on the circumference of the world. He knew that a
camel travelled about 100 stadia a day (stadion = approx. 200 metres), and that it took
50 days to go from Syene to Alexandria. So the distance was 5000 stadia. Finally,
Eratosthenes multiplied the 5000 up to the full circumference of the world, instead of
just Syene to Alexandria: 5000 x 360/7.2. The answer is 250 000 stadia.
Eratosthenes' calculation was not quite right. It was a little too high because Syene is not
quite due south of Alexandria, and camels’ paces and therefore their speeds are not
always the same. Modern values for the Earth's circumference are 40 008 kilometres for
the polar circumference and 40 076 kilometres for the equatorial circumference.
221 BCE
Emperor Shi Huang Ti attempted a major measuring reform in China as part of a
program to unify the nation. Shih Huang Ti set standards for Chinese weights and
measures.
200 BCE
The Indian mathematician Bakhshali used zero in a textbook before 200 BCE. The word
'zero' in English derives from the Indian Sanskrit sunya that means empty or blank. This
was translated as zifr by Arab writers, then as the Latin zephirum, and finally into
English as either zero or cipher.
16
129 BCE
The Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician Hipparchus (Ἵππαρχος c 190 /c
120) used projections to show heights (sterographs) and perspective (orthographs). He
also completed his star catalogue with about 850 stars catalogued by their apparent
brightness and their celestial latitude and longitude.
100 BCE
Greece
The width of a forefinger (~ 20 mm) was a common small length measure. A Greek foot
was regarded as 16 finger-widths (16 fingers = one foot) that would make each Greek foot
320 millimetres long; this is too long for most people and was probably too long for the
Greek people of that time.
Rome
The Romans divided the foot into 12 unciae. Uncia means 'a twelfth part' and assuming
the average Roman foot is about the same as ours, about 275 mm, then the original uncia
must have been about 23 mm.
As the Romans were a military society, they measured long distances in lots of
1000 double steps, as in left-right-left. This gave them one of the first decimal measures.
In modern military terms with a pace of 750 millimetres, two paces is 1500 millimetres
and 1000 paces is 1500 metres or 1.5 kilometres.
46 BCE
Roman calendar
Julius Caesar (100 BCE/44 BCE) introduced a new calendar with three years of 365 days
followed by a leap year of 366 days. To adjust for the seasons this meant that the year
46 BCE had to have 445 days; this made it the longest year ever.
However, the Roman calendar was fundamentally flawed. It provided for a year that was
exactly 365¼ days long when the real year was 365.2425 days long. This meant that the
beginning of the year on the calends of Mars gradually moved forward until the seasons
no longer matched the dates.
Roman length
Julius Caesar, about the time he reformed the calendar, also approved the method for
measuring long distances using 1 000 paces where each pace consisted of two steps. In
Latin 1 000 paces is 'mille passus' and much later, in English, this was shortened from
'mille passus' to 'mille', meaning 1000, and eventually this was shortened to 'mile'.
The Roman mile consisted of 1000 paces, where the 'pace' or double-step was defined as
5 Roman feet so the Roman mile was 5000 Roman feet. The Roman mile of 5000 feet
(about 1500 metres) was introduced into England during the occupation of England.
Many European countries also retained a mile of about 5000 Roman feet (however big
the local 'feet' were), but in England, the mile was redefined as 5280 feet in an attempt to
coordinate the foot and mile with other local measures such as the rod and the furlong.
The Romans spent so much time marching across various countries that they recorded
the distances in 'mille passus', each mille comprising a thousand footsteps. They used
permanent stones to mark the distance between towns and villages. In addition, each
Roman road had occasional small obelisk statues placed to indicate the distance from
Rome because, under the Roman Empire, Rome was the centre of the known world. It
was said that, All roads lead to Rome, and so all distances were measured from Rome.
The Romans probably inherited the word, foot, from Egypt via Greece. A Roman
architect, Statilius Aper, had a statue of himself made that included a ruler that has been
17
accurately measured as 296 mm. The Roman foot was sometimes divided into 12 unciae
(about 24.7 mm) and sometimes divided into 16 digits (about 18.5 mm).
Assuming that 296 millimetres was the length of a Roman foot and that there were five
feet to a Roman pace, and one thousand Roman paces to a mille passus, then a Roman
'mille' would be 1480 (say 1500) metres.
If we estimate the Roman mile at about 1 500 m, each soldier would have single paces of
about 750 mm. They simply selected a pace length that was a little stretched yet
comfortable for their smallest soldiers and the taller soldiers kept in step using smaller
paces; modern armies still use a standard pace of 750 mm.
Every country that was influenced by Rome 2000 years ago had units with the names
'inch', 'foot' and 'mile, or local languages equivalents. All countries that were part of the
Roman Empire had 'inch', 'foot' and 'mile' units but the lengths of these varied widely
even within the same country. Countries further away from Roman influence such as
China and Japan used other non-Roman units.
It's interesting that people who want to 'go back to miles' really want to use an old Roman
decimal system. The metric system currently uses 'milli' to mean one thousandth.
Roman mass
For measuring mass the Romans used scales called 'Libra Pondo'. The word pound is
derived from the second part of Libra Pondo and the abbreviation for pound (lb.) is
derived from the first part of Libra Pondo. In Latin Libra meant scales and pondo
referred to the weights that were placed on the pan of the scales. The Romans shortened
Libra Pondo to libra.
The Roman libra of about 500 g was divided as follows:
1 libra = 12 unciae = 48 sicilici = 96 drachmae = 288 scripula = 576 oboli = 1728 siliquae
Pounds, ounces, and hundredweights were other Roman measures of mass. The word
ounce is derived from the word for a twelfth – uncia. It is interesting that some people
still use a form of uncia as the word inch – and it still means one twelfth. In Rome, there
were 12 ounces (unciae) in a pound. This survived into modern times as the 12 ounces in
a Troy pound and 12 inches in a Roman foot.
The Romans tried other decimal units. An as (from where we got the word ace) was 100th
part of a roman talent and a hundredweight, also a talent, meant a 100 libra pondus.
Commercial goods were originally traded simply by number or volume. When weighing
of goods began, new units of mass were developed, but these were naturally based on the
previously used volume based methods.
The diverse magnitudes of units having the same name, which still appears today in dry
and liquid measures in the USA, could have arisen from the nature of the various
commodities traded. The larger avoirdupois pound for goods of commerce might have
been based on the volume of waterm, that has a higher bulk density than grain.
There is some conjecture that as the two methods developed, one was based on a cubic
foot of grain (28.3 litres or 22.4 kilograms), while the other was based on a cubic foot of
(the denser) water (28.3 litres or 28.3 kilograms). To support this idea, the difference
between the theoretical ratio (1.265) and the historical ratio (1.215) is not too far away,
and some historical measuring talents have been found that are approximately equal to
the mass of one cubic foot of water (28.3 kilograms).
All the countries of western Europe used roughly similar 'pounds'. In some countries they
were divided into 12 ounces and in other countries they were divided into 16 ounces;
12 ounce pounds were common in Italy and southern France, but in Spain and northern
Europe 16 ounce pounds were more usual. The name of the 'pound' in Europe usually
traces back to one or other part of the Latin 'libra pondo'. Libra is used for 'pound' in
18
Italy, Spain, and Portugal and in France it is called the livre. Variations of the Latin word
'pondo' are the origin of the English pound, Dutch pond, Danish pund, German pfund,
and Russian funt.
In some English speaking nations there are still two different 'pounds' being used – the
avoirdupois pound and the Troy pound. The avoirdupois pound is divided into
16 avoirdupois ounces and the Troy pound is divided into 12 Troy ounces. An avoirdupois
pound (of 453.592 37 grams) is exactly 175/144 troy pounds. The word avoirdupois
comes from the French phrase 'avoir du poids', which literally means 'to have weight'
and it refers to goods that are sold by weight rather than by volume or by the piece. The
troy pound is named after the French market town of Troyes and one Troy pound (of
373.242 grams) is 144/175 of an avoirdupois pound.
Roman angles
The instrument used for setting out right angles for many thousands of years was the
groma that had been invented and used by the Egyptians in constructing their pyramids.
A groma consisted of 4 stones hanging by cords from two sticks joined at right angles.
Measurements were made by lining up two of the strings and the point of the
construction that was to be set.
The groma worked well on fairly flat construction sites so it was widely used for road
construction. A carving on a tomb near Turin dating from the first century CE, shows a
groma on the tomb of Lucius Aebutius Faustus, who was described as an agrimeter,
literally an earth measurer.
55 BCE and 54 BCE
Julius Caesar visited England but chose not to remain there as an occupying force.
25 BCE
A Roman book on architecture describes a device for measuring distances that worked by
counting the revolutions of a wheel with a known diameter. These days this would be
called an odometer, or a distance-measuring wheel (or more humorously a metre meter).
9 CE (Common Era)
Emperor Wang-Mang standardised the measurements of China. These became known as
'the good measures of Wang-Mang'. However, with the decline of central authority over
the centuries, regional measures gradually underwent growing differentiation between
the regions and also increased in size – with the (capacity) measure of grain increasing
most markedly. By the Ming dynasty, the basic measure of length, the chi or foot, was
400 millimetres longer than under Wang-Mang; the standard unit of mass doubled and
the grain measure of capacity quadrupled!
40
Heron of Alexandria (10/70 approx.) described an instrument that he called a dioptra
that possibly dated from about 150 BCE. Dioptra comes from the Greek word that means
‘to see through’. A dioptra was used to accurately measure angles and it was the
forerunner of the modern theodolite.
43
The Roman conquest of England by Aulus Plautius introduced the Roman 1000 paces as
the measure for long marching distances. The Latin term 'mille passus' for 1000 paces
was soon shortened, firstly to 'mille', and then to 'mile' in English.
As a Roman double pace was assessed as about 5 English feet, the English mile was
considered to be about 5000 English feet. Later, it was stretched to 5280 feet to
accommodate exactly 8 furlongs, a popular English measure of the time that derived its
name from the length of a furrowed ploughed with the assistance of oxen.
19
By coincidence, a furlong is roughly the same length as the various Greek and Roman
stadions that had been inherited from even more ancient times. It seems to have been the
optimal length for the traditional ox-drawn plough before the oxen need to rest.
79
When the Mount Vesuvius volcano erupted burying Pompeii, it preserved many parts of
the town and its artefacts. Among these were measuring instruments of the times such as
the groma for measuring angles. The Pompeii groma were made with iron main supports
with four bronze plumb bobs.
90
Ptolemy (90/168 approx.) was born in Egypt and given the name Claudius Ptolemaeus
(Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαίος) that identified him as a Roman citizen, with Greek family
connections, who lived in Alexandria in Roman Egypt. He became a mathematician,
astronomer, and geographer who is known for two great scientific works: the
Mathematical Treatise that later became known as Almagest, The Great Treatise, a book
on the known astronomy of the time, and the Geography, a thorough description of all
the geographical knowledge of the Greco-Roman world.
Ptolemy drew the first conic projection plane map of the Earth with North at the top. The
later use of rhumb lines, whereby a ship could steer in a single direction from point to
point on the Earth's surface, built on the convention established by Ptolemy.
Ptolemy also devised the 60 minute and 60 second divisions of the 360 degrees in a
circle, which led to the idea of a nautical mile being equal to a minute of angle at the
Earth's surface.
In the year 150, Ptolemy drew a map of the world that included China, Sri Lanka, and the
Malay Peninsula. He had to make a judgement about the Earth’s circumference to draw
his maps. Unfortunately for him, Eratosthenes' calculations of the size of the Earth had
been lost when the libraries of Egypt were destroyed (they were later discovered in
Constantinople), and Ptolemy miscalculated. His estimate was closer to
30 000 kilometres instead of the 40 000 kilometres (approx.) we now know.
250 to 900
During the Classic period of Mayan civilisation there is evidence that a symbol for zero
was used in their base-20 number system.
400 to 700
The origin of a base-10 positional number system might be traced back to a positional
base-10 number system called in Chinese Hua Ma. Coincidentally, when the number of
pilgrims travelling between China and India reached its peak, decimal numbers began to
be used in India in a manner similar to their use in China.
600
With the demise of the Roman Empire at about this time, there was little measurement
progress in Europe for the next 500 years of the 'Dark Ages'.
At about this time, China had successfully standardised units of measurement, the chi,
the tsin, and the cheng, throughout its territory.
610
The Koran, written between 610 and 632, contains the line:
Woe to those who give short weight! Who when they measure against others take full
measure; but when they measure to them or weigh to them, diminish!
(Koran Sura 83)
20
629
A Chinese traveller, Hiuen Tsiang (602/664 approx.), described Indian measurements as
follows:
In point of measurements, there is first of all the yojana; this from the time of the
holy kings of old has been regarded as a day's march for an army. The old accounts
say it is equal to 40 li; according to common reckoning in India it is 30 li, but in the
sacred book (of Buddha) the yojana is only 16 li. In the subdivision of distances a
yojana is equal to eight krosas (ken-lu-she): a krosa is divided into 500 bows
(dhanus): a bow is divided into four cubits (hastas): a cubit is divided into 24 fingers
(angulis): a finger is divided into 7 barley corns (yavas): and so on to a louse (yuka),
a nit (liksha), a dust grain, a cow's hair, a sheep's hair, a hare's down, a copper
water (a small hole in a copper cup for water administration), and so on for seven
divisions, till we come to a small grain of dust (anu): this cannot be divided further
without arriving at nothingness, and so it is called the infinitely small (paramanu).
Some historians regard this attempted organisation of measuring words as a system. It is
probably better to regard this simply as an attempt to provide some sort of credibility to
these old measuring words, even though they obviously had no standard definitions to
provide them with any secure foundation. It is better to think of the metric system as the
only measuring system that ever existed, and that all previous collections of measuring
words were just that – previous collections of measuring words.
670
Arabic mathematicians in Iraq used a zero digit between nonzero digits, but not after
nonzero digits.
732
During the reign of Ethelbert II, who was the king of Kent, the 'acre' was in common use.
However, there was no real standard as to what an acre was. The size of an acre varied
according to how much land could be ploughed in a day. Acres on rough, hilly, or clay
ground were smaller acres than land on easily ploughed flat or sandy land; acres nearer
to a market town were smaller than acres further away from the market.
742
Charlemagne (742/814 approx.) became King of the Franks in 771 and, by agreement
with the pope, he built the Holy Roman Empire that extended from the Vistula River to
the Atlantic, from the Baltic Sea to the Pyrenees mountains, and also included nearly all
of Italy and some of the Balkans.
During Charlemagne's lifetime he issued several Capitulare missorum documents that
were intended to protect the whole population from cheating and corruption. Often these
were written especially to protect poor people such as wards and widows. Charlemagne
also gave encouragement to commerce; the fairs were protected and weights, measures,
and prices were regulated.
789
Karaouiyine University was founded in the city of Fez in Morocco. It is the oldest
educational institution in the world and still has a mosque and a library. The university
re-established the concept of a decimal point based on its use in India. Probably because
of Karaouiyine University, at one time Fez was the largest city on Earth.
The university was founded following a bequest from a remarkable woman, Fatima al-
Fihria, who had fled religious persecution in Tunisia. Fatima's generosity is greater than
it might appear as, being a woman, she couldn't attend her own university. However men
from all over North Africa, the Middle East and Europe did attend, and this gathering of
students had a major impact on mediaeval Europe, as the male students included both
21
Muslims and Christians. The university had an effect on the decimal metric system in
Europe after Gerbert d'Aurillac attended there in about 965 (see 965 below).
800
In Baghdad, a school of science was founded.
807
Charlemagne introduced uniform length and weight measures in his empire. Like many
kings both before and after him he was aiming to reduce the number of existing
measurements, to simplify measurement and reduce cheating. Charlemagne tried to
standardise measurement through much of Europe by sending model weights and
measures to all parts of his empire. Unfortunately these failed to overcome centuries of
traders, kings, princes, queens, bishops, cardinals and popes making their own measures
that suited their individual commercial practices and aspirations.
830
The Arab mathematician Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi
(790/840 approx.) described the use of 0 (zero) in his book, Hisab al-jabr w'al-
muqabala. From that name we get the name 'algebra' for that part of mathematics where
symbols are used to develop general mathematical principles. Algebra was one of the two
operations he used to solve quadratic equations. From the Latin form of al Khwarizmi we
get the word algorithm for a logical step-by-step procedure. Another of Al-Khwarizimi's
books is called 'Concerning the Hindu Art of Reckoning' and this is largely a translation
of the arithmetic and algebra works of the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta, added
to several ancient Greek mathematical manuscripts.
Our modern numbers are sometimes called Indian/Arabic numbers because Arab
scholars learned of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0 from the Indian people
through the work of al-Khwarizmi. Latin translations of al-Khwarizmi's works spread to
Europe after Adelard of Bath translated them in the early 12th century (see 1080 below).
European people soon saw the value of these decimal calculating methods.
In addition to the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0 al-Khwarizmi's works also
introduced these concepts to a European audience: algebra, astrolabes, astronomical
tables, better clocks, calculus of two errors (a precursor to differential calculus), higher-
order equations, map theory, trigonometry tables, and volumetric analysis.
Astrolabes were used by astronomers, navigators, land surveyors, and for timekeeping
both on a daily basis and for calendars. You can predict the positions of the Sun, Moon,
planets and stars using an astrolabe. The Hindu Arabic numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
and 0 form the basis of the decimal system that we all use today.
874
Arabic mathematicians used a base 10 positional numeral system, with a zero between
numbers and also after nonzero numbers.
900 about
The rod, also called a pole or a perch, was a traditional Saxon land measure that had
originally been defined as … the total length of the left feet of the first sixteen men to
leave church on Sunday morning.
960
Around the middle of the 10th century the Saxon King Edgar the Peaceful kept The
Yardstick at Winchester as the official standard of measurement for the southern Saxon
lands. He issued a decree that all measures must agree with standards kept in
Winchester. Little is known about this standard of measurement other than its existence
in historical records.
22
965 about
One of the people who attended Karaouiyine University (see 789 above) was Gerbert
d'Aurillac (946/1003 approx.) who was a prolific scholar and teacher who, even though
he was French, became Pope Silvester II. Due to his connection with the Islamic world,
speculation that he had Sephardic-Jewish ancestry, and especially because of his
interests in science and intellectual thought, there were many rumors about Pope
Silvester II being a sorcerer and in league with the devil.
Gerbert d'Aurillac introduced knowledge of Arabic arithmetic, mathematics and
astronomy to Europe, especially to France and Italy, including Arabic numerals and the
concept of zero.
976
Robert K. G. Temple in his book, The Genius of China – 3,000 Years of Science,
Discovery and Invention says that the first evidence of decimal numbers in Europe was
published in a Spanish manuscript.
1000 to 1500 about
In medieval Europe, trade guilds set the local laws on weights and measures (largely to
suit themselves) on a city-by-city basis. For example, an ell was a measure of length
commonly used for buying and selling fabrics. In Europe the length of an ell varied from
about 40o millimetres Germany, to about 700 millimetres in The Netherlands, and to
about 950 millimetres in Scotland.
1038
Ibn al-Haytham al Hazan, (usually known simply as al Hazan), one of the earliest
experimenters and pioneers of optical science, published seven volumes of experiments,
mathematics, and explanations of observations that he called 'Optics'. He wrote that
vision was the result of rays of light reaching the eye from external sources. He taught
that light rays emanated in straight lines from every point of a luminous object such as
the Sun or a star. He also studied reflection by mirrors, refraction by lenses and
magnifying glasses. For his studies on refraction, he wrote about the angle at which light
is bent when passing from one medium to another. Later, translations of Optics into
Latin influenced scientists, such as Roger Bacon (1214/1292 approx.), René Descartes
(1596/1650), Pierre de Fermat (1601/1665), and Johannes Kepler (1571/1630).
1080
Adelard of Bath (1080/1152 approx.) was born in Bath. He is included in this chronology
because he introduced Indian/Arabic decimal numbers into England and into Europe
with the even more important addition of the concept of zero in his Latin translation
(with commentaries) of al-Khwarizmi's Hisab al-jabr w'al-muqabala (see 830 above)..
In many ways it was the introduction to Europe of Indian/Arabic numbers and the use of
zero that helped Europe revive after many centuries of dark ages. The use of zero made it
possible to calculate without using counters in a checkerboard pattern of squares marked
out on a table.
Adelard of Bath developed his ideas when he travelled extensively and studied at Tours
and Laon in France, Salerno in Italy, Syracuse in Sicily, Athens in Greece, and Antioch in
Syria. When he returned to England he translated many important Arabic and Greek
scientific works on astronomy, philosophy and mathematics into Latin. It was Adelard of
Bath who introduced many of these new ideas to Europe and especially to England.
Sometimes we forget how much the proto-science of ancient astronomy has contributed
to accuracy in measurement.
His book Quaestiones Naturales (Natural Questions), showed how reason and
observation could be used to explain natural events. Because of his studies, Louise
23
Cochrane titled her book, Adelard of Bath, the First English Scientist (British Museum
Press 1994).
1100
The University of Paris was founded
1101
There is a story that King Henry I of England (reigned 1100/1135) is reported to have
introduced a length measure, called a yard, and decreed that a yard is … the distance
from the tip of the King's nose to the end of his outstretched middle finger.
Before this, and as early as the middle of the 10th century, it was believed that the Saxon
king Edgar the Peaceful kept a yardstick at Winchester as the official standard of
measurement. It would appear that Henry had lost Edgar's Yardstick or, more likely, it
had been destroyed.
The story about King Henry is probably based on the Chronicles of William of
Malmesbury (1095/1143) who tells how a false yard was corrected by referring it to the
length of King Henry I's arm. However, William does not say that this was the origin of
the yard. The word yard existed in the keeping of the guilds that dealt in cloth before
Henry I was born. Whatever the truth of the story about King Henry I, it is probably true
that the kingdom needed some sort of standardising laws as several different yards were
then in use in England.
The origin of the word yard to mean a measure of length is not definitely known. Some
believe the origin was the double cubit; others believe that it came from half a French
toise (or half a fathom); still others say that it is associated with the word 'gyrd' (a
rod), or with the circumference of a man's waist. Binary numbers, 2, 4, 8, 16, divided the
early yard and the parts were known as the half-yard, the span, the finger, and the nail.
In the time of King Henry I, the Chancellor of the Exchequer got his title from the
counting checkerboard that he used to count out the king's taxes and expenses. The
Exchequer's table was covered with a cloth with embroidered rows and columns and it
was large enough (3 metres long and 1.5 metres wide) for calculations to be supervised
publicly – and you can be sure that every move was closely watched. When a zero was
needed one of the squares on the Exchequer's table was simply left empty. As this was a
time when the use of the abacus was increasing in England, it seems likely that Adelard
of Bath had an official role at the Exchequer's table of Henry I (see 1107).
1105 to 1114
Adelard of Bath travelled to Salerno, Spain, Italy, Sicily, Greece and probably Toledo,
Asia Minor, and North Africa. He is recorded as being in Manistra near Antioch standing
on a bridge when a severe earthquake struck there in 1114.
1107
Adelard of Bath wrote a treatise on the use of the Regule Abaci (Abacus), a device to help
calculating problems in arithmetic. The abacus is sometimes incorrectly called an early
hand-held calculator, but it is really a register or accumulator for remembering what has
been counted. Adelard recorded the names of the Indian/Arabic numbers as:
Igin (1), Andras (2), Ornis (3), Artoes (4), Quinis (5), Caletes (6), Zenis (7), Temerias
(8) and Calentes (9).
The zero (cifra, circulus, sepos, or theca) was a little more complex as it had several
different names and symbols that were all some sort of circular shape, sometimes with a
bar through the middle like the Greek letter theta and sometimes with a dot in the middle
like a target. Eventually, however, these were simplified into a simple written circle or
oval which was easier to write with a quill pen carved from a feather.
24
For an intriguing treatment of this, I commend Robert Kaplan's book, The Nothing That
Is: A Natural History of Zero. Kaplan suggests 'that O arose from the depression left by
a circular counter's removal ' on a sand-covered counting board (precursor of the
abacus).
1116 to 1152
During these years Adelard of Bath wrote original works and made important
translations from Greek and Arabic into Latin.
He wrote Quaestiones Naturales (Natural Questions ) that included more than 50
questions on what we would consider today to be scientific matters. Here are some of the
questions he tried to answer:
What is the shape of the Earth (he believed it was round)?
How are the Sun and the Moon supported in the air?
What causes tides?
How does the Earth remains stationary in space?
How would a rock fall if dropped into a hole through the Earth (centres of gravity)?
How is it that matter is not destroyed when it changes in chemical reactions
(conservation of matter)?
Why does water experience difficulty flowing out of a bottle-shaped container that
has been turned upside down (atmospheric pressure and vacuum)?
As an example of his writing, he says of the manners and customs of his own country
that:
… he has learned that its chief men are violent, its magistrates wine-lovers, its
judges mercenary, its patrons fickle, private men sycophants, those who make
promises deceitful, friends full of jealousy, and almost all men self-seekers.
He wrote a book, De opere astrolapsus, on the astrolabe (see 830 above) which showed
how an astrolabe could be used to:
calculate the heights of buildings and the depth of pits and wells;
determine the longitude and latitude of any place (the astrolabe continued to be
used for navigation until the 17th Century);
show the precise positions of the stars and planets in relation to the fixed stars;
1196 November 20
King Richard I (Richard the Lionheart – reigned 1190/1199) of England proclaimed an
'Assize of Measures' during which the first documentation of a standardised unit of
measurement was made. It read:
Throughout the realm there shall be the same yard of the same size and it should be
of iron.
King Richard then had defined standards made in the form of iron rods as 'the iron yard
of our Lord the King' and these were distributed throughout the nation. The expression
'measured by the King's iron rod' appears frequently in subsequent records, especially in
legal records.
Prior to this all English measures were defined in terms of an inch where
… it is ordained that 3 grains of barley, dry chosen from the middle of the ear, full
and round, make an inch; 12 inches make a foot; 3 feet make an Ulna; and 5 and a
half Ulnae make a rod.
1202
The man who brought Indian/Arabic decimal numbers to Europe was Leonardo Bonacci
(1170/1250 approx.) known as Fibonacci, which was a short form of the Latin Filius
Bonacci (son of Bonacci)).
Fibonacci's father was a merchant who served as a customs officer in Algeria in North
Africa. His son went with him, travelled widely in Algeria and later went on business trips
to Egypt, Syria, Greece, Sicily and Provence in France. As he travelled he learned the
different methods that people used to count and to calculate. Fibonacci had a natural
talent for mathematics and he won many of the calculating contests that were popular at
that time.
When Fibonacci returned to Pisa he used the knowledge gained on his travels to write
Liber abaci (The Book of Calculations) in which he reintroduced decimal numbers to
Europe. The first chapter begins with these words.
These are the nine figures of the Indians: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. With these nine figures,
and with this sign 0 which in Arabic is called zephirum, any number can be written,
as will be demonstrated.
Before Adelard of Bath and Fibonacci, European people were still using the numbers left
behind by the Roman Empire. Even in the 21st century some people still use Roman
numerals. For example, notices after films and television programs give the year as
something like MCMXCVIII (for 1998).
Fibonacci's book became very popular because of the obvious advantages of decimal
numbers over Roman numerals. However, it was not a smooth transition. Several
attempts were made by church officials to suppress Fibonacci's book because they
believed that it was foreign and because it came from Islamic scholarship. His book was
extremely important in starting the progress of getting the decimal system universally
adopted.
Technically, Fibonacci encouraged the use of one of the most important discoveries of
early mathematics – a fully positional notation with a representation for the number zero
– we now all learn this in our first few years at school.
Our present use of decimal numbers for all of our counting and calculating is based on
two separate discoveries: the Indian/Arabic decimal numbers brought to Europe by
Adelard of Bath and Fibonacci and the decimal point from John Napier, Laird of
Merchiston, in 1616 (see below). The word, decimal, is derived from the Latin decimus,
meaning a tenth.
26
Our decimal number system is called a base 10 system because it is a positional numeral
system using 10 as its base and requiring 10 different numerals, the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
6, 7, 8, 9, and a comma or a dot (called the decimal marker or the decimal point).
Despite the long history of people using decimal numbers, in 1986 Witold Kula in his
book Measures and Men felt a need to re-argue the case against using decimal numbers
in favour of numbers based on halves (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 etc), duodecimals (divided by
12s), vigesimals (divided by 20s), and sexdecimals (divided by 60s).
1209
The University of Cambridge was founded.
1215
A major attempt to standardise English measures was included in the Magna Carta. The
English King John (reigned 1199/1216), also known as 'Lackland', was forced by his
Barons to sign a document called the Magna Carta, which among other things had a
clause that provided for uniform weights and measures. In part the Magna Carta read:
There shall be one measure of wine throughout our whole realm, and one measure of
ale and one measure of corn--namely, the London quart;--and one width of dyed and
resset and hauberk cloths--namely, two ells below the selvage. And with weights,
moreover, it shall be as with measures.
To see a copy of the original Magna Carta go to:
http://www.bl.uk/treasures/magnacarta/magna_main.html
Clearly the Magna Carta was among other things another attempt to standardise
measures, particularly of wine and beer, throughout England.
1242
Roger Bacon (1214/1292 approx.) is famous for making accurate predictions without any
experiments. For example, he believed that the earth was round and that people could
sail all the way around it; this was not done until some of Ferdinand Magellan's crew
returned to Spain in 1522.
Roger Bacon carried out experiments on lenses and mirrors and he made his own
magnifying glasses. He was the first person to think of a refracting telescope but he didn't
make one. In 1242, he invented and wrote exact formulas for making gunpowder, which
was in regular military use within 100 years.
1266
King Henry III (reigned 1216/1272) set out a standard based on the weight of grains of
wheat:
The English penny which is called a sterlyng, round and uncut, ought to weigh
32 grains of wheate taken from the middle of the ear. And the ounce to weigh
20 pennies. And 12 ounces make the London pound, that is to say 20 shillings
sterlyng.
In England, this was yet another attempt to standardise measurement. This law made a
clear connection between money and mass, in that 240 pennies (of money) was made
equal to one pound (of mass). The same law also provided for eight pounds to be the
weight of a gallon of wine. Despite this attempt to standardise measurements, variations
and abuses continued long after the law was passed. For example, there were still three
different gallons (ale, wine and corn).
1267
Roger Bacon sent a copy of his Opus Majus (Latin for Greater Work) to Pope Clement
IV. In this 840 page book, he writes about:
27
marine pilot, is credited with perfecting the sailor's compass by freely suspending a
magnetised needle and enclosing the compass in a box with a glass cover. The compass
was soon used in discovering many new lands.
1302
The États Généraux, the General Assembly of France, met using the motto 'One king, one
law, one weight, one measure’. After several sessions it was discovered that the
noblemen and the guilds were bribing politicians to vote against reform of weight and
measures, because they were profiting greatly from the prevailing measuring confusion.
1303
In England an Assize of Weights and Measures was held and another attempt was made
to standardise measures. One of its decrees was:
… an English penny, which shall be called sterling, round without clipping, shall
weigh 32 grains of wheat dry in the midst of the ear, and twenty pence do make an
ounce, and 12 ounces one pound and 8 pounds do make a gallon of wine, and
8 gallons do make a London bushel, which is the eighth part of a quarter.
From this it is clear that several units with the same name – pound – were to measure
mass, weight, money, and capacity or volume. At the time there were several English
pounds: the Tower pound was probably the one meant by the Assize, but there were also
lighter pounds such as the subtill pound and the foyle pound. Later the troy pound and
the avoirdupois pound, both from France, joined all the other pounds in England.
1304
A law was promulgated in England that, for medicines, a pound would weigh the same as
20 shillings of money, or 12 ounces of weight. Other things, which were not medicines,
were to be weighed with a pound of 15 ounces. However, in both cases, an ounce was the
same weight as 20 pennies.
1324
The inch was re-established in England as the length of three barley grains taken from
the centre of an ear by King Edward II (reigned 1307/1327) when he reverted back to the
seed concept of the ancients and passed a statute that ‘three barleycorns, round and dry
make an inch’. The 'yardstick' of Edward I was no longer legal. This barleycorn definition
also redefined the foot, yard, rod, pole, perch, and mile to suit the new, highly variable,
inch.
1335
The word clock is associated with bells. If a device for keeping time does not have some
sort of a bell, it is technically called a timepiece.
There was a working mechanical clock in Milan in 1335. In A history of mechanical
inventions, Abbott Payson Usher quotes from Mesure du Temps by Berthoud who
describes this clock as follows:
There is a wonderful clock, because there is a very large clapper which strikes a bell
twenty-four times, according to the XXIV hours of the day and night, and thus at the
first hour of the night gives one sound, at the second two strokes, at the third three
and at the fourth four; and so distinguishes one hour from another, which is of the
greatest use to men of every degree.
The Milan clock is regarded as the first mechanical clock because, although there might
have been clocks before then, evidence for them is limited. Several more mechanical
clocks were operating in Italy by 1350.
29
1350
Around 1350, nobles and clergy who had properties on both sides of the channel were
introducing measuring methods from France. Using two measuring methods, English
and French, soon led to confusion. Edward III, Henry V and Henry VII all tried and
failed to simplify exchange between the two methods.
1400
England was another nation using decimal measures in the early fifteenth century – 100
fathoms in a furlong and ten furlongs in a mile. It also had a measure called a 'wand' that
in modern terms would be 1007 mm long – only a bit longer than the modern metre. An
interesting use of this 1007 mm wand was to make a tun, which was a box 1007 mm long,
wide, and high. This was used to store dried grain for one family for a year. Each full
moon progress was checked, and if the level had fallen more than a man's hand width
(about 100 mm), rationing was required or the tun would not last till next harvest.
1440
The advisers to Henry VI (reigned 1422/1461 and 1470/1471) changed the developing
decimal system in England back to non-decimal methods, somewhere around 1440.
More complicated measuring methods have, throughout history, often replaced simple
measures, usually for commercial, political, or religious reasons.
1450
In a Latin codex, a collection of ancient manuscript texts published in Munich,
Theodericus Ruffi used a decimal division of the degree.
1452
Leonardo da Vinci (1452/1519)
Leonardo da Vinci is the usual name given to Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci and this is
usually shortened simply to Leonardo.
Leonardo is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time; he is
especially remembered for The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa.
More importantly for the metric system, Leonardo was an anatomist, architect, botanist,
engineer, geologist, inventor, mathematician, musician, painter, scientist, sculptor, and
writer who constantly measured so he could invent. His inventions inc
luded: helicopters, hydraulic pumps, mortar shells, musical instruments, parachutes,
reversible crank mechanisms, and steam cannons.
Leonardo was interested in the measurement of time. He observed pendulums swinging
and suggested that they did so with a regular beat for any given length of string, as long
as they didn't swing too far from side to side. Leonardo made this observation a century
earlier than Galileo Galilei, but neither of them actually built a pendulum based clock.
1466
A chart of Nicolaus Germanus divided the degree into 60 equal divisions that he called
miles. His map was based on the incorrect Earth circumference of Ptolemy (about
30 000 km instead of 40 000 km) but it neatly gave him a nautical mile that was, he
thought, near enough to the same length as a Roman statute mile. This error became the
world standard for at least a hundred years, especially in shipping communities.
1476
Caxton invented the printing press.
1482
Johannes Campanus published his first printed edition of the 13 books of Euclid's
30
Elements after the invention of the printing press, and probably used Adelard of Bath's
translation. This became the chief textbook of the mathematical schools of Europe and
continued to be used into the 20th century.
1492
In the year 150 Ptolemy (see 90 above) drew a map of the world that included China, Sri
Lanka, and parts of Malaysia. He also estimated the circumference of the world, but at
about 30 000 kilometres, he got it wrong – the circumference of the world is quite close
to 40 000 kilometres.
The Ptolemy map was the kind of map and scale used by Christopher Columbus. The
navigators of Columbus' time did not have any sort of timing device to determine exact
longitude. The best 15th century information available to Columbus came from Ptolemy.
In 1492 Columbus sailed around an Earth that was at least 33% larger than he was led to
believe.
The error by Ptolemy directly resulted in Columbus' declaring that he had reached and
was exploring India when he had only got to what we now call America. Since
Christopher Columbus' time more accurate measurements of the world's circumference
have kept changing until we finally have co ,me to accept 40 005 kilometres as a good
average.
Francisco Pellos (1450/1500) published a commercial arithmetic book called Compendio
de lo abaco, where he used a dot to represent division by 10. He used terms such as:
'numbre desenal' and 'numbre plus que desenal' to refer to decimal numbers.
1496
Unscrupulous traders introduced many measuring discrepancies into English market
places, so new standards of length were ordered following a parliamentary inquiry.
1497
A fire burned down the king's residence at Sheen (later rebuilt as Richmond Palace). The
standard of length (the Iron Ulna) must have been lost because it is thought that King
Henry VII (reigned 1485/1509) went back 350 years to obtain his length standard. Some
think that he found the wooden yard of Edgar I (the Peaceful), one of the earliest Anglo-
Saxon standards. and made a direct copy of it.
This yard of Henry VII, which became known as the Exchequers Standard because of
where it was stored, is now housed in the Science Museum in London.
King Henry VII tried to make his measurement and weight methods binding on all the
people in England.
This Yard rule was made at the command of Henry VII, King of England … to act as
an Exchequer standard of length. Copies of the rule were issued to the various
boroughs around England to enforce and encourage true measure in trade and
commerce. This standard was not a success and was superseded by a more accurate
length standard produced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I around 1588.
Science Museum, London
It is thought that this new yard (915 mm), with its associated foot one third of its length
(305 mm), was an attempt to secure uniformity of the basic length units instead of the
diversity of 'foot' measures that had survived from earlier times in England and Wales.
They included: Greek common foot – 317 mm, Roman foot – 296 mm, Welsh foot –
251 mm, Saxon foot – 335 mm
1507
In his book, Mercator: the man who mapped the planet (Phoenix Paperback 2002),
Nicholas Crane wrote:
31
Gerhard de Kremer, also known as Gerardus Mercator (1512/1594) named the continent
that was north of America as 'Americae pars Septentrionalis' that translates as North
America (see 1507 above).
It is thought that Mercator named the new continent after Spain's most famous
navigator, the Italian born Amerigo Vespucci. Nicholas Crane suggests that Mercator
might have been influenced by councillors from the Spanish court, which at that time was
located in Brussels. Nicholas Crane thinks that several councillors from the Spanish
Court might have influenced Mercator when he wrote:
Surely, it was these councillors who prompted Mercator to occupy 'North America'
with the only historical caption of its size on the map, a caption which read 'Hispania
maior capta anno 1530' -'Greater Spain, seized in the year 1530'.
Thus, the most modern world map in the Low Countries confirmed that America was
not only separate from Asia, but that it had a northern relative who was larger even
than Europe, and that both Americas belonged to Spain. With a single nomenclative
flourish, Mercator had erected an Imperial barrier to the Indies that ran from pole to
pole.
1533
Peter Apian (1495/1552), a German mathematician and astronomer, published a table of
sines with the radius divided decimally in his book of 'Trigonometrical Tables (Natural)'.
Nicholas Crane in his book, Mercator: the man who mapped the planet, reports how
Mercator's mathematics tutor, Gemma Frisius, described how to survey any area by
triangulation. Crane writes:
… Gemma described how to survey an area of any size on the basis of a single
ground measurement. All his readers required was a makeshift instrument: a flat
piece of wood inscribed with a graduated circle, from the centre of which revolved a
pointer -an alidade -fitted with pins, for sights. By holding the 'planimetrum' level
and orienting it with a compass so that its north-south line was parallel with
magnetic north, the surveyor could rotate the pointer until its sights were aligned
with the landmark in question. The bearing was read from the graduated circle. By
taking bearings from two landmarks, the position of a third could be fixed. Gemma
suggested that the surveyor began by ascending a suitable highpoint, such as the
tallest tower in a town, taking a series of bearings in a circle, then adding them to a
circle drawn on paper. (He) then described how to repeat the process from a second
tower, using the intersecting sight-lines to fix each landmark. Gemma finally pointed
out that a third set of bearings would resolve any problems caused by two sight-lines
converging in a straight line. Coasts and rivers, he added, could be mapped in the
same way.
To draw a map to a known scale, continued Gemma, the surveyor needed to create a
base-line by measuring the actual distance between two of the centres. He gave
Mechelen and Antwerp as an example, and described how to replicate their relative
positions at a reduced scale on the map. Distances between other places on the map
could be calculated using similar triangles. (In walking from Louvain to Antwerp,
Mercator had effectively followed Gemma's instruction that a base-line could be
measured 'by walking over this distance'. A measured base-line from Louvain to
Antwerp would have been sufficient to embark upon the first mathematical survey of
the region.)
This triangulation technique – invented by Gemma Frisius and then developed by Gerard
Mercator – was essentially the same method used by Jean-Baptiste Delambre and Pierre
François-André Méchain for their measurement of the meridian between Dunkerque in
France and Barcelona in Spain starting in 1792 (see below).
33
1543
Nicolas Copernicus (1473/1543) published his description of the solar system with the
Sun in the centre and the planets revolving around it. He is reputed to have awoken from
a stroke-induced coma, looked at his book, and then died peacefully.
1557
King Henry II of France (reigned 1547/1559) issued a weights and measures edict at a
time when the predominant issue of the French government was about disputes between
Catholics and Protestants.
1560
Giambattista della Porta (1535/1615 approx.) founded the Academia Secretorum Naturae
(Academy of Nature's Secrets), thought to be the first academy of science in the world.
1564
Galileo Galilei (1564/1642) was born in Tuscany in Italy. Galileo learned about
Aristotelian physics at the university of Pisa, but he soon began to question Aristotle's
approach. Aristotle had a qualitative and verbal approach, but Galileo preferred a
quantitative and mathematical approach to learning.
Aristotle believed, and argued without any evidence, that heavy bodies fall faster than
light ones. Later on Galileo followed the example of Simon Stevin in Flanders who had
dropped two objects from a high place and noticed that they both hit the ground so
closely together that he couldn't notice any difference between the sounds they made
when they arrived at the ground.
Galileo championed the astronomical ideas of Copernicus, who promoted the idea that
the Earth moved around the Sun. This was in disagreement with the belief, strongly
argued by Aristotle, that the Earth was the centre of the Universe and that the Sun went
around the Earth every day.
Unfortunately for Galileo, the Catholic Church agreed with Aristotle's conjecture, so
Galileo was eventually forced to recant his heliocentric ideas – with the Sun in the centre
of the solar system – and was condemned to spend the last years of his life under house
arrest on orders of the Catholic Church Inquisition.
Galileo is now described by Wikipedia like this:
Galileo has been called the 'father of modern observational astronomy', the 'father of
modern physics', the 'father of science', and 'the father of modern science'.
1569
Mercator, drew a world globe map with the longitude marked in 180 degrees East and
West, and with latitude marked from 0 degrees to 90 degrees from South to North. After
correcting some errors this gave us a map where every point could be described in terms
of degrees of latitude and longitude.
Mercator used Ptolemy's method of dividing degrees so that each degree of longitude had
divisions of 60 miles equal to a statute nautical mile, and each nautical mile was again
divided into 60 units called minutes, and each minute was again divided into 60 units
called seconds.
1574
Citizens in London complained:
The weights used throughout this our realm are uncertain and varying one from
another, to the great slander of our realm.
34
1581
Galileo began his studies of medicine in Pisa.
1582
Queen Elizabeth I (reigned 1558/1603) appointed a jury 'to sort out' England's weighing
and measuring problems. The 21 men on the jury failed to agree on better methods, so
she appointed a second jury. It took them 6 years to arrive at a solution (see 1588).
Johannes Kepler (1571/1630) developed his pendulum theory, that it was the length of
the pendulum that was related to the time for each swing; the mass on the end of the
pendulum was unimportant.
1582 February 24
The Gregorian calendar was introduced because the old Julian calendar year had been
slightly too long and this caused a drift of the seasons because, in the Julian calendar, all
years exactly divisible by 4 were leap years.
To counter this trend a Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius devised a new calendar with
these rules:
Every year that is exactly divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are
exactly divisible by 100; the centurial years that are exactly divisible by 400 are still
leap years. For example, the year 1900 is not a leap year; the year 2000 is a leap
year.
The changes made by Aloysius Lilius also corrected the drift in the civil calendar by
dropping 10 days to bring the calendar back into synchronization with the seasons.
Because Pope Gregory XIII formally decreed the new calendar it is known as the
'Gregorian calendar'. There are others, but the calendar developed by Aloysius Lilius is
the most widely used calendar in the world today. Although Aloysius Lilius went close to
aligning the calendar with the length of the true year it still moves slightly. A recent
suggestion is to make years that are divisible by 4000 normal years, rather than leap
years, to improve the accuracy of the calendar.
1584
The Flemish engineer and surveyor, Simon Stevin (1548/1620), working from Brugge in
Belgium, published a set of tables for working out the amount of interest that banks
should charge for lending money. As he was working out these tables he realised that
decimal numbers could make all calculations in all areas of life much easier. Stevin came
to believe that the use of decimals could rid the world of the cumbersome common, or
vulgar, fractions with all of their various calculating difficulties.
1585
Simon Stevin published two books that were essentially the same. De Thiende (Of
Tenths) was written in Flemish and La Disme (The Tenths) was written in French. These
were decimal arithmetic books in which Simon Stevin described the use of decimal
numbers. These were the first books where the simplicity of decimal numbers was fully
explained. Because of these books, the invention of decimal fractions is often attributed
to Simon Stevin.
Although decimal fractions had been invented, lost, then re-invented several times
previously, they had never been in widespread use. Common fractions and hexadecimal
fractions were also available, but these were regarded as difficult to use. Clearly, Simon
Stevin had in mind that decimal numbers could be used for all crafts, trades, and
professions when he wrote the dedication to his two books on 'Tenths':
Simon Stevin wishes the stargazers, surveyors, carpet measurers, body measurers in
general, coin measurers and tradespeople good luck.
35
Simon Stevin was born in Flanders (Belgium) but spent his adult life in the service of the
Republic of the Netherlands. He was a military engineer and tutor in mathematics, and
adviser in finance and navigation to the rulers William of Orange and Maurice of Nassau.
He organized the school of engineering at the University of Leiden and wrote textbooks
on engineering and bookkeeping as well as arithmetic.
Stevin explained in very definite terms the advantages to be gained by using decimal
fractions in all mathematical operations and those to be derived from the decimal
subdivision of the units of length, area, capacity, money value, etc.
Stevin states in his Introduction that the purpose of his books, De Thiende and La Disme
is to teach the easy performance of 'all reckonings, computations, and accounts' without
common or vulgar fractions. He wrote that his book:
… teaches us all calculations that are needed by the people without using fractions.
One can reduce all operations to adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing with
integers.
Stevin's technique was based on writing a whole number followed by the symbol ‘0’ with
a circle around it – here written as (0) – to represent the units, then each tenth of a unit
is written as a single digit – possibly 0 – followed by 1 with a circle around it (1) then
another single digit – possibly 0 – followed by 2 with a circle around it (2) and so on.
For example, the fraction 123 456/1000 would be written by Simon Stevin as:
123 (0) 4 (1) 5 (2) 6 (3). Stevin called these decimal numbers and the symbols (1) etc
signs. Now we would write this more simply as: 123.456 or as 123,456. It depends on
which decimal marker we choose, but it still means 123 456/1000.
Simon Stevin describes in his books how to add, multiply, subtract and divide decimal
numbers. If you would like to learn more about Simon Stevin's decimal numbers and his
decimal arithmetic you could start with an English translation of his books published by
Robert Norton in 1608. You will find the complete text of Robert Norton's English
translation at http://adcs.home.xs4all.nl/stevin/telconst/10ths.html
Although Simon Stevin suggested a number of decimal methods for various activities, he
made no attempt at any coordination between them; he did not devise a decimal 'system'.
Simon could see no reason why the following items could not be calculated using decimal
numbers – immediately – in 1585.
Compilations of Land Meting – to be divided into decimal Rods and decimal
Perches.
Measures of Tapestry or Cloth – to be divided into decimal Ells and Poles
Measures of Liquor vessels – 1 decimal Ame to be equal to 100 Antwerp Pots
Stereometry in General – to be divided into decimal Rods and Yards
On Astronomical Calculations – the circle to be divided into decimal angles
Moneymasters Merchants and all Estates in General – to be divided into decimal
Pounds sterling, decimal Livres de gros and decimal Ducats.
The last of these was probably the suggestion that eventually led to the worldwide use of
decimal money through the activities and leadership of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas
Jefferson, and George Washington in the USA.
These suggestions would also appear to have been known to known to John Wilkins
(1614/1672).
The following is a repeat of paragraph three, page one, this article:
… a 'universal measure' was first described by John Wilkins in London.
36
Go to the article Commentary on ‘Of Measure’ by John Wilkins for a better understanding
of how the work of John Wilkins, AN ESSAY Towards a REAL CHARACTER, And a
PHILOSOPHICAL LANGUAGE (1668), fits into an historical context.
Wilkins’ Essay shows that the metric system and the International System of Units (SI)
both had their origins in England in 1668.
In her 1969 biography of John Wilkins: John Wilkins 1614/1672 An Intellectual
Biography (University of California Press 1969), Barbara J. Shapiro makes it clear that
Wilkins knew about Simon Stevin's work. She said:
He seems to have been familiar with the most advanced work in the field, including
that of Galileo and Simon Stevinus.
Other contributions to the modern world made by Simon Stevin were the introduction of
double-entry bookkeeping, the replacement of the sexagesimal system by the decimal
system for almost all measurement, and his opposition to the exclusive use of Latin in
scientific writing; after 1583 he published only in Flemish or French.
1586
Simon Stevin's name became prominent in the history of science when he dropped two
spheres of lead, one ten times the mass of the other, from a height of about 10 metres
onto a piece of board. Stevin and his friends noticed that the sounds of the balls striking
the board were almost simultaneous.
1588
Elizabeth I issued a new standard yard that remained the legal British yard until 1824,
when an Act of Parliament under George IV superseded it. This Act attempted to
introduce systems of measures more widely into British society and remove inaccuracies
associated with measurement.
The new standards, made for length and for mass, were cast in metal and 57 copies of the
standards were made for keeping in market towns all around the nation. Precious metals
and stones, however, were still to be weighed in 'grains'.
One of these standards, a new standard yard, consists of an iron bar with a square cross
section, about 13 millimetres on each side. The standard yard was the distance between
its ends. This was the legal British yard for more than 300 years even though, sometime
between 1760 and 1819, it was broken and repaired.
This bar still exists in the Science Museum in London and it has been measured at
914.15 millimetres – a little shorter than the (1959) International standard yard that is
now based on metric system units (that is 914.40 millimetres exactly).
1591
Aristotle had believed, and argued without any evidence, that heavy bodies fall faster
than light ones. In 1591 Galileo followed the example of Simon Stevin in Flanders. Stevin
had dropped two objects from a high place; because they hit the ground so closely
together, Stevin could discern no difference between the sounds they made when they
hit. Galileo repeated Simon Stevin's experiment when he dropped weights of different
sizes from a tower in Pisa.
1593
The term 'statute mile' originated with Queen Elizabeth I, who changed the definition of
the mile from the Roman mile of 5000 feet to 5280 feet or 1,760 yards or 63,360 inches
by issuing a statute. This was largely irrelevant until the USA decided to issue their own
statute mile by redefining the length of a statute foot for the USA as 1200/3937 metre or
0.3048006096 metres approximately. Since then it has been agreed to define the length
of a mile as exactly 1.609 344 kilometres. This is known as the international mile.
37
The statute mile was divided into eight furlongs, the length that a furrow could be
ploughed before the ox or oxen had to be rested (the word furlong is a contraction of the
words 'furrow long'). A furlong was defined as 40 rods long; each rod was defined as
5½ yards; each yard was three feet, making up 5280 feet to one Queen Elizabeth I mile
(depending on the length of the 5280 feet). Since 1593 the length of the mile (and all of
the other old pre-metric measures mentioned here) has changed whenever the definition
of the yard and the foot changed. Currently, the mile used in the UK is a 'metric mile' as it
is based on the length of the metre; the metric mile is exactly 1609.344 metres long.
Around this time Galileo invented a thermometer for measuring temperatures, based on
the expansion and contraction of air enclosed in a glass container.
1595
Bartholomaeus Pitiscus (1561/1613 ) used a notation for his trigonometrical tables that
included the idea of a decimal point. This is considered to be the first use of the decimal
point that we now all use quite regularly.
The English Parliament voted to make an English mile equal to exactly 5280 feet so that
it would be exactly 8 furlongs in an English mile.
1597
Juan Fernandez de Velasco, the Governor of Lombardy, ordered the standardization of
all local measures according to the Milanese standard. All attempts to carry out his
reform failed so badly that his successor, de Fuentes, called it off in 1605 and before long,
the matter was forgotten.
Henry Briggs (1561/1630) was the first Gresham Professor of Geometry; he worked on
astronomy, navigation, and on devising mathematical tables for finding such things as
the height of the pole star and eclipses. He also invented the method of long division
using decimal numbers that many of us learned at school.
1600
Francois Viéte (1540/1603) advocated the use of decimal numbers using a comma ',' as
the decimal marker (he called it the separatrix) with an underbar for the fractional part.
Here is an example: 1234,5678. He also suggested the decimal division of degrees,
minutes, and seconds for measuring angles.
1602
Galileo discovered that the longer the string on a pendulum, the slower it swung, and the
width of the pendulum's arc or of the weight of the pendulum bob made little difference
to the time of the swing. That is, the period of a pendulum (the time it takes for
pendulum to swing back and forth) depends almost solely on the length of the pendulum.
The tradition is that Galileo first began to think about the motion of pendulums as he
watched suspended lamps swinging back and forth in the cathedral of Pisa instead of
attending to the church service.
One of Galileo's most significant observations was based on his studies of the pendulum.
In Pisa, Galileo found the exact length for a pendulum to swing through its arc in exactly
one second. This became known as a 'seconds pendulum'. A seconds pendulum is a
pendulum whose period is exactly two seconds; one second for a swing in one direction
and one second for the return swing.
We now know that a seconds pendulum varies according to where it is on the Earth. For
example at the equator the seconds pendulum is 991 millimetres long, at the North Pole
it is 996 millimetres and at 45° North of the equator it is in between, at 994 millimetres.
The pendulum is mentioned in two of Galileo's books: Dialogue Concerning the Two
Chief World Systems (1632) and Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (1638).
Galileo suggested that a more accurate clock might be made using his observations of
38
pendulums but, like Leonardo da Vinci before him, he never got around to making one.
The idea of a fixed standard length for a clock pendulum proved to be particularly
intriguing for scientists at that time. Galileo's discovery spread quickly throughout the
world, especially in Europe, and soon led to further study of time intervals and the
development of pendulum clocks; most of the 'long-case' models were made with a
pendulum that was close to being one metre long.
1603
Federico Cesi founded the Accademia dei Lincei, in Rome, for the study of mathematics
and natural sciences. See http://www.lincei.it
Johann Hartmann Beyer (1563/1625) published a book, Logistica Decimalis, in which he
claimed to be the inventor of decimal numbers.
1608
When Simon Stevin's book was translated into English, Robert Norton, an 'engineer and
gunner', gave it the title 'Disme: The Art of Tenths’ or ‘Decimall Arithmeticke'.
From this title, the USA eventually used the word 'Disme' (without the silent internal 's')
as the name of the coin that is a tenth of a dollar. The dime in the USA is quite likely the
world's only coin named after a book! You can read Robert Norton's translation at
http://adcs.home.xs4all.nl/stevin/telconst/10ths.html
1609
Johannes Kepler published his Laws of Planetary Motion.
Galileo began to use the telescope, developed by Lippershey in 1608, for astronomy.
1610
Galileo discovered Jupiter's moons, sunspots, and stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.
1613
Richard Witt published another English translation of Simon Stevin's Decimal
0Arithmetic.
1614
The Estates General met in France. This meeting consisted of the three French Estates.
The first estate was the church;
the second estate was the nobles;
the third estate was the commoners.
The Scottish laird John Napier, Laird of Merchiston (1550/1617), developed logarithms.
These were designed to replace lengthy calculations using multiplication and division
with easier calculations using addition and subtraction. At Gresham College in London,
Henry Briggs was enthusiastic about the:
… new and remarkable logarithms. I never saw a Book which pleased me better or
made me more wonder.
John Wilkins (1614/1672) was born at Fawsley, Northamptonshire. His father was a
goldsmith, and his grandfather a vicar.
1615
John Napier used a comma as a decimal marker to separate the whole number part from
the decimal number part in his book, Rabdologia. He used a comma in his early works
and then later changed to using a dot as his decimal marker.
39
1616
When Edward Wright translated John Napier's book, Descriptio from Latin to English,
he also improved on Napier's and Stevin's notations of decimal numbers. It is Wright's
decimal notation complete with the decimal point “.” that he used in his A Description of
the Admirable Table of Logarithms that we all now use.
1617
Willebrord Snellius, (1580/1626), an astronomer and mathematician from Leiden in the
Netherlands made the first calculations of the length of the Earth's meridian.
1619
Henry Lyte published another English translation of Simon Stevin's Decimal Arithmetic.
He also proposed that decimal currency should be linked with decimal weights and
measures.
1620
Edmund Gunter (1581/1626) published his Canon Triangulorum, describing several
measuring instruments that he had invented, including what has become known as
'Gunter’s chain'. This was based on Simon Stevin's decimal arithmetic, in that it had
100 links to facilitate the use of decimal arithmetic to make relatively complex
trigonometric calculations. He also developed 'Gunter's scale', a ruler with lines to show
the logarithms of trigonometric functions, invaluable to people such as surveyors who
constantly needed triangulation calculations. After 1620, a furlong was defined as ten
lengths of Gunter's chain, and the chain had 100 links that were each 7.92 inches long.
It is interesting that Edmund Gunter's base in London, Gresham College, was the same
college where John Wilkins worked in the 1660s. Presumably Gunter was familiar with
Simon Stevin's work on decimal arithmetic, translated into English as Decimall
Arthmetike in 1608. At Gresham College in the 1660s, John Wilkins would have been
familiar with Gunter's decimal work, and the decimal work of Simon Stevin, as he
formulated his ideas for a universal measure based on decimal numbers.
Cornelius Drebbel von Alkmaar (1572/1633) invented a thermometer using alcohol in a
glass tube. Drebbel was from the Netherlands but he lived much of his life in London. He
carried out many experiments in optics and heat, and he could demonstrate lightning
and rain at will. He is regarded as a pioneer in the area of temperature control and
measurement systems, and invented or developed:
improved versions of the telescope, barometers, camera obscura, microscopes, an
incubator for chickens, a solar powered energy system, air conditioning, and an
oven with a smart thermostat.
1624
Henry Briggs found that Napier’s logarithms were too difficult to work with in their
original form. After he visited Napier in Edinburgh he soon devised a new form of
logarithms, his 'logs to base 10', in which to multiply two numbers we simply add their
logarithms.
In his Arithmetica logarithmica he published his extensive hand-calculations of the
logarithms of 30 000 numbers to 14 decimal places, and these proved to be of enormous
value to mariners and navigators.
1627
In the city of Ulm in Germany, Johannes Kepler suggests that an oak tank be made that
would be able to define the measures (capacities) that were valid in that city.
40
1630
The invention of logarithms by Napier and their development by Briggs quickly led to the
development of many instruments based on a logarithmic scale. Most notable was the
slide rule that was widely used for over three hundred years, until the invention of the
pocket calculator at Texas Instruments in 1966.
1631
Pierre Vernier (1580/1637) invented a device to add to a theodolite. He published this in
Brussels as La construction, l'usage, et les propriétés du quadrant nouveau de
mathématiques (The Construction, Use, and Properties of the New Mathematical
Quadrant). His device later became widely known as the Vernier scale and its principle
was applied to a wide range of measuring instruments. Vernier's development attached a
movable ring that, although divided into thirty equal parts, was actually thirty-one half
degrees in length. It was placed so that it was aligned next to the initial scale, that was
also divided into thirty parts, but was actually thirty degrees in length. To measure an
angle precisely to the nearest minute of arc, you simply had to note which division line of
the Vernier scale coincided with which division line of the theodolite. This gave a
precisely measured angle in degrees and minutes.
Pierre Gassendi (1592/1655) observed the transit of Mercury that had been predicted by
Johannes Kepler.
1632
Galileo published Dialogo dei due massimi sistemi del Mondi (Dialogue Concerning the
Two Chief World Systems). In this he compared the Sun-centred and the Earth-centred
ideas of astronomy.
1634
Richard Witt published An Analysis of Stevin's Disme (on decimal arithmetic).
1636
Marin Mersenne (1588/1648) measured the speed of sound by calculating how long it
took for an echo to return over a known distance. His speed of sound was within 10% of
the modern value of 343 metres per second or 1236 kilometres per hour.
1637
John Wilkins became vicar of his hometown, Fawsley, but later resigned to become
personal chaplain to various Lords, Princes, and eventually Charles Louis, nephew of
King Charles I and afterwards Elector Palatine of the Rhine.
1638
Publication of John Wilkins' scientific treatise, The Discovery of a World in the Moone.
in which Wilkins describes a trip to the Moon.
Galileo published Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences.
1639
William Gascoigne (1612/1644) used a micrometer screw gauge to measure the diameter
of the Sun and the planets as viewed through a telescope.
1639 December 4 15:15
Jeremiah Horrocks (1618/1641) observed the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun.
His observations allowed him to calculate the distance of the Sun from the Earth. His
estimate of 96 million kilometres was a long way short of the current value of 150 million
kilometres but it was the best estimate made up to that time.
41
1640
Publication of John Wilkins' A Discourse Concerning a New Planet. This book included a
reprint of his earlier book, Discovery of a World in the Moone.
1641
John Wilkins anonymously published the first English language book on cryptography –
secret writing in code. It was a small but comprehensive work called Mercury, or The
Secret and Swift Messenger.
A Scottish measurement law attempted to produce national Scottish standards to
facilitate local and intercity trade.
1642 December 25
Isaac Newton (1643/1727) was born at Woolsthorpe. It is said that he was born
'prematurely and posthumously'. Prematurely because he was small enough to fit into a
small 'quart pot' (about a litre) which suggests that his birth mass was a lot less than the
2500 grams used to define modern babies as premature; his survival was in question for
some time. Posthumously because his father died three months before Isaac was born.
1643
The mercury barometer was invented by an Italian, Evangelista Torricelli (1608/1647), a
pupil of Galileo . Athanasius Kircher (1602/1680) invented the mercury thermometer.
1644
Blaise Pascal (1623/1662) announced a decimal adding machine for the new decimal
French currency that he called a 'Pascaline'. His design was very practical and some
examples were still in use up to the 1960s, after which electronic calculators took their
place. The Pascaline could add up to 10 digit numbers and could 'carry' numbers from
one column to the next.
Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), a French priest, recruited teams of monks to count the
swings of a seconds pendulum continuously for 24 hours. They found the length of the
seconds pendulum was 994 mm (about 36 91/128 old French inches).
1645
Tito Livio Burattini (1617/1681) published the book, Bilancia Sincera (The Honest
Balance) that improved on the hydrostatic balance invented by Galileo. Burattini was
born in Italy but spent most of his life in Poland, where he worked as an architect for the
king. He had previously travelled to Egypt where he studied the obelisks in Heliopolis
and Alexandria.
1648
Tito Livio Burattini designed a flying machine but didn't build it.
John Wilkins published Mathematicall Magick, the first book on mechanics ever written
in English. In this book John Wilkins describes a number of mechanical inventions and
devices that he owned. There are descriptions of clocks, flying machines, submarines,
and perpetual motion machines moved by means of magnets. Mathematicall Magick
also includes general discussions of mechanics, including descriptions of the physical
principles that underlie the use of levers, pulleys, screws, wheels, and wedges.
1648 to 1659
John Wilkins was appointed Warden of Wadham College, Oxford. Under his direction
the college prospered because, even though he was a supporter of Oliver Cromwell, he
remained in touch with his former Royalist friends who placed their sons in his charge at
the College.
42
1655
Isaac Newton went to live with an apothecary, Mr Clarke, so he could attend the
Grammar School at Grantham.
Christiaan Huygens (1629/1695), a Dutch horologist, observed the rings of Saturn.
1656
John Wilkins married Robina Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell's sister.
Christiaan Huygens, who lived in the Netherlands but was not isolated from the world’s
scientific community, made the first clock that used a pendulum to measure time.
Stephen Hawking wrote an anthology, God Created the Integers: The Mathematical
Breakthroughs That Changed History. The title refers to a quotation attributed to
mathematician Leopold Kronecker. ‘God made the integers; all else is the work of man.’
Hawking wrote:
While in Amsterdam, (René) Descartes became friendly with Constantijn Huygens,
secretary to Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange. Huygens came from a family of
diplomats and he became an ardent supporter of Descartes. However, the Huygens
family is best known for Constantijn's eldest son Christiaan (1629/1695) a
contemporary of Newton who the English philosopher John Locke would describe as
the 'Huygenius'. Descartes took an active interest in the education of the young
Christiaan Huygens and Huygens developed Descartes' theory of vortices.
1658 September 3
Oliver Cromwell died and was succeeded as Lord Protector by his son, Richard.
1659
Shortly before his death, Oliver Cromwell arranged John Wilkins' appointment as Master
of Trinity College, Cambridge. This appointment was later confirmed by Richard
Cromwell. Wilkins was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1659 to 1660.
The Italian mathematician, Tito Livio Burattini built a calculator with 18 disks. Some
coupled disks used base 12, some used base 20, but there was no capacity to 'carry'
numbers from one column to the next.
1660 November 28
Following a lecture by Sir Christopher Wren, a group of twelve met at Gresham College in
London and decided to found 'a Colledge for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall
Experimentall Learning'. They called it the Society of London for the Improvement of
Natural Knowledge .
It later became the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge
when King Charles II (reigned 1660/1685) became its patron, and later again simply the
Royal Society, as it still is today.
The Royal Society is now regarded as one of the world's oldest learned scientific
academies still in existence. As a voluntary organisation it serves as the academy of
sciences for the UK.
John Wilkins chaired the first meeting and was the first secretary.
See http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/wilkins/wilkins.html
For those who are not familiar with John Wilkins, here is what Barbara J. Shapiro said
about him in the introduction to her book, John Wilkins 1614/1672 An Intellectual
Biography (University of California Press 1969):
For Wilkins had been in turn or in tandem theologian, scientific experimenter,
Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, science-fiction writer, linguist, encyclopedist,
43
Christopher Merrett (1614-15/1695) wrote to the Royal Society about a technique he had
devised for double fermentation to produce sparkling wine. Later this became known as
the 'méthode Champenoise' or the 'champagne method' when it was used to found a
regional industry in France.
1663
Modern archaeology began when Charles II, with his physician Walter Charleton and
John Aubrey studied the Neolithic stone circle at Avebury in Wiltshire. They submitted
drawings from their studies to the Royal Society.
1664
Sir Samuel Morland (1625/1695) constructed a decimal calculator in England that was an
improvement on Pascal's adding machine. It used a stylus to input numbers and could
'carry' numbers from column to column.
Robert Boyle (1627/1691) published his book of Experiments and Considerations
Touching Colours.
1665
Gabriel Mouton (1618/1694), a country vicar and choirmaster, repeatedly counted and
recorded the swings of a pendulum to establish the relationship between the length and
the time for each swing. Later a device was made of a length such that the pendulum
would beat a second of time; it became known as a 'seconds pendulum'.
The Royal Society published Micrographia by Robert Hooke (1635/1703). This book
contained many drawings made using a microscope and included Hooke's famous
drawing of a flea. Hooke's book was the first to use the word 'cell' as a biological term.
Christiaan Huygens suggested using the freezing and boiling points of water as standards
for a thermometer temperature scale.
Isaac Newton differentiated between spherical aberration and chromatic aberration in a
glass lens. He then pointed out that it was impossible to eliminate or suppress chromatic
aberration in any optical system consisting of lenses. It wasn’t until 1758 that an English
optician, John Dollond (1707/1761) invented achromatic lenses.
Plague appeared in London. Because it was detected by the colour of the lumps that
appeared on its victims, people called it the Black Death. It is thought that the plague
germs were carried by fleas that lived as parasites on rats.
1665 January
Isaac Newton finished his Bachelor's Degree at Trinity College, Cambridge.
1665 August
Isaac Newton moved back to Woolsthorpe from Cambridge due to the Plague. He
continued his mathematical and scientific work at his mother's home.
1666
The Great Fire of London burnt down extensive portions of the central parts of the city.
The French join the Dutch in the war against the English.
Samuel Morland showed a new calculator for English currency that was similar to the
Burattini calculator of 1659. Morland's calculator could add pennies and shillings and
pounds separately but because it was not working with a decimal currency, it could not
'carry' from one unit to the next.
John Wilkins became vicar of Polebrook in Northamptonshire, the same year that the
church where he had been vicar and would be buried, the Church of St Lawrence Jewry
in London, was badly burned in the great fire of London. Later, between 1670 and 1687,
45
was not confident of its success. He wrote about his plans for a universal measure:
I mention these particulars, not out of any hope or expectation that the World will
ever make use of them, but only to show the possibility of reducing all Measures to
one determined certainty.
Later, the development of Wilkins' ideas into what became the metric system in France in
the 1790s was heavily influenced by thinkers in the USA, especially the decimal ideas
promoted by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.
Following the publication of John Wilkins' Essay, many other people in several countries
seemed to take up and promote themes that appeared in it. Here is an extract from John
Wilkins 1614/1672 An Intellectual Biography by Barbara J. Shapiro (University of
California Press 1969):
Some of the greatest minds of the century received Wilkins's efforts warmly. Newton,
who at one time had attempted a similar scheme, mentioned Wilkins's work in his
correspondence. John Locke, too, was interested in Wilkins's work, and
recommended his book on the subject in preference to Dalgarno's. Contemporaries
such as Sir William Wotton even saw a connection between the work of Wilkins and
that of Locke, and suggested that any one wishing to pursue the subject of a
universal character beyond Wilkins should consult Locke's 'An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding'. Leibnitz was very interested in a universal character, and
was familiar with the work of both Wilkins and Dalgarno. One recent writer has
suggested that they, rather than Leibnitz, should be credited with the important
developments in symbolic logic that resulted from the search for a philosophic
language. Wilkins's Essay, although written in English, quickly found its way
abroad. Comenius was sent a copy by Oldenburg. Wallis sent one to the Italian
physicist Giovanni Borelli. Huygens and Leibnitz obtained copies. The Elector
Palatine, Wilkins's former patron, tried to obtain a copy, and Thomas Pigot, one of
the Aubrey circle, was hopeful that the Elector would 'be very instrumental' in
promoting Wilkins's design in his domains. A Latin edition was prepared to make the
work more widely available, but it was never printed. Efforts were undertaken to
translate the Essay into French as well.
As concrete examples of the spread of Wilkins' ideas, they were repeated by Gabriel
Mouton in 1670, Jean Picard (1620/1682) in 1671, and Gottfried Leibniz (1646/1716) in
1673 – see below. The word ‘metre’ probably derived from a translation, by Tito Livio
Burattini in 1675, of Wilkins’ words 'universal measure' into the Italian words, 'metro
cattolico', seven years after the publication of the ‘Essay’ (see below). More information
about the life of John Wilkins can be found from Aubrey's Brief Lives at
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Societies/Aubrey.html
where it is written:
He was no greatly read man; but one of much and deep thinking, and of a working
head; and a prudent man as well as ingenious. He was one of Seth, Lord Bishop of
Salisbury's most intimate friends. He was a lusty, strong grown, well set, broad-
shouldered person, cheerful, and hospitable.
He was the principal reviver of experimental philosophy (in the spirit of Lord
[Francis] Bacon) at Oxford, where he had weekly an experimental philosophical
[scientific] club, which began 1649, and was the cradle of the Royal Society. When he
came to London, they met at the Bull-head tavern in Cheapside (e.g. 1658, 1659, and
after), till it grew too big for a club, and so they came to Gresham College parlour.
From John Aubrey's Brief Lives (Edited by R Barber, Boydell Press, 1982)
Other good references about the life and times of Bishop John Wilkins can be found at:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/wilkins/wilkins.html and http://www-history.mcs.st-
andrews.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Wilkins.html
47
The modern English translation from 17th century English of the pages relevant to
measures from Wilkins’ Essay can be found in the article Translation of Wilkins’ Essay.
The French King Philip I (reigned 1668/1671) redefined the French toise de
Charlemagne. This toise had been a length standard in France since the time of
Charlemagne (reigned 768/814). The toise was situated on the outside of one of the
pillars of the old Châtelet building. This old standard (étalon) was still on that pillar in
1714. Like many of the other toises of length in France the toise de Charlemagne was
about 1.95 metres long.
Isaac Newton devised successful methods for casting and polishing mirrors of the best
shape to use in a reflecting telescope. His first reflector telescope was 160 millimetres
long with a mirror 31 millimetres across.
1668 March 16
Isaac Newton was elected as a major Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
1668 July 7
Isaac Newton was granted a Master's Degree at Cambridge.
1668 August 5
Isaac Newton made his first visit to London.
1669
Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625/1712), an Italian astronomer and mathematician,
travelled to France to work with Christiaan Huygens (1629/1695), the man who invented
the pendulum clock, and Adrian Azout, to help develop better scientific instruments. He
became a French citizen and was known as Jean-Dominique Cassini. Their observations
and better instruments made it possible to measure the movements of the moons of
Jupiter and to see the rings of Saturn. The rings of Jupiter became important later to
measure time accurately to determine the lines of longitude on the Earth's surface.
Jean Picard (1620/1682) commenced work to correct the known size of the world after
copies of the lost scrolls of Eratosthenes were discovered in Constantinople by Polish
researchers. Using trigonometrical methods, he set out to establish an accurate distance
from Malvoisine to Sourdon, a distance of about 200 kilometres.
French mathematician Gilles Personne de Roberval (1602/1675) invented the weighing
balance that bears his name. The Roberval balance was an improvement on earlier
balances as it prevented the pans or platforms from tilting as they moved up and down
making sure that the position of weights on the pans had no effect on the way it balanced.
1669 February 23
Isaac Newton described his reflecting telescope in a letter to Henry Oldenburg, first
Secretary of the Royal Society.
1669 October 29
Isaac Newton elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Trinity College Cambridge.
1670
Jean Picard completed a measurement of an arc of a meridian of the Earth to determine
the distance of a degree of arc on the Earth's surface. He had measured the distance from
Malvoisine to Sourdon, a distance of about 200 kilometres, and was accurate to within
about 3 metres (or o.015%). Prior to this, the wrong calculation devised by Ptolemy for
the circumference at the equator had been about 30 000 km instead of 40 000 km now
established. Picard went on to calculate the diameter of the Earth as 12 744 kilometres,
which is very close to the modern equatorial diameter now known to be 12 756 km.
48
Picard worried that he could lose his standard measuring rod, called a toise in French. He
conceived the idea of comparing his standard toise with the length of a simple pendulum
beating in seconds. He reasoned that he could then reproduce a standard toise if he ever
needed a new one. This eventually led to the idea of a standard unit of length based on a
seconds pendulum beating one second at sea level, at a latitude of 45°.
Gabriel Mouton was Vicar of St. Paul's Church in Lyons, France, with a doctorate of
theology from Lyon University. He was also interested in mathematics and astronomy,
and promoted a decimal measurement system that had many similarities to the system
proposed two years earlier by John Wilkins (see 1668) .
Mouton published his ideas in a book called, Observationes diametrorum solis et lunae
apparentium (Observations on the Apparent Diameter of the Sun and the Moon). He
explained the advantages of a system based on nature rather than the length of a king's
foot, and proposed a linear scale based on a geodetic minute to be divided decimally.
Mouton wanted to base a 'universal measure' on the circumference of the Earth. Picard's
estimates of the earth’s circumference had recently become available, so Mouton also
worked out the size that he would need to make a pendulum, so that the size of the Earth
could be referred to by using a pendulum as a convenient and easy everyday standard.
Mouton did not use Picard's estimate of the Earth's circumference. He based his
calculations in his book on the measurements of the size of the Earth conducted by
Giovanni Battista Riccioli of Bologna (1598/1671) an Italian astronomer. We now know
that Riccioli's figures were mistaken because his methods have since proved to be faulty.
Mouton proposed a standard length based on a 1/10 000 of a minute of arc. Mouton's
pendulum, located in Lyon, oscillated 3959.2 times in an hour and so was not a seconds
pendulum. Using back calculation, Mouton's pendulum would have been close to
205 mm long. (There are actually two possible seconds pendulums, depending on
whether you measure the period – forward and backward movement gives a pendulum
about 249 mm long – or only half the period – only forward or only backward that gives a
pendulum about 994 mm long. Eventually, there was agreement in naming the longer
seconds pendulum as the one that gave a second in a single swing of the pendulum, that
is the 994 mm pendulum.
Mouton suggested that the minute of arc along a meridian be measured and defined as a
unit called a 'milliare'. He then suggested a decimal system of measurement dividing the
milliare into centuria, decuria, virga, virgula, decima, centesima, and millesima by
successively dividing by factors of ten. In short, Mouton suggested that, using decimal
divisions, we could use Simon Stevin's 1585 decimal system of tenths to divide an Earth-
based unit into smaller parts. Mouton's milliare corresponded to a nautical mile of
exactly 1852 metres and his virga would, by his definition, have been exactly
1852 millimetres.
Mouton's ideas attracted interest at the time, and were supported by Jean Picard as well
as Huygens in 1673. They were also studied at the Royal Society in London, which had
commissioned the original work by John Wilkins in 1668. In 1673, in Germany, Gottfried
Leibniz independently made similar measurement proposals to those of Wilkins.
It would be over a century later, however, that the French Academy of Sciences weights
and measures committee suggested the decimal metric system that initially defined the
metre as a decimal division of a quadrant of the Earth.
1671
For over a century, the length of a seconds pendulum had periodically been proposed as a
way of establishing a standard length. In 1671, Jean Picard, in his book, Mesure de la
terre (Measure of the earth), proposed defining the French foot, pied or 'universal foot'
as a third, and the toise as twice the length of the seconds pendulum.
At this time, it was the seconds pendulum that had most consensus between scientists.
49
Jean Picard, Olaus Rømer (1644/1710), and other astronomers promoted the idea that
the length of a pendulum beating in seconds should be used as a standard unit of length
for all nations.
They suggested that a pendulum of specified time period could be used as a convenient
sub-multiple for people to use routinely as an everyday standard for length.
Picard specifically suggested a universal foot, to be represented by one-third of the
length of a pendulum beating exactly in seconds. However, it was already known that
identical pendulums set up in different places had different periods of oscillation, so any
such definition would also have to have a specific location for the standard pendulum.
The issue of a specific location was fraught with political problems. Everyone – France,
UK, and USA wanted the specific location to relate specifically to their own country.
1671 December
Isaac Newton sent his reflecting telescope to the Royal Society. Since then reflecting
telescopes have often been called Newtonian telescopes.
1671 December 21
Isaac Newton was proposed for election to the Royal Society in London.
1672
Isaac Newton reported new ideas on the nature of light and colour. He had noticed that
when two flat pieces of glass were pressed together, he could see circular bands of
rainbow-like colours. These came to be called Newton's Rings.
Although Newton did not recognize it immediately, he had discovered a very precise
method for making accurate measurements. Later, other scientists were to use Newton's
Rings to develop and establish a new branch of science called interferometry. Now,
interferometry is routinely used to measure distances down to nanometres.
Thomas Gobert built the Trianon de Saint-Cloud (later to be known as the Pavillon de
Breteuil) for Monsieur, the brother of King Louis XIV, who inaugurated the building.
Jean Richer (1630-1696) discovered that the force of gravity was not uniform around the
world. He made this discovery by comparing the swing of a pendulum at the Observatory
in Paris (45 °N) with the same pendulum in Cayenne, which is quite close to the equator.
1672 January 11
Isaac Newton was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
1672 February 6
Isaac Newton's first letter on Light and Colours was read to the Royal Society where
Robert Hooke, a respected senior scientist and Curator of Experiments for the Royal
Society, criticized it harshly.
1672 February 8
Isaac Newton published his first scientific article, a letter on Light & Colours, in the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
1672 March 25
An account of Isaac Newton's new reflecting telescope was published in the Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society.
Seven additional optical papers by Isaac Newton also appeared in the Philosophical
Transactions throughout this year.
50
1672 November 19
John Wilkins died in London and was buried in the church of St Lawrence Jewry.
1673
The Dutch mathematician, astronomer and physicist, Christiaan Huygens, and the
French astronomer Jean Picard published support for Gabriel Mouton's measuring ideas.
These ideas were also reported to the Royal Society in London.
The German mathematician, Gottfried Leibniz, published measurement proposals
similar to those of John Wilkins and Gabriel Mouton.
1675
Tito Livio Burattini published Misura Universale (Universal measure) in which he
proposed that a pendulum with a period of a second be used as the universal measure of
length. In his book, Burattini first used the expression 'metro cattolico' to describe the
length of this pendulum. This looks like a direct translation of Wilkins' 'universal
measure' into Italian.
The Italian word 'metro' derives from 'metron', a Greek word for measure, and it is
probable that the French word, 'mètre' is also from these sources. Burattini's suggestion
led to the name, mètre, being used as the base unit of length in France and this
subsequently became metre in England.
Tito Livio Burattini wrote that the same word for the universal measure should be used:
… by all civilized people on earth despite differences in languages and custom.
The word, metre, now serves Burattini's purpose, albeit with slightly different spellings in
various languages.
King Charles II established the Royal Greenwich Observatory to determine longitude at
sea by 'the astronomical method'. Like the Paris Observatory (1667) its activities were
limited to astronomy, navigation, and surveying.
He appointed John Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal. Flamsteed’s task was to:
… apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the rectifying of the tables
of the motions of the heavens, and the places of the fixed stars, so as to find out the so
much desired longitude of places for the perfecting of the art of navigation.
Rømer published a short paper where he stated for the first time that light has a definite
speed. He wrote:
This second inequality appears to be due to light taking some time to reach us from
the satellite; light seems to take about ten to eleven minutes to cross a distance equal
Isaac Newton attended his first meeting of the Royal Society in London.
1676
A Danish astronomer, Ole Christensen Rømer (1644/1710), demonstrated that light has
a finite speed and he made the first reasonable estimate of the speed of light. Rømer
based his estimate on the observations made by Cassini on the movement of Jupiter’s
moons.
Rømer's value for the speed of light was 220 000 000 metres per second; this is about
25% less than the actual speed of light, that we now know as exactly 299 792 458 metres
per second.
Ole Rømer was also a pioneer of the metric system, in that he began to evaluate earth
distances by comparing them to the circumference of the whole Earth.
When Ole Rømer visited England in 1679 to examine a pendulum being made at the
51
Royal Academy, he had meetings with Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley.
1677
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632/1723) saw 'animalcules' (little animals) using his
microscope. This was the first view of microorganisms and his observations began the
science of microbiology and the need for measurements on an extremely small scale.
1679
John Locke (1632/1704) suggested the word gry as a unit for length in a decimal
measuring system based on the length of a foot. The gry was to be equal to 0.001 foot and
0.01 inch in a decimalised method for measuring lengths.
Thomas Jefferson (1743/1826), who was very familiar with Locke's writings, proposed a
similar system for the USA in 1790 but he changed the name of 0.001 foot to a 'point'
rather than a 'gry'. The word 'gry was derived from an ancient Greek word that meant a
small amount.
More details of the word gry can be found at:
http://www.onlineunitconversion.com/gry_to_shackle.html
1681
Ole Christensen Rømer became a professor of astronomy in Denmark. One of his first
assignments was to reform the Danish weights and measures. He did this by basing all
Danish measures on the Rhineland foot.
1682
Sir William Petty (1623/1687) in England put forward a suggestion that there should be
five farthings to a penny instead of four so that we could:
'keep all accompts in a way of Decimal Arithmetic, which hath been long desired for
the ease and convenience of Accompting'.
1682 December
Isaac Newton made detailed observations of Halley's comet.
1684 December 10
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz published his first publication on calculus, Nova
Methodus pro Maximis et Minimis (New Method for the Greatest and the Least).
Although he had developed the calculus from his own entirely independent efforts, it
resulted in a bitter priority dispute with Isaac Newton, who had arrived at similar results
earlier but had not published them.
1687 July 5
The Royal Society published Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia
Mathematica, Latin for Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, that is usually
shortened to Principia Mathematica. Among many other things Newton's book
described the action of gravity on both a human and on an astronomical scale. Newton
was aware that a seconds pendulum would have to be shorter near the equator than at
the North or South Pole because the force of gravity is greater near the poles and
centrifugal forces are greater near the equator. Isaac Newton's book was published with
help from the astronomer, Edmond Halley. 'Principia Mathematica' remains one of the
most influential books of all time.
One odd aspect of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica was that Newton felt he could
not rely on English measures for accuracy. Throughout his book he used Parisian feet for
all of his measurements.
52
1689
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689/1755), was born
in Bordeaux. He was a French social commentator and political thinker who trained as a
lawyer, then travelled widely studying political organisations and methods. Montesquieu
was highly regarded in the British colonies in America as a champion of liberty. His
philosophy was that: Government should be set up so that no man need be afraid of
another.
Montesquieu was the most frequently quoted authority on government and politics in
colonial pre-revolutionary America. Following the Declaration of Independence,
Montesquieu's work had a powerful influence on many of the American Founders,
especially on Thomas Jefferson, the 'writer of the Declaration of Independence' and on
James Madison, the 'Father of the Constitution'.
Montesquieu's main work, De l'Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of the Laws) was published in
1748 and quickly rose to a position of enormous influence. This book became influential
as the French Constitution and the Constitution of the USA were being drafted and
written.
John Locke published, A Letter Concerning Toleration and Two Treatises of
Government. Locke, an English philosopher, was very influential to the theory of social
contract and to the theory of how governments should operate. His ideas had enormous
influence on the developments of political philosophy. His writings influenced Diderot,
Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson.
The writings of Rousseau, Locke and Montesquieu all contained ideas that were later
used by Thomas Jefferson and the French National Assembly to compose two documents
that have had a major effect on the whole world: the American Declaration of
Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.
Both documents provided for standards for weights and measures and for laws and
procedures to provide honest measurements for all citizens.
1695
In the lead up to the 'Great Recoinage of 1696’ many voices were heard in support of
decimal currency for the UK. For example, an anonymous broadsheet, 'A letter from
London to a Friend in Westminster, proposing some Particulars relating in the Coyn'
suggested that a 'William Royal' should form the tenth part of a pound, a 'Ropee' should
form the hundredth part, and a farthing should be the thousandth part of a pound.
1696
Newton departed Cambridge for London to become Warden of the British Mint.
1699
Newton was elected Foreign Associate of the Académie des sciences (Paris).
Newton was elected to the Council of the Royal Society.
1701
Ole Christensen Rømer made the first practical thermometer. His thermometer used red
wine as the temperature indicator. Rømer's temperature scale began at 0 for the
temperature of a salt and ice mixture (the coldest thing he could find) and went to 60 for
the boiling point of water. On the Rømer scale the freezing point of water was 7½ and
human temperature was 22½.
1700
Isaac Newton was appointed Master of the Mint.
53
1701
Isaac Newton was elected to Parliament as a Senator from Cambridge.
1703
Isaac Newton was elected President of the Royal Society.
1704
In an English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences called Lexicon Technicum, the terms
‘separating point’ and ‘separatrix’ are used to describe the decimal marker used to
separate the whole number part from the decimal number part.
Isaac Newton published the first edition of his book on light and colour called, Opticks.
1705
Queen Anne (reigned 1702/1707) knighted Sir Isaac Newton in Cambridge.
1706
The English gallon was standardised as 231 cubic inches (3 785 mL).
Benjamin Franklin (1706/1790) was born in Boston.
1707
The Treaty of Union between England and Scotland extended the weights and measures
of England to Scotland. Since then, England and Scotland have had the same standards
for weights and measures.
Sir Isaac Newton published Arithmetica universalis (The Universal Arithmetic) in which
he describes decimal methods of calculation.
1713
Jacques Cassini (1677/1756), the son of Giovanni Domenico Cassini, measured the arc of
the meridian from Dunquerque to Perpignan. He also observed that all domestic
measures in France could usefully be referred to a unit based on a seconds pendulum,
and even all European measures, since the length of a seconds pendulum is about the
same length throughout the continent of Europe.
Sir Isaac Newton published the second edition of his Principia Mathematica.
1714
The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society reported on the first account of
inoculation against disease in England. This started the fight against smallpox that ended
with the global eradication of smallpox by 1979.
1717
Benjamin Franklin invented swim fins for his hands so that he could swim faster.
1718
Benjamin Franklin was apprenticed to his brother James who was a printer.
1720
Sir Isaac Newton's Universal Arithmetic was published in an English language edition.
There is a copy of this in Thomas Jefferson's Library that is now housed at the Library of
Congress in Washington. Jefferson had written a short eulogy to Isaac Newton inside the
front cover.
Jacques Cassini proposed the adoption of a geodetic foot representing (1/6000)
terrestrial minute of arc.
54
1724
Benjamin Franklin travelled to London in order to buy printing equipment. Letters of
credit for him never arrived so Franklin was stranded in London where he continued to
work as a printer's apprentice. While Franklin was in England he swam along the
Thames River from Chelsea to Blackfriars; apparently he entertained thousands of
onlookers by regularly changing his swimming stroke styles.
Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686– 1736) proposed a temperature scale based on what he
considered to be two stable values: the temperature of a mixture of ice water and
ammonium chloride at the low end, and the temperature in his wife's armpit at the high
end. By a process of continual halving and quartering he arranged for there to be
32 degrees from the low temperature to the freezing pint of water and 64 degrees
between the freezing point of water and the temperature of his wife's armpit.
Anders Celsius (1701/1744) used better stable values and decimalised the temperature
scale in 1742 (see below).
1726
Sir Isaac Newton published the third edition of Principia.
1727
Although Benjamin Franklin lived and worked in London as an itinerant printer's
apprentice, he was still able to meet Sir Hans Sloane (1660/1753), a noted collector of
curiosities, who became President of the Royal Society in 1727. Sloane took over the
presidency from Sir Isaac Newton. On Sloane's death in 1754, his extensive collections,
including much Royal Society-related material, became the core of the British Museum.
Benjamin Franklin returned to Pennsylvania where he developed a talent for printing
currency. One employer is quoted as saying he could find 'no one to cut currency like
Franklin'. Franklin helped establish the 'Junto', a society of young men who met for
'self improvement, study, mutual aid, and conviviality'.
1727 March 20
Isaac Newton died and was buried at Westminster Abbey in London.
1729
Benjamin Franklin wrote a pamphlet, 'The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency'.
1731
Benjamin Franklin drew up the articles of association for 'The Library Company', the
first lending library in America.
1733
Jacques Cassini made measurements of the Earth based on terrestrial minutes of arc.
Together with his son, César-François Cassini (1714/1784), they surveyed a portion of the
arc of meridian from Dunkerque in France to Barcelona in Spain.
1735
Charles-Marie de La Condamine (1701/1774), and his party measured a geodetic arc of
meridian in Peru, where they also made equatorial measurements such as the length of
an equatorial pendulum. From these measurements they devised a standard length of a
toise (about 1.95 metres) that became known as the Toise of Peru. Their work helped to
form the basis for the determination of the length of the metre. La Condamine also
proposed international cooperation and a pendulum regulated at the equator, as
determined by himself and 'the hands of nature' as the universal standard for length.
55
1736
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698/1759) completed a geographical survey in
Lapland. This, together with the Cassinis' measurements and the measurements of
Charles-Marie de la Condamine in Ecuador and Peru, refined the value of the earth’s
circumference and radius and established definitively that the shape of the earth is
oblate, which means that it's a sort of flattened sphere. Modern measurements show that
the diameter of the earth at the equator is 12 756 kilometres and that the diameter
through the North and South Poles is 12 715 kilometres. The Earth is 41 kilometres wider
than it is tall. Technically the shape of the Earth is called an ellipsoid or a geoid.
The Copley Medal was established from an endowment of £100 received from the estate
of Sir Godfrey Copley. It is Britain's oldest scientific honour and a forerunner of the
Nobel Prize.
Benjamin Franklin printed the currency for New Jersey.
1737
Pierre Simon Fournier (1712/1768) began to use the point as a typographical unit for
measuring printer’s type. Fournier published his printing ideas in his book Manuel
Typographique. As Fournier lived and worked in France his point size was defined as
1/72 of the French Royal Inch of about 27.1 mm (1 Fournier point ~ 376 μm). Later
definitions used inches with different lengths; English typesetters used the English inch
of about 25.4 mm but kept the 1/72 fraction thus giving English typesetters a point with a
different and smaller size. The English point is defined as about 0.013 888 888 … inches
(~ 353 μm). Later Nelson C. Hawks (1841/1929) of California redefined the printer’s
point as 0.138 exactly or 35 μm (see 1868 below).
Benjamin Franklin was appointed Postmaster for Philadelphia in 1737. Later, Benjamin
Franklin owned a copy of Pierre Simon Fournier’s book Manuel Typographique, which
he probably purchased directly from Fournier when Franklin was in France as a diplomat
between 1776 and 1785.
1740
Nicolas Louis de Lacaille (1713/ 1762) and Jacques Cassini published their results after
measuring an arc of meridian in Europe. Their objective was to measure a line extending
both sides of latitude 45° along the meridian from Barcelona to Dunkerque. Their plan
was to establish the length of a geodetic foot. They intended this foot to be 1/6000 of a
terrestrial minute of arc.
Among other achievements, they further refined the value of the earth’s radius and
established definitively that the shape of the earth is oblate or slightly flattened near the
North and South Poles.
These measurements by Lacaille and Cassini formed the basis of the provisional metre
established in 1793.
Benjamin Franklin proposed the idea of positive and negative electricity.
1742
For his meteorological observations Anders Celsius constructed his Celsius thermometer,
with 0 °C for the boiling point of water and 100 °C for the freezing point. It wasn't until
after Celsius' death that the scale was reversed to its present form.
Anders Celsius had previously been part of the French astronomer Maupertuis' famous
'Lapland expedition' in 1736 to the most northern part of Sweden before he began his
work on his temperature scale. The aim of the 'Lapland expedition' was to measure the
length of a degree along a meridian, close to the pole and then to compare the result with
a similar expedition to Peru near the equator. These two expeditions confirmed Isaac
Newton's belief that the shape of the earth is an ellipsoid flattened at the poles.
56
The Royal Society in London arranged an exchange of length standards with the Royal
Academy of Sciences in Paris. Two identical brass bars were made and a line was marked
on them to show the length of the standard yard using the 1720 iron bar of Elizabeth I.
This mark was labelled 'E' (for English). When the French scientists received the two bars
they marked them with the length of half a toise, labelled it 'F' for France. The French
then kept one of these bars and sent the other one back to the Royal Society in London.
In the UK, a new yard became the first imperial standard. It was a standard that had been
commissioned by the Royal Society, which in turn had been based on an earlier
Elizabethan standard of 1588.
1743 April 13
Thomas Jefferson (1743/1789) was born at Shadwell in Virginia. Coincidentally, this was
the 75th anniversary of the publication of Bishop John Wilkins’ description of a 'universal
measure' on 1668 April 13.
1743
George Washington (1732/1799) inherited his father's surveying equipment and so was
familiar with the simplicity of the decimal measures used with Gunter's decimal chain.
This was important because it meant that George Washington had practical daily
experience in actual use of a decimal measuring method. That gave him an insight as to
how a decimal currency system (such as dollars and cents) might work better than the
English pounds, shillings, and pence or the Spanish pieces-of-eight.
Here is an extract from the historical reference at:
http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/theodolites/theodolitehead_zm.html
Several of our nation's early presidents spent time as surveyors. Lawrence and
Austin Washington inherited the most valuable of the Washington lands when their
father died in 1743, leaving younger brother George Washington (future first
president of the United States) in need of a profession. George did inherit Augustine
Washington's surveying equipment, and, at age sixteen, George embarked on his
first career. George headed across the Blue Ridge Mountains, then considered the
western frontier, to survey land for Thomas, Lord Fairfax.
Abraham Lincoln wrote of the time he spent as assistant to the Sangamon County
(Illinois) Surveyor as something that 'procured bread and kept soul and body
together'. Unfortunately, it apparently didn't always pay the bills, as in 1834 Lincoln
sold his surveying equipment at auction to pay a debt.
1744
Swedish naturalist, Carl Linnaeus (1707/1778) suggested reversing the temperature scale
of Anders Celsius so that 0 degrees represented the freezing point of water (273.15 K) and
100 degrees the boiling point (373.15 K). This became known as the centigrade
temperature scale and gradually became popular throughout the world. The units of the
centigrade temperature scale were designated 'degree centigrade' (symbol – °C).
The 9th Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures (CGPM) and the Comité International
des Poids et Mesures (CIPM) in 1948 formally changed the name 'degree centigrade' to
'degree Celsius', and kept the same symbol – °C.
1745
In England, Bishop Fleetwood, concerned about uniformity of measures, wrote:
What can be more vexatious and unprofitable, both to men of reading and practice,
than to find that when they go out of one country into another, they must learn a
new language or cannot buy or sell anything. An acre is not an acre; nor a bushel a
bushel if you but travel ten miles. A pound is not a pound if you go from a goldsmith
57
to a grocer, nor a gallon a gallon if you go from the alehouse to the tavern. What
purpose does this variety serve?
Benjamin Franklin learned about the newly invented Leyden jar (an early type of
capacitor invented in the Netherlands) from correspondence with Peter Collinson FRS, a
London merchant. He made his own Leyden jar and wrote an explanation of how the
capacitor stored electricity. Franklin's explanation included the ideas of positive and
negative charge and the concept of conservation of charge. These ideas influenced the
next generation of European electrical experimenters, such as Alessandro Volta
(1745/1827)
1747
Charles-Marie de La Condamine repeated Wilkins' proposal for a 'universal measure'
when he wrote 'Nouveau projet 00d'une mesure invariable, propre à servir de mesure
commune à toutes les nations' (New project for an invariable measure appropriate to
serve community measures for all nations). Writing about the need for common
measures, he said:
It is quite evident that the diversity of weights and measures of different countries,
and frequently in the same province, are a source of embarrassment in commerce, in
the study of physics, in history, and even in politics itself; the unknown names of
foreign measures, the laziness or difficulty in relating them to our own give rise to
confusion in our ideas and leave us in ignorance of facts which could be useful to us.
The variety of measures in different countries, and even in the same country, is an
embarrassment. It makes life difficult in trade, banking, science, history, and even in
politics.
In France the infinite perplexity of the measures exceeds all comprehension. They
differ not only in every province, but in every district and almost every town. A pinte
of wine in Saint-Denis was one-third larger than a pinte in Paris. A carpenter’s pied
(foot) was not the same as the ironmonger’s foot. There were about 700 names of
measures and 250 000 different units of measurement.
Condamine proposed that the length of the equatorial seconds pendulum should be
adopted as a universal standard. He had a brass rod made to this length, sealed it in a
block of marble, and had it inscribed: A natural unit – may it become universal.
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre (1749/1822) was born.
1748
Baron de Montesquieu published De l'Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of the Laws) in which
he emphasised the need to curb arbitrary government by separation and balance of
powers. Montesquieu's ideas were later embodied in the constitution of the USA and in
the constitution of France.
Benjamin Franklin carried out experiments on lightning.
1751
The new year in the UK began on 1 January rather than 25 March to bring it into line
with the rest of Europe because England and the British Dominions began to use the
Gregorian calendar (new style) rather than the Julian calendar (old style). Part of the
reason given for this change was the difficulty of calculating interest of loans. They wrote:
… attended with divers inconveniences, not only as it differs from the usage of
neighbouring nations, but also from the legal method of computation in Scotland,
and from the common usage throughout the whole kingdom, and thereby frequent
mistakes are occasioned in the dates of deeds and other writings, and disputes arise
therefrom …
Benjamin Franklin wrote to a friend in London, Peter Collinson, about how he nearly
58
time. Even though he had been imprisoned in the Bastille, the large prison in Paris,
Voltaire continued to be an unsparing critic of existing institutions, and in particular the
Catholic Church.
Voltaire was one of the Enlightenment figures whose writings influenced important
thinkers of both the American and French Revolutions.
1760
Benjamin Franklin was elected to the Council of the Royal Society.
John Bird made another standard yard at the request of a Parliamentary committee.
Both of Bird's yards were made of brass and contained a gold button near each end. A dot
was engraved in each of these two buttons, with the two dots spaced 1 yard apart.
This second yard was not legally recognised as a standard yard until 1824 May 1, when an
act establishing imperial measure declared that the yard Bird made in 1760 would be the
prototype of the imperial yard, and that all length measures were to be based on it.
In 1834, less than ten years later, the UK Houses of Parliament burned down and both of
Bird's yards – the 1758 and the 1760 – were destroyed.
1761
Benjamin Franklin perfected his glass harmonica, a musical instrument that used the
idea of a wet finger rubbed around the rim of a wine glass to produce sounds. Both
Mozart and Beethoven wrote pieces for Franklin's invention.
At this time Franklin supported the work of Joseph Priestley (1733/1804), who used
electricity to dissociate gases and later discovered oxygen and the use of carbon dioxide
in carbonated beverages. Later Joseph Priestly went to the new American Republic to
join Franklin in Pennsylvania.
John Harrison (1693/1776), an English clockmaker and carpenter, invented his first
highly accurate clock, called a chronometer, to determine longitude at sea.
1762
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712/1778) published Du Contrat Social (Of Social Contracts)
in which he argued that man is: born free, (but) is everywhere in chains.
Rousseau argued strongly that the ideas and desires of the people should be what is
actually carried out by governments. In short, he argued for democratic governments
where a large state was split into a number of small direct democracies that were bound
together into a federation. Rousseau's ideas about the nature of democracy were
developed later by revolutionary leaders in France and the USA.
1766
During Benjamin Franklin's second London visit he petitioned King George III (reigned
1760/1820) for the establishment of central British government for Pennsylvania. He
became friendly with the King's physician, Sir John Pringle, who was also President of
the Royal Society. The two became close companions and they travelled together to
Germany (in 1766) and to pre-Revolutionary France (in 1767) where they met
King Louis XV (reigned 1715/1774) at his palace in Versailles.
The Congress of the USA appointed Benjamin Franklin to France as its first ambassador.
He served in France as one of the Commissioners of Congress to the French Court from
1776 to 1784.
Joseph Priestley developed the inverse square law for the force between electric charges.
1766
King Louis XV of France ordered the construction of 80 new standard toises to be based
61
compartments to prevent ships sinking and investigated the way in which oil could be
used to calm water surfaces.
The UK passed the False Weights and Scales Act
1771
The 1771 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica says: 'The point thus prefixed is called
the decimal point' in its article on 'Arithmetick'.
1773
Jesse Ramsden (1735/1800) invented the circular-dividing engine. Early models of this
machine were able to divide circles to a repeatable accuracy of three seconds of arc; later
models reduced this to one second of arc.
This meant that all of his surveying and astronomical instruments could be made much
more accurately and precisely. Ramsden soon gained a high reputation for the high
quality instruments he produced. These included high quality physics apparatus but also
included eyeglasses and large astronomical telescopes. The leading scientists of his time
recognized Ramsden’s work by making him a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1786.
1774
Gilbert White (1720/1793) and the Royal Society published his letters on ornithology, the
study of birds. Later (in 1784), his systematic records were published in The Natural
History of Selborne; it became one of the most popular nature books of all time.
1775
Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet (1743/1794), usually just
called Condorcet, wrote about having an invariable standard measure that was based on
a natural standard taken from nature. Condorcet hoped that that this would lead to a
standard that would not be based on any national vanity, that could be used by all foreign
nations, and that would be used for all international trade between all nations.
Benjamin Franklin left London, and shortly thereafter presided over the constitutional
convention, serving on a committee of five who drafted the Declaration of Independence,
that declared the independence of a new nation, the United States of America.
The constitution writers recognised the importance of a uniform system of weights and
measures for the whole of the USA, so in Article I, Section 8, of the constitution they
wrote that Congress would have the power to coin money … and fix the standard of
weights and measures.
Benjamin Franklin was elected as the Pennsylvania delegate to the second Continental
Congress that expelled royal officials and formed an army. Franklin also served as
Chairman of Pennsylvania Committee of Safety and he was elected Postmaster General
for the Colonies.
André-Marie Ampère (1775/1836) was born in Lyon, France. The SI unit of measurement
of electric current, the ampere, is named after him. Although he was a French physicist
and mathematician, he was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS) of London
because he was generally regarded as the main discoverer of electromagnetism.
Captain Cook returned from his second voyage (1772– 75), The English Parliament had
offered a reward to anyone who could find a way to accurately determine longitude. John
Harrison, a self-educated English carpenter and clockmaker, designed a number of
marine chronometers, and a copy of his fourth one went with Cook on his second voyage
and enabled him to calculate his longitudinal position with great accuracy. This gave
England a huge advantage over other nations; this single invention led to the ascendancy
of the Royal Navy, and thus to the reach of the British Empire. Accurate and precise
measurement can have far-reaching effects.
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1775 April 18
Paul Revere's midnight ride to warn colonists that ‘the British are coming’. Paul Revere
(1735/1818) was a silversmith, part-time dentist, and a highly regarded patriot.
1775-76
Thomas Jefferson attended the Continental Congress. He was chosen to be on the
committee to write the Declaration of Independence and quickly became its main author.
1776
Benjamin Franklin returned to Europe as one of the Commissioners of Congress to the
French Court to represent the new United States of America in Paris. He carefully
cultivated an image as a fur cap-wearing frontiersman seeking freedom from an
oppressive government, which endeared him to the French, and greatly increased his
effectiveness as an agent of the USA.
Lieutenant General Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval (1715/1789) developed new
methods for producing military cannons. Gribeauval is usually given the credit for
engineering in a way that allowed for the interchangeability of gun parts. Cannons
produced using Gribeauval's new manufacturing system proved essential to French
military victories during the Napoleonic wars.
Gribeauval's concept of uniformity and interchangeability of parts was soon promoted in
the USA by Thomas Jefferson, who could see the benefits that these properties could
make to guns made in the USA. To achieve uniformity and interchangeability it was
necessary to measure more accurately and more precisely than had ever been done
before. There also needed to be advances in precision in machine tools and their
application. In the USA Thomas Jefferson was a natural champion for these
advancements, so gun-makers in the USA were soon able to accomplish remarkable
results using Gribeauval's methods.
1776-79
Thomas Jefferson became a Member of the Virginia House of Delegates, where he was
involved in rewriting state legal documents to reflect republican principles concerning
landholding, inheritance and criminal law.
1777
Condorcet became secretary of the French Academy of Science and held this position
until his death in 1793.
1778
Jacques Necker, the Controller General of Finance in France, reported to Louis XVI that
he had examined the means that might be employed to render the weights and measures
uniform throughout the French kingdom, but doubted whether the result would be
proportionate to the difficulties involved.
Benjamin Franklin signed the 'French Alliance' between France and the United States of
America, but Franklin's primary objective, of raising funds for a war against Britain as an
enemy nation, did not prevent him from promoting the cause of science. For example,
Franklin wrote a 'passport' for Captain James Cook FRS, who was then on his third
voyage of discovery in the Pacific on a ship called The Resolution. Franklin urged the
captains of any armed ships acting for the United States of America to regard Cook and
his crew as … common Friends to Mankind … and … to treat the said Captain Cook and
his People with all Civility and Kindness.
Benjamin Franklin also maintained cordial links with Sir Joseph Banks (1743/1820),
John Pringle's successor as President of the Royal Society. Franklin sent news of the
latest in French science to Joseph Banks and John Pringle. John Pringle probably lost the
64
presidency of the Royal Society largely because he backed Franklin's idea that pointed
lightning rods were more effective than rounded ones.
Franklin perfected bifocal spectacles in Paris and these became one of his most famous
inventions.
1778
France played an important part in the victory of the USA over Britain by providing
military help to the USA on both land and sea. Official support of the USA by France
came with a formal treaty of friendship and alliance signed on February 6 by Louis XVI,
King of France, and Benjamin Franklin, Ambassador to France from the USA. Many
young French aristocrats passionately embraced the rebellion of the 13 American
colonies against British rule.
Napoleon embarked for France with his father, his brother Joseph, and his uncle Fesch.
1779
Benjamin Franklin was appointed to negotiate a peace treaty with England.
1779-81
Thomas Jefferson was Governor of Virginia.
1781
French involvement in the American war of Independence proved decisive, with a French
naval victory in the Chesapeake leading to the surrender of a British army at Yorktown.
1781
Joseph II and Ferdinand signed a decree in Vienna that laid down a reform program to
standardise measures of length where the 'ell of Milan' was to become the standard
length. This reform was restricted to the state of Milan, but their justification for this
reform could have been used in any European country at that time; they said:
The dimensions and diversity of the measures in use in different regions of our state,
although it has one law and obeys one ruler, and the absence or inexactitude of the
standards employed by the agencies of control – these are matters that have always
been considered as sources of errors … and a hindrance to the flow of secure internal
and foreign trade.
Friedrich Wilhelm (William) Herschel (1738/1822), an orchestral musician (oboe and
cello), organist and composer, discovered the planet Uranus.
In his musical and astronomical work, Herschel was assisted by his sister Caroline
Lucretia Herschel (1750/1848). Caroline was a gifted soprano and astronomer who later
discovered eight comets.
1782
Jean-Charles de Borda (1733/1799) was a French mathematician and nautical
astronomer who developed instruments for navigation and for geodesy (the study of the
size and shape of the Earth).
He developed a series of trigonometric tables for his studies in astronomy, calculus, fluid
mechanics, geodesy, navigation, physics, surveying, and for the further development of
his scientific instruments.
He was in command of a flotilla of six French ships while supporting the American War
of Independence when captured by the British. Later he was one of the main driving
forces in the introduction of the decimal metric system as the legal measures of France.
In the USA, Thomas Jefferson argued for a decimal currency system with 100 cents in a
dollar. Jefferson reasoned that dividing America's First Silver Dollar into 100 cents was
65
the simplest way of doing this and that a decimal system based on America's First Silver
Dollar should be adopted as the American standard. His plan went like this:
The ordinance represented a great victory for the quantifiers, led by Thomas
Jefferson, who insisted that the lands be surveyed into equal spans before being
offered, and subdivided into parts affordable by small farmers; their opponents,
primarily southern aristocrats and plantation owners, favoured large grants to
companies or wealthy individuals who would undertake to divide it up into such
shapes and by such boundaries as suited their interests …
Jefferson's original proposal would have divided the western territories into what he
called ‘hundreds’ – squares with sides of 10 nautical miles – rather than the
townships of 36 square statute miles Congress eventually authorized. Each hundred
was to contain 1,000 Jeffersonian acres and so on, for Jefferson, who invented the
American system of pennies, dimes, and dollars, championed decimal division
almost as strongly as democracy. He and the professor of mathematics who helped
him work out his system of rigid squares recommended it for its order and clarity,
and as an obstacle to cheating. They argued that irregular lots inspired fraud, and
could point to the experience of Massachusetts, which discovered that holdings in the
country typically held 10 percent more land, and often 100 percent more land, than
had been granted. Friendly surveyors set the boundaries where their clients wished.
The square grid made the practice much more difficult and allowed purchasers to get
more or less what they paid for.
Despite his comments, Jefferson's arguments did not prevail and Federal legislation in
the USA required that official surveys were to be done using Gunter's chains made up of
100 links each 7.92 inches long. This was in recognition of the fact that Gunter’s chain
had already been widely used for many years throughout the USA.
The Pavillon de Breteuil was given its present name when it became associated with the
most distinguished member of the Breteuil family, Louis-Auguste le Tonnelier, Baron de
Breteuil (1730/1807). Baron de Breteuil had a distinguished career in the diplomatic
service of the King of France. At one time he was ambassador to Russia during the reigns
of Elizabeth and Catherine II. After many successful international negotiations, the
Baron returned to France in 1783 and was made Minister of the King's Household, and
Minister for Paris.
The Baron de Breteuil was a man whose humanitarian and social views were far in
advance of his time. During his period as Minister for Paris, he introduced far-reaching
reforms in hospitals and prisons. He also took a great interest in the world of science and
became a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
1785
James Madison (1751/1836) wrote to James Monroe (1758/1831) to express his concerns
about currency, weights, and measures. It would appear that James Madison, who would
be the 4th President of the USA, had been influenced by Thomas Jefferson’s decimal ideas
on currency, weights, and measures (Jefferson would be the 3rd President of the USA)
and was passing on these ideas to James Monroe, who would be 5th President of the USA.
I hear frequent complaints of the disorders of our coin, and the want of uniformity in
the denominations of the States. Do not Congress think of a remedy for these evils?
The regulation of weights and measure seem also to call for their attention. Every
day will add to the difficulty of executing these works. If a mint be not established
and a recoinage effected while the federal debts carry the money through the hands
of Congress, I question much whether their limited powers will ever be able to render
this branch of their prerogative effectual. With regard to the regulation of weights
and measures, would it not be highly expedient, as well as honourable to the federal
administration, to pursue the hint which has been suggested by ingenious and
philosophical men, to wit: that the standard of measure should be first fixed by the
length of a pendulum vibrating seconds at the Equator or any given latitude; and
that the standard of weights should be a cubical piece of gold, or other homogeneous
67
the word Fugio next to a sundial, together with one of his favourite mottoes, Mind Your
Business. He intended this to imply that Time Flies so Mind Your Business. On the other
side of the coin Franklin had thirteen entwined rings, one for each of the thirteen states,
and in the centre the words We are one. Franklin's Fugio Cents were minted and entered
circulation immediately.
On September 17, the United States of America adopted the Constitution as the supreme
law of the United States of America. It took effect in 1789.
Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution provides that Congress shall have the power: to
coin money … and fix the standard of weights and measures.
Another provision of the Constitution stated that 'all duties, imposts and excises shall be
uniform throughout the United States of America'. Benjamin Franklin was one of the
signatories of the United States Constitution.
To avert a bankruptcy, King Louis XVI (reigned 1774/1792) convened the Estates
General, which had not met since 1614, for the purpose of imposing new taxes.
The Estates General consisted of the three French estates; the first estate was the clergy,
the second estate was the nobility and the third estate was the bourgeoisie, the urban
workers and the peasants.
One of the issues for discussion was that of fair and honest measurement. There had
been many previous attempts to impose the 'Parisian' units on the whole of France, but
they were opposed by the church, the guilds, and the nobles, who benefited greatly from
measurement confusion.
Baron de Breteuil resigned from the King's service.
1787
Cross-channel measurements were taken linking France and England. While this work
was proceeding, triangulation survey work continued further inside England, forming the
basis of the Ordnance Survey. This was the final part of the process to connect the
observatory in Paris and the Greenwich observatory so that they could accurately share
data with each other.
The Constitution of the USA was created, giving the Congress of the USA the power to …
fix the standard of weights and measures.
1788
In Paris, there were methods of producing portraits that would certainly have appealed to
anyone with scientific curiosity. In one Paris studio customers sat for silhouette portraits
using a device called a psysiognotrace. Both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin
were customers for these portraits. Another one of these had a complicated device that
enabled the inventor to produce exact three-dimensional models of their subjects. Again,
American Ambassadors Franklin and Jefferson were customers.
Just before the Revolution, Gaspar de Prony declared the pendulum to be the ultimate
standard for length. He wrote that the standard length should be:
… the length of the simple pendulum, an invariable quantity always easy to recover,
seemed given by nature to serve as a measure in all countries.
At this time, Sir John Riggs Miller was about to introduce proposals for the reform of
English weights and measures when he received a letter from Talleyrand, inviting Britain
to join France in finding the length of a seconds pendulum. The British considered the
advantages of this suggestion, and of calibrating their yard by the pendulum, so that:
… all future generations may obtain similar measures of length, capacity, and
weight, and thereby render it altogether needless to cut them on stone, or to engrave
them on brass to perpetuate their existence.
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1788 June 21
The Constitution of the USA was ratified.
1789
Sir John Riggs Miller raised the question of honesty in weights and measures in the UK
House of Commons and shared his thoughts on rational methods to improve weights and
measures. He also pointed out the difficulties arising from the use of multiple measures
in the UK where he was quoted as saying that disorganised measures led to
… the perplexing of all dealings, and the benefitting of knaves and cheats
The First Congress of the USA took up the question of weights and measures, and had the
metric system been available at that time it might have been adopted. What actually
happened is that Thomas Jefferson, who was then serving as the first Secretary of State,
submitted a report proposing a decimal-based system with a mixture of familiar and
unfamiliar names for the units. No doubt Thomas Jefferson passed copies of this report
to his friends in Paris, such as Talleyrand and Condorcet, and to John Riggs Miller in the
UK, as he knew they were also working on the reform of weights and measures. It is likely
that they were as impressed by his report as they were with his success at promoting a
decimal currency for the USA.
1789 March/April
King Louis XVI ordered that a list of grievances (cahiers de doléances) be written. These
grievances were then to be considered by the Estates General. The Estates General
consisted of the three French estates; the first estate was the clergy, the second estate was
the nobility and the third estate was the bourgeoisie, the urban workers and the peasants.
Measuring issues were a constant theme in these lists of grievances, especially about how
they related to rents, tithes and taxes. Delegates from many French towns petitioned
King Louis XVI to unify the measuring methods in France so that they were fair to all.
Here are some examples from the cahiers de doléances (list of grievances):
Are the seigneurs not obliged to present to us some documents in support of the size
of the measures they employ?
In cases where the seigneurs' measures are found to be in excess of what they should
be, are they not obliged to restore to their rent payers the resultant excess amounts?
Over how many years, retrospectively, may the payers demand such 'restitutions';
does the usual time-limit applicable to private prosecutions, thirty years, hold here,
or should the measuring abuses be deemed criminal fraud and be subject to no rule
of lapse at all?
The seigneurs avail themselves of the crafty dealings of their underlings, who
recover from the tenants the large amount they had themselves been forced to invest,
as the price of their position.
The grain measures must now be heaped not striked as they were in the past.
The seigneur's agents are employing two different measures: one of them is larger
than the proper one and is used in the collection at the granary. The payers are not
blind to this injustice, but are too afraid to protest.
The seigneurs and their agents use falsified and oversized measures.
The seigneurs have been gradually increasing their boisseaux (bushels), until, in
effect, the payments of dues they exacted are quite arbitrary.
There are almost as many local measures to collect dues, as there are estates.
What is the use to us of the abolition of the feudal system, if the seigneurs remain at
liberty arbitrarily to increase or decrease their measures?
70
science had become even more precise. Science, especially the geographers, needed a
trusted basis of measurement. Trade and commerce were also greatly impeded by the
bewildering array of measures, often with the same name, but describing different
quantities. It has been estimated that in France alone, about 250 000 different
measurement units were in use at the time. This situation was probably matched by an
equal chaos in Germany and other nations.
Benjamin Franklin became President of the ‘Society for Promoting the Abolition of
Slavery’ and wrote an anti-slavery treatise.
1789 August 4
Feudalism was abolished in France. The French National Assembly passed laws that did
away with the feudal system of land management that had been the way that things were
managed in France since ancient times. These laws were augmented with further laws
passed in May 1790 that completed the abolition of feudalism. These laws meant that the
local 'seigneurs' no longer had a monopoly on weights and measures. It also effectively
meant that France had no method of measurement at all. This lack of any measurements
led to an intolerable legal vacuum and lawlessness.
This void somehow had to be filled, and this had to be done against a background where
many were attempting to safeguard their numerous vested interests. As the new National
Assembly was seeking to fulfil the dreams of progressive thinkers they were
simultaneously trying to satisfy the aspirations of the bourgeoisie. And all participants
were fully aware of their complaints because they had only recently been powerfully
expressed in the cahiers de doléances. Many had complained about the metrological
duplicities of the seigneurs, and the situation had grown worse in many provinces during
the Revolution, because of the 'seigneurial reaction', as the seigneurs jockeyed to gain
the best possible post-revolutionary position. The task was gigantic and not all the
difficulties were at first appreciated.
1789 August 14
Jean Baptiste Le Roy (1720/1800), who was a physicist, a mathematician, and who at one
time had been a clockmaker, suggested that the Academy propose to the National
Assembly that they dissolve all the old measures currently in use in France and replace
them all with the length of a pendulum that beat seconds at the 45th parallel of latitude. It
is likely that the Academy's secretary, the marquis de Condorcet, drew up this proposal
and asked Talleyrand to present it as the Academy's proposal to the National Assembly.
Talleyrand also proposed that the British be invited to join in the determination of the
correct length and in promoting the use of the new measure 'so that all nations might
adopt it'.
1789 August 27
The Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen was enacted in France as the new French
Constitution.
1789 October 56
During the 'October Days' in France, there was a women’s march on the Palace of
Versailles and King Louis XVI was brought back to Paris
1789-93
By the end of 1789, Franklin's Fugio cents were in wide circulation throughout the USA,
so Jefferson's decimal currency was well established by the time George Washington was
inaugurated as the nation's first president on 1789 April 16.
Thomas Jefferson became the first Secretary of State for President George Washington
after his return from France. During his term as the first Secretary of State, Jefferson
proposed a decimal-based measurement system for the USA. See:
72
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/t_jeff.htm
for the full text of Jefferson's proposal and see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_for_Establishing_Uniformity_in_the_Coinage,_Weigh
ts,_and_Measures_of_the_United_States for the Wikipedia discussion of this plan.
1790
Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, made a report to the Constituent Assembly on the state of
French weights and measures, and in it suggested a new measure of length based on the
length of the seconds pendulum at the latitude of 45°N. He also suggested that the
Academy of Sciences in Paris collaborate with the Royal Society of London in defining the
new unit. The Assembly, and subsequently Louis XVI, approved this proposal, but
nothing came of it.
George Washington, in his first message to Congress on January 8, reminded the
legislators of their responsibility on weights and measures when he said:
A uniformity of weights and measures is among the important objects submitted to
you by the Constitution, and, if it can be derived from a standard at once invariable
and universal, it must be no less honourable to the public council than conducive to
the public convenience … Uniformity in the currency, weights, and measures of the
United States is an object of great importance, and will, I am persuaded, be duly
attended to.
George Washington repeated his call for uniformity in the currency, weights, and
measures of the United States of America with similar calls for action in his second and
third annual presidential messages to congress (later these annual reports became known
as the 'State of the Union Address').
George Washington was clearly referring to an idea similar to Wilkins' 'universal
measure' when he said, 'derived from a standard at once invariable and universal'.
The Congress accepted that decimal currency had been agreed between the states in 1785
but that uniform standard measures remained a problem. The USA Congress discussed
which weights and measures to use for the USA and then responded to George
Washington's speech by asking Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson (1743/1826), to
make a special report on the subject of measurement for the USA. Jefferson presented his
report to Congress on July 13. Congress had the authority to decide on a standard of
weights and measurement as a Constitutional right, under Article I, Section 8.
1790 February 9
The Prieur du Vernois (1763/1832), later known as the Prieur de la Cote-d'Or, made a
suggestion to the National Academy of France for a single uniform set of weights and
measures. His proposal was based on a seconds pendulum timed at the Paris
Observatory. The pendulum was to be divided into thirds to make a Paris foot (which
would also be the national foot for France). The French foot was to be divided into 10
inches, each of 10 lines; and 10 feet would be equal to 1 rod. This suggestion has a
remarkable similarity to that made earlier by Thomas Jefferson to the USA Congress.
1790 March 28
King Louis XVI issued a decree that abolished, without compensation, all feudal rights
with respect to weights and measures.
1790 March 29
Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, put Prieur's suggestion to the French National Assembly. In
doing so he adjusted it slightly, making the length of the pendulum a standard length at a
latitude of 45 degrees. Talleyrand did this to make the proposal independent of any
particular location.
Talleyrand's proposal was referred to the French Committee on Agriculture and
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Commerce, who recommended it to the king, who sanctioned action on August 22.
At this time, Talleyrand was also aware that both the UK and the USA were investigating
the possibility of new methods of measuring. He actively encouraged the idea that the
governments of the UK, the USA, and France should work together with the French
Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society in London to create a new system of universal
measure.
The House of Commons in England again discussed a proposal from Sir John
Riggs Miller to establish uniform weights and measures throughout England and
Scotland.
Knowing that Sir John Riggs Miller had raised the question of weights and measures in
the British House of Commons during 1789, Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, wrote this
private letter to him. This is Sir John Riggs Miller's translation of Talleyrand's letter.
Sir,
I understand that you have submitted for the consideration of the British Parliament,
a valuable plan for the equalization of measures: I have felt it my duty to make a like
proposition to our National Assembly. It appears to me worthy of the present epoch
that the two Nations should unite in their endeavour to establish an invariable
measure and that they should address themselves to Nature for this important
discovery.
If you and I think alike on this subject, and that you are of opinion that much general
benefit may be derived from it, it is through you only that we can hope for its
accomplishment; and I beg to recommend it to your consideration. Too long have
Great Britain and France been at variance with each other, for empty honour or for
guilty interests. It is time that two free Nations should unite their exertions for the
promotion of a discovery that must be useful to mankind.
I have the honour to be, Sir, with due respect, your most humble and obedient
servant,
The Bishop of Autun
Talleyrand's proposals for a new measuring method were based on a survey he had done
on the measures currently in use in France. The mess they were in can be gauged from
this quote from The Measure of Enlightenment by J. L. Heilbron.
The existence of French men and women around 1790 was made miserable by,
among other things, 700 or 800 differently named measures and untold units of the
same name but different sizes. A 'pinte' in Paris came to 0.93 litre; in Saint-Denis, to
1.46; in Seine-en-Montagne, to 1.99; in Précy-sous-Thil, to 3.33. The aune, a unit of
length, was still more prolific: Paris had three, each for a different sort of cloth;
Rouen had two; and France as a whole no fewer than seventeen, all in common use
and all different, the smallest amounting to just under 300 lignes, royal measure, the
largest to almost 600.
France possessed non-uniform measures in law as well as by custom. Their
multiplicity went with other relics of the feudal system, which maintained arbitrary
rents and duties usually to the disadvantage of the peasant. A landlord wanted his
bushels of grain or hogsheads of beer in the biggest measures in use in the
neighborhood, and he preferred to sell according to the smallest. Nor were all
seigneurs above enlarging the vessel in which they collected their rents; and since in
many cases they possessed the only exemplars of their patrimonial bushel, no one
could be certain that it did not grow in time. But one suspected. A frequent complaint
in the cahiers, or notebooks of desiderata brought by representatives of the people to
the meeting of the Estates General in 1789, was that 'the nobles' measure waxes
larger year by year. These same representatives castigated the oppressive confusion
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authorised scientific investigations aimed at reform of all French weights and measures
and these investigations led to the development of the 'decimal metric system' as the
legal measurement system, firstly in France with the passage of several laws mostly in the
1790s, and then in the rest of the world. Talleyrand also suggested that the Academy of
Sciences in Paris collaborate with the Royal Society of London in defining the new
measuring unit.
A French politician, La Rochefoucault, had this to say in the National Assembly in
support of Talleyrand's proposal:
We cannot make enough haste over promulgating this decree, which should bring
about fraternal relations between France and England.
Even though it was in the middle of the French revolution, the National Assembly of
France requested the French Academy of Sciences to deduce an invariable standard for
all the measures and all the weights and to prepare a report on the development of a
system of measurement for France and for the world. The French National Assembly
then sent delegates to Britain, Spain and the USA to propose cooperation in developing a
universal system of units for measurement.
1790 May 8
The Assembly decided that the length of the metre would be defined by a seconds
pendulum. Having held a detailed discussion on the proposal submitted by Talleyrand,
they approved the proposal to standardize the length of the new metre as the length of a
pendulum with a one-way swing (called a half-period) of one second; a pendulum that
swings back and forth in one second is about 250 mm in length. The decree was later
ratified (see 1790 August 22) in a form that was, in almost every respect the same as
Talleyrand's proposition .
The National Assembly recognised that the metric system was simple and elegant with
decimal multiples and sub-multiples based on Greek prefixes (deca-, hecto-, kilo-) for
multiples and Latin (deci-, centi-, milli-) for fractions. They were also impressed with the
relationship between length, volume, and mass as 1 gram (mass) was defined as one
cubic centimetre (volume) of water.
Some maintain that this was the day that the metric system was 'born' with the
statement:
Liberté! Egalité! Métriqué!
The National Assembly of France made this decision to go ahead with the metric system
after the revolutionary storming of the Bastille (1789 July 14) but before the declaration
of the French Republic (1792 September 22) and the execution of King Louis XVI
(1793 January 21).
Prior to this decision, under the monarchy and the ancien régime, French people had
used inches (pouce ~27 mm), feet (pied ~325 mm), and fathoms (toise ~1950 mm).
Later, on a recommendation from the French Academy of Sciences, the assembly
redefined the metre in 1793 as 1/10 000 000 of the distance from the Equator to the
North Pole.
Charles-François, marquis de Bonnay (1750/1825) delivered a report to the French
National Assembly on the measurement proposition proposed by Talleyrand.
There were five distinct aims that were focused on in the discussions of the metric system
at this time. In order of importance they were:
uniform national standards of measurement for France,
a natural standard of length that was not based on the length of a king's foot (the
hated pied de roi),
the use of a decimal scale to divide units into smaller parts or to multiply units into
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larger parts,
the creation of an international system of weights and measures for trade,
the emerging requirement for scientists and engineers to have access to better
accuracy and precision in their measurements.
Today we often think that two of these, decimalisation and internationalisation are most
important, but politically in 1790 it was the first two that appealed to the revolutionary
spirit of the times. The wishes of le philosophes (the scientists) were essentially ignored
in the political process that made the metric system legal in France.
Talleyrand sent Sir John Riggs Miller a copy of the National Assembly's minute of May 8
referring to the new measurement arrangements. In this minute the French king,
Louis XVI, was asked to write to the British king, George III, inviting joint action to
determine a natural standard of weight and measure. However, subsequent historians
have not been able to find such a letter in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle.
At the same time as the French National Assembly considered the Academy proposal as
presented by Talleyrand, they also considered several other similar proposals including
one by the military engineer, Prieur, who expressly opposed using an arc of the meridian
as the basis for a standard of length. Prieur wrote:
Besides the magnitude of the fundamental operation required, the difficulty of
verifying it, and the impossibility of doing so daily, it is not easy to decide how exact
the method might be.
Thomas Jefferson agreed with Prieur when he wrote:
… the various trials to measure various portions of meridians, have been of such
various result, as to show there is no dependence on that operation for certainty.
1790 July 13
Thomas Jefferson reported back to the Congress with a 'Plan for Establishing
Uniformity in the Coinage, Weights, and Measures of the United States'. You can find
full details of Jefferson's plan at: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/jeffplan.asp
and at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Gene_Nygaard/t_jeff.htm
In the first paragraph of his report, Jefferson provides evidence of the international effort
to develop a decimal metric system between France, the UK, and the USA. Jefferson
wrote:
… on the 15th of June, came to my hands, from Paris, a printed copy of a proposition
made by the Bishop of Autun, to the National Assembly of France, on the subject of
weights and measures; and three days afterwards I received, through the channel of
the public papers, the speech of Sir John Riggs Miller, of April 13th in the British
House of Commons, on the same subject.
Although Jefferson's report carried considerable influence in the Congress of the USA, as
he was the first Secretary of State of the USA for President George Washington, no
official action was taken, and the Congress passed no legislation relating to weights and
measures as a result of Jefferson's report.
Jefferson's report used some of the scientific investigations aimed at reform of the
French weights and measures, but it varied in the detail. Jefferson's proposals also had a
remarkable similarity to the design for a 'universal measure' outlined by John Wilkins in
1668. It seems likely that Jefferson had access to An Essay Towards a Real Character
and a Philosophical Language (1668) by John Wilkins.
This conjecture seems more likely when we compare Wilkins' plan for length with that of
Jefferson.
77
And there are many other parallels. In many respects Jefferson's plan might have been
taken straight from John Wilkins' essay with only slight changes to the names of the
various components of the plan and a few minor differences. For example Jefferson
suggested a pendulum that had a rod instead of a string. Details of Wilkins' plan can be
found in the article Commentary on ‘Of Measure’ by John Wilkins and a Wikipedia
article on Jefferson's decimal plan can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_for_Establishing_Uniformity_in_the_Coinage,_Weigh
ts,_and_Measures_of_the_United_States
Note: I have been unable to definitely confirm that Jefferson had access to Wilkins'
Essay. Jefferson was a very keen book collector and I, and several very helpful librarians,
have searched many catalogues of his extensive collections. I suspect that he either
owned or had access to Wilkins' Essay, and that possibly his copy of Wilkins' book was
lost in the Library of Congress fire of 1851
(http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefflib.html )
Jefferson recommended a two-part decimal plan to Congress.
The first part of Jefferson's plan proposed the adoption of a universal length based
on the seconds pendulum, and measured at 45 degrees North latitude at sea level
and changing existing old English units to this new universal measure.
The second part of Jefferson's plan proposed the use of a decimal system as a basis
for dividing and multiplying the seconds pendulum length unit: to reduce every
branch to the same decimal ratio, thus bringing the calculations of the principal
affairs of life within the arithmetic of every man who can multiply and divide
plain numbers.
Thomas Jefferson's plan might have been successful in the USA as his system actually
resembled the metric system in many ways. However, it had a fundamental problem that
had nothing to do with the metrology or the mathematics of his proposal; the problem
was with the language he chose for his new system. He presented a decimal system
developed around a new 'foot' based on a pendulum that swung from one end of its arc to
the other in a second (about 250 millimetres long). Jefferson's system had many names
for different units and all of them had been used as measuring words in the past. He did
not seem to realise that as most people do not comprehend the theory of measurement,
they will cling fiercely to their use of old measuring words, without understanding what
they exactly mean. It is a pity that Jefferson had not acquired the idea of using prefixes to
create names for sub-multiples and multiples of his units, or the history of measurement
in the USA might have been profoundly different.
Here are some samples of the basic units in Jefferson's new measuring system:
Length
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Jefferson divided his pendulum-based new foot into 10 new inches. Each new inch was to
be divided into 10 new lines, and each line into 10 new points. For longer lengths, 10 new
feet were to be called a decade, 100 new feet was a new rood, 1000 new feet a new
furlong, and there were 10 000 new feet in a new mile.
At about 250 millimetres, Jefferson's new foot was slightly shorter than the old foot
(about 300 millimetres) that was commonly used in the USA at that time, and a mile of
10 000 new feet was almost twice as long as an old mile.
Capacity and volume
Jefferson described a basic volume unit that he called a new bushel, and its size could be
traced back to the new foot, as the new bushel was defined as a new cubic foot.
Jefferson's system resembled the developing metric system, in which a litre of water
weighs 1000 grams. The cubic new foot, that Jefferson called a bushel, would have a
capacity of about 15.6 litres and would hold about 15.6 litres of water. This meant that a
thousandth part of the new bushel would have a volume of about 15.6 millilitres and it
would hold about 15.6 grams of water. This is about half the size of the old ounce and the
old fluid ounce that were used in the USA. The new bushel was close to 75% of the size of
the bushel then in use in the USA.
Mass (then called weight)
Jefferson defined the basic 'weight' as a new ounce that was one thousandth part of a new
bushel (1 cubic new foot). This meant that the basic weight unit was the ounce, defined so
that a bushel of water weighed 1000 ounces.
As the metric system developed later during the 1790s as a legal entity in France, I have
no doubt that the French 'philosophes' borrowed extensively from Jefferson's ideas as
they developed their proposals for the development of the metric system as the legal
measurement system for France.
Congress gave the Jefferson plan serious consideration but took no action to implement
it. Without a coherent measurement policy, the USA simply adopted bits and pieces from
various versions of English weights and measures. These included:
distance measurements identical to those of the 1592 English Act of Parliament,
mass measures based on English avoirdupois weight measurements of 1303,
measurements for dry volumes based on the 1496 English 'Winchester' bushel and
measurements for liquid volumes based on the English Queen Anne wine gallon of
1707.
It is remarkable that Congress never established this traditional method, or any other
method, as the mandatory system of weights and measures for the United States.
During the nineteenth century expanding trade needed a consistent set of international
measurement standards. This need was gradually filled by the use of the metric system,
which quickly spread throughout continental Europe. Citizens of the USA, during the
19th and 20th centuries, only became aware of the metric system if they imported or
exported goods to or from Europe.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson combined forces politically to propose the use
of decimal currency for the USA. Decimal currency became reality in the USA with the
establishment of the Federal Mint in 1792.
1790 August 12
A deputation from the French Academy of Sciences was made to the French National
Assembly with the view to placing the services of the Academy of Sciences at the disposal
of the National Assembly.
79
During the next eight days, the French National Assembly issued instructions that
allowed municipal authorities to fix the rates for assessing weights and measurements in
public squares and markets.
1790 August 12
The French National Assembly passed laws that entrusted municipal authorities with the
verification of weights and measures.
1790 August 22
The French King Louis XVI authorized scientific investigations aimed at a reform of
French weights and measures. Talleyrand's proposal to the French National Assembly
was to standardize the length of the seconds pendulum at 45° latitude. His proposal,
having been referred to the Committee on Agriculture and Commerce, was recommended
to the king who sanctioned action. This was the French decree that led to the further
development of the metric system.
The French Academy of Sciences was made responsible, and appointed a committee that
consisted of: Jean Charles de Borda (1733/1799), Joseph-Louis Comte de Lagrange
(1736/1813), Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749/1827), Gaspard Monge (1746/1818), and Marie
Jean Antoine Nicholas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet (1743/1794). Condorcet, who was
appointed secretary, was a champion of modernity whose vision of progress reflected
commitment to the values of reason, freedom, and equality. Condorcet's proposals for
social and political reform were characterized by pragmatism and by the conviction that
only cautious and scientific management of change would ensure lasting benefits.
Condorcet was also a close friend of Thomas Jefferson, who had been the Ambassador
from the USA from 1784 to 1789.
The committee‘s first report, in October, recommended the decimal division of money,
weights, and measures. However, it should not be inferred that this was a smooth or an
easy process. Stephen Hawking in his book, God created the integers, describes Laplace's
contribution to the metric system as follows:
Engrossed as he was in science, Laplace had little time for the tumult of politics in the
late 1780s and early 1790s. He took no part in the affairs of the French Revolution
during its most radical phase in the early 1790s, except to participate in the
committee that devised the metric system, part of a systematic attempt to overthrow
the shackles of the Old Regime. One camp argued that the fundamental unit of length
should be defined in terms of the earth's equatorial circumference. Laplace argued,
instead, that given the role of the right angle in geometry, the fundamental unit of
length should be based on the length of the quadrant from the North Pole to the
equator.
Thanks to Laplace's successful argument, the metre was defined as 1/10 000 000th of
the distance from the pole to the equator. By the end of 1793 the political atmosphere
in Paris became too intemperate for Laplace. Along with many other leading
scientists, including the chemist Antoine Lavoisier and Coulomb, Laplace was purged
from the committee devising the metric system. The radical republicans loudly
announced that such responsibilities could only be entrusted to men known for 'their
Republican virtues and hatred of kings'.
Literally fearing for his neck, Laplace and his family fled from Paris to the country
town of Melun, thirty miles [actually a little over 40 km] away. In retrospect, Laplace
had correctly judged the probabilities of the possible outcomes. His friend and
colleague, Lavoisier, chose to remain in Paris, where he lost his head to the guillotine
in the spring of 1794.
The National Assembly decreed that all measures in use throughout the provinces of
France should be sent to the Academy of Sciences, who would then issue new standard
measures to all the parishes of France. The idea was that by doing this the old measures
80
could be dispensed with altogether. However, it seems that the National Assembly had
little idea of the complexity and magnitude of this task. They considered that the new
standards could be adopted, and copies of it could be distributed replacing all of the old
measures with the new within six months.
1790 October 27
The National Assembly accepted Talleyrand's proposal to standardize the length of the
seconds pendulum at 45° latitude. and sent it, and a question about the most useful
division of weights, measures, and monies to the committee. The committee
recommended to the Assemblée that currency, weights and measures should all be based
on a decimal rather than a duodecimal system and included a list of prefixes for decimal
multiples and sub-multiples
The French Academy of Science then issued a report that recommended the decimal
division of French money along similar lines to those used in the USA.
1790 December 8
The French National Assembly issued a decree limiting the application of the law of
1790 May 8 to only the principle measures in each district, with a requirement that a
report be filed for all other measures.
On March 30 the committee specifically rejected the seconds' pendulum because it
involved time as a non-linear element and recommended:
… that the length of a meridian from the North Pole to the Equator be determined,
that 1/10 000 000th of this distance be termed the metre and form the basis of a new
decimal linear system, and, further, that a new unit of weight should be derived from
the weight of a cubic metre of water.
One reason for choosing the quadrant was because one of the commission members,
Jean-Charles de Borda, had constructed extremely precise graduated circles for
measuring angles, exactly the kind required for this sort of work. de Borda's circles were
graduated in units called 'grads' with 100 centesimal grad divisions to a quadrant.
de Borda sneered at the Babylonian degrees used by others as too old-fashioned (in 1790)
to be used for the development of the modern decimal metric system, which was to be
both scientific and simple. The committee proposed:
to redo the arc from Dunkirk to Perpignan and to extend it to Barcelona,
to obtain latitudes astronomically,
to lay out new baselines,
to observe the pendulum,
to determine the weight of an exactly measured volume of distilled water at the
temperature of melting ice, and
to compare all the old units in use in France with the new standards.
Essentially, except for the last point, this committee was putting in place the proposal
that Bishop John Wilkins had made for a 'universal measure' in 1668. They were
sufficiently confident of their methods that they did not seek international cooperation
before they wrote:
… we have excluded from our advice every arbitrary determination, we have used
only the common property of all nations … In a word, if the memory of all our work
disappeared and only the results remained, they would disclose nothing to show
what nation conceived the idea and carried it through.
The Commissioners assigned the name, metre, to the unit of length that was one ten-
millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator along the meridian running
81
One reason they gave for this choice was that the metre would materialise the idea of
… a unit which in its determination was neither arbitrary nor related to any
particular nation on the globe.
The Académie des Sciences committee also recommended a new decimal system of
measurement based on the metre and the kilogram. Discarding the traditional degrees
and minutes of angle measurement emphasized the decimal nature of the new system.
The length of the metre was to be based on the measurement of a meridian arc extending
from Dunkerque to Barcelona. This was an extension of the line measured by Lacaille
and Cassini in 1740.
Ideally, of course it would have been better to survey the whole quadrant between the
North Pole and the equator but no one had ever been to the North Pole.
The scientific commission members reckoned that if they could measure a significant
piece of a meridian, the rest could be calculated. Both ends of the line to be measured had
to be at sea level, and near the middle of the pole-to-equator quadrant.
Fortunately for them, the only one such meridian on Earth is about a tenth of the
distance from the pole to the equator and it runs from Barcelona to Dunkerque, so most
of the distance lies conveniently inside France (a fact that did not escape the notice of
observers such as Thomas Jefferson).
The committee rejected the pendulum, on principle, because it involved non-linear time
and because it was insufficiently precise. To stress that this was to be a decimal métrique
système the committee recommended dividing the quadrant decimally into grads of one
hundredth of a quadrant.
They specifically recommended discarding the degrees, minutes, and seconds of
Babylonian angle measurement.
The secretary of this committee, Condorcet, wrote in this report:
The Academy has done its best to exclude all arbitrary considerations – indeed, all
that might have aroused the suspicion of its having advanced the particular interests
of France; in a word, it sought to prepare such a plan that, were its principles alone
to come down to posterity, no one could guess the country of its origin.
The French National Assembly endorsed the Academy of Sciences’ report and directed
that the necessary measurements of the Earth's meridian be made as soon as possible. In
a single day of debate, the French National Assembly enacted the necessary legislation on
1791 March 26.
Although the Académie des Sciences finally chose that a metre would be exactly a
1/10 000 000th of the distance between the North Pole and the equator, so that this
distance would be exactly 10 000 000 metres, an error was made in its measurement.
The error arose because the wrong value was assumed for the earth's flattening used in
correcting for oblateness. We now know that the quadrant of the earth is
10 000 957 metres instead of exactly 10 000 000 metres as was originally planned.
At this time the French unit of volume was called the pinte and this was later renamed
the litre; it was defined as the volume of a cube having a side equal to one-tenth of a
metre.
The unit of mass was called the grave and this was later renamed the kilogram; it was
defined as the mass of one litre of distilled water at the temperature of melting ice.
The centigrade scale for temperature was also adopted with its fixed points at 0 °C and
100 °C representing the freezing and boiling points of water; this is now called the
Celsius temperature scale.
83
When the French National Assembly accepted the report of the Académie des Sciences
adopting a length equal to a quadrant of the meridian as the base of the new system of
measures they said:
The only hope of extending the standardization of measures to foreign nations and
persuading them to accept it lies in selecting a unit that is in no way arbitrary, nor
particularly suited to the circumstances of any one nation.
The metric system, as it was first proposed by John Wilkins in England, and developed in
France (with help from the USA) in the 1790s), was designed as a standard universal
system that would be easy for everyone in the world to understand and to use.
In fact, when Talleyrand presented the plan for a system of decimal metric units to the
French National Assembly he described it as:
… an enterprise whose result should belong some day to the whole world.
The (gloriously named) French mathematician and philosopher, Marie-Jean-Antoine-
Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet (1743/1794) wrote an article 'Le Mètre: du
monde' (The metre: of the world) where he described the metric system simply as:
In 1799 the international metric system conference decided that a medal should be struck
to honour the metric system and bearing the words of Condorcet:
A TOUS LES TEMPS, A TOUS LES PEUPLES
It should be noted that, from a purely metrological point of view, using a quadrant of the
earth as a standard makes little sense. To measure this distance is so difficult that any
two surveys of such a long distance are bound to differ by much more than the amount of
precision required of the unit.
The amazing thing about this is how two 18th century surveyors, Delambre and Méchain,
would come so close to the true measurement in such trying circumstances. It took them
six years to complete the measurement of the distance from Dunquerque to Barcelona
using triangulation techniques.
A committee of 12 mathematicians, geodesists, and physicists met with Louis XVI, who
gave his formal approval for the introduction of the new metric system on June 19 . A day
later Louis and his family attempted to flee secretly from France to Germany, but were
recognized and captured at Varennes. He was returned to Paris where he remained as
constitutional king until 1792.
1792
In August 1792 the National Assembly abolished the office of King. Louis was arrested
(August 10). From his prison cell, Louis XVI issued the proclamation that directed two
astronomers and engineers, Jean-Baptiste Delambre and Pierre François-André
Méchain, to perform the operations necessary to determine the length of the metre.
Delambre and Méchain set to work to measure the precise distance, on the meridian,
from Barcelona in Spain to Dunkerque in northern France. In part the line from
Barcelona to Dunkerque was deliberately chosen to be multinational to make people
aware that the French scientists were not simply being parochial.
Delambre and Méchain emphasised the decimal aspect of the metric system by
discarding the traditional degrees and minutes of angular measurement. They used a
process called triangulation, where they had to measure angles in each of the triangles
very accurately. They did this using decimal division of the quadrant. The quadrant was
divided into 100 grads (that were sometimes called grades or gons) and these were
further divided into 100 decimal minutes, each of 100 decimal seconds. This gave them a
84
0.0002 shorter than a metre based on one ten-millionth of the earth's quadrant
(999.9998 mm instead of 1000 mm).
In hindsight, Delambre and Méchain did a magnificent job. They knew that the metre
that they would define would not be exactly 1/40 000 000 of the Earth’s circumference
as the other three quarters of this circumference – that they couldn't measure or even
estimate – might have different lengths. This meant that the metre might not be exactly
equal to 1/10 000 000 of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator.
Given these difficulties, all they had to work with were de Borda's highly accurate
instrument, the 'Borda Duplicating Circle', for measuring the angles at each angle in a
triangle and then used these angles to determine lengths by calculation.
Delambre and Méchain were also aware that there is the possibility of error in every
measurement we make and their goal was to minimise these errors. Working in decimals
of right angles divided into 100 grads (rather than having to use the old Babylonian
degrees, minutes, and seconds) markedly reduced the possibility for error.
However, since the 1790s, astronomers and sailors have continued to use the older non-
decimal Babylonian measures of angles with 360 degrees in a circle, 60 minutes of arc
(also called arcminutes) in a degree, and 60 seconds of arc (also called arcseconds) in a
minute. Scientists, other than astronomers, have decided not to use decimal divisions of
a quadrant or the older Babylonian methods and have developed several other methods:
the radian as the ratio between an arc of a circle and its radius, decimal degrees such as
12.345 degrees, and angular mils are still in use in various sciences and technologies.
King Louis XVI also issued orders for Baron Gaspard Clair François Marie-Riche de
Prony (1755/1839) to begin the task of calculating new mathematical tables for use with
the metric system.
He calculated the trigonometrical tables by organizing his (human) 'computers' in three
levels. Skilled mathematicians laid down the rules for the calculations; second level
mathematicians calculated the functions for every 10th value; and level three
mathematicians carried out the interpolations for the intermediate values using finite
differences – where they were only required to add and subtract.
In the USA, Thomas Jefferson wrote that he was not enamoured of the international
metric system as it was formulated, primarily because the meridian had been substituted
for the pendulum as the standard. A USA Senate committee declined an invitation from
France to participate in developing an international metric system.
The Congress of the USA established the United States Mint to produce new coins and
notes. By then Jefferson's decimal system had been already well established in the
thirteen states by the daily use of Benjamin Franklin's 'Fugio Cent'. The world's first
decimal currency, with one dollar consisting of 100 cents, was introduced smoothly and
successfully to the USA.
1792 September 22
The French Republic was established when Year 1 of the First Republic was proclaimed
on the day of the autumnal equinox.
1793
The French Constitution was promulgated with Jean-Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis
de Condorcet (who as stated earlier is usually known simply as Condorcet) as the
principle author. Condorcet was an especially close friend of Thomas Jefferson from the
USA. Their friendship is logical when you consider that Thomas Jefferson had played a
leading role in forming the ideas behind the Constitution of the USA in 1787. The Library
of Congress web site (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefffed.html ) says:
86
Although Thomas Jefferson was in France serving as United States minister when
the Federal Constitution was written in 1787, he was able to influence the
development of the federal government through his correspondence. Later his
actions as the first secretary of state, vice president, leader of the first political
opposition party, and third president of the United States were crucial in shaping the
look of the nation's capital and defining the powers of the Constitution and the
nature of the emerging republic.
For example, these words of the preamble are attributed to Thomas Jefferson:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
It also seems highly likely that Condorcet and Jefferson would have discussed their
common ideas for the system of universal measure that eventually became SI, the
modern metric system.
France and England went to war.
The New York Stock Exchange opened this year, but they decided not to use this new-
fangled decimal currency. Instead they chose to use dollars of the USA but to divide them
into 'pieces-of-eight'; that is into halves, quarters, and eighths. The NYSE did not change
to trading using decimal currency until 2001 – 208 years later.
1793
Louis XVI was executed on January 21.
On August 1 the metre had its legal origin when the Republican Government of France
adopted a report from the Académie Française and decreed the unit of length was to be
called the 'metre' and it was to be 1/10 000 000 (10-7) of the earth's quadrant.
Despite their best efforts, the scientists at the time made an error in their calculations,
namely the assumed value of the earth's flattening used in correcting for oblateness. The
quadrant of the earth is nearer to 10 002 kilometres instead of exactly 10 000 kilometres
as originally planned (an error of 0.02%) so the metre was a little short at 999.8
millimetres rather than 1000 millimetres exactly. For details of the history of measuring
the Earth circumference see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth.
In the meantime, while they waited for the meridian to be measured, the French
government passed laws approving a provisional measuring system and a provisional
metre was constructed from geodetic data already available. A brass standard of the
provisional metre was made and it is still preserved in the Conservatoire des Arts et
Métiers at Paris. The National Convention also adopted the preliminary definitions and
terms with the 'methodical' nomenclature, using prefixes for fractions and multiples of
the measuring unit names, rather than the 'common' method that involved separate
names for each unit size.
On August 8 the National Convention abolished the Academy of Sciences as un-
republican. But the Committee of Public Safety (CPS) wanted to rid France of the old
feudal measures, and they needed the help of the members of the Academy to do this, so
the CPS persuaded the National Convention to create the Commission temporaire des
poids et mesures républicaines (Temporary Commission of Republican Weights and
Measures) with the same members.
Later, when Lavoisier was arrested in November and the commission requested his
release, the CPS responded by kicking five more members off the commission, including
Delambre.
A report, 'Le Système Métrique Décimal', published by the Ministère du Commerce et
Industrie in Paris in 1901, said in part:
87
Standard metres and graves (kilograms), made by the temporary Commission, were
very probably distributed, at least in part, in several foreign countries. In the papers
of the Committee of Public Safety, kept in the National Archives, there is a mention
under the date of 21 frimaire year I (11 December 1793), that a copper metre and a
copper grave both with gradations were sent to the USA through an agency for a
'Correspondent of the Natural History Museum 'Joseph Dombey'.'
Joseph Dombey, a French citizen and botanist, as a special diplomatic messenger;
accepted the task of transporting some of the provisional metric standards to
Philadelphia, the first capital of the USA. Unfortunately, a hurricane forced his ship
south to Guadeloupe and Dombey was imprisoned at Montserrat where he died. The
French recovered some of his papers and metric models some years later but an
opportunity to be relevant to the USA was lost.
1794
Paolo Ricchini de Voghera sent a letter from Italy to Champagny, the Minister for the
Internal Affairs of the French Empire, extolling the virtues of the metric system and
bemoaning the variety of measures used in Italy at that time. He wrote:
This Gothic diversity was the ineluctable outcome of the partition and fragmentation
of Italy into small seigneuries, as well as a direct consequence of the feudal law.
He went on to demand tough measures anticipating strong resistance from conservatives
and traditionalists.
The execution of Robespierre ended of the reign of terror in France.
Condorcet suspected that he was being watched by his enemies and although he fled
from Paris he was arrested and imprisoned. Two days later, on March 29, he was found
dead in his prison cell and it is not known whether he died from natural causes, was
murdered, or took his own life. More information can be found at:
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Condorcet.html
where H B Acton summarised Condorcet's life as follows:
Wholly a man of the Enlightenment, an advocate of economic freedom, religious
toleration, legal and educational reform, and the abolition of slavery, Condorcet
sought to extend the empire of reason to social affairs. Rather than elucidate human
behaviour, as had been done thus far, by recourse to either the moral or physical
sciences, he sought to explain it by a merger of the two sciences that eventually
became transmuted into the discipline of sociology.
However, for many students of the metric system and its development, the secretary of
the scientific commission that developed the first legal metric system, Jean-Antoine
Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet will be best remembered for describing the
metric system as:
there the seconds pendulum and the size of a degree have their mean values;
it is a coincidence that the 45th parallel runs through France;
only there do meridians have arcs bisected at 45° that terminate at either end at sea
level; and
only there are there meridians that are short enough to measure.
Pierre-Simon,Marquis de Laplace put it this way in a lecture in 1795:
… had savants from all countries come together to fix the universal measure, they
would not have made a different choice.
However, not everyone in the rest of the world agreed with them. It was hard for people
in places other than Paris to concede that a section of the meridian through Paris and
lying almost entirely within France was a unit dictated by nature! As an example, Thomas
Jefferson put his position like this:
The element of measure adopted by the National Assembly excludes, ipso facto, every
nation on earth from a communion of measurement with them; for they
acknowledge themselves, that a due portion for admeasurement for a meridian
crossing the forty-fifth degree of latitude, and terminating at both ends at the same
level, can be found in no other country on earth but theirs.
The UK passed the Weights and Measures Act 1795
On April 7 the Republic of France legally adopted the French Academy of Sciences
recommendation for a decimal metric system. This decimal metric system defined the
length, mass, and capacity standards and listed the prefixes for multiples and
submultiples of units. The law (Loi du 18 germinal, an III) adopted the definitions and
terms that we still use. Lenoir made a brass bar to represent the provisional metre,
obtained from the survey of Lacaille, and a provisional standard for the kilogram was
derived.
Copies of the provisional standards were sent to several countries, including the
United States.
The motto adopted for the new decimal metric system was Condorcet's description of the
metric system as:
For all time, for all people
The new law defined the 'Système métrique décimal', to distinguish it from the several
'systèmes métriques' of former times that were not 'décimal'. The new measures were
officially named 'républicaines'.
The French Assembly decreed that henceforth the new 'Republican Measures' were to be
legal measures in France. This law included the metre for length, the are (100 square
metres) for area, the litre for volume, the gram (and later the kilogram for mass), and
the bar for pressure, as the official base units.
All of these units were related to the metre. For example the kilogram was the mass of
distilled water occupying a space of one litre. In the form of a cube, a litre is 100 mm high
by 100 mm long by 100 mm wide.
Prefixes were identified with Greek words for the multiples:
deca (x 10), hecto (x 100), kilo (x 1 000), and myria (x 10 000);
and Latin prefixes for fractions:
deci (1/10), centi (1/100), milli (1/1 000).
This was the decimal metric system, which proved to be simple to use, and made
transitions between different dimensions easier beyond compare. The metric system has
survived little changed as the basis of today's Système International d'Unités (SI).
89
The Assembly re-established the scientific commission (except for Lavoisier, guillotined
the previous year) and ordered resumption of the survey of the quadrant.
The new French coinage, including the decimal franc, was also introduced as the French
legal currency.
1797
The UK passed the Weights and Measures Act 1797.
1797-1801
Thomas Jefferson was Vice President for President John Adams.
1798
Delambre and Méchain completed the survey (despite the great difficulties due to the
political conditions) of the meridian of longitude between Barcelona and Dunkerque.
In the whole of the quadrant survey, only angles had been measured, the angles of
thousands of contiguous triangles stretching all the way from Barcelona to Dunkerque.
All that was needed was the measurement of any side of only one of these triangles then
the dimensions of all the others could be calculated, and from them the distance along
the meridian. Delambre used a special ruler to measure one of the baselines – it took him
33 days to measure a single line with sufficiently high accuracy and precision.
Scientists met in Paris in September to discuss the Delambre and Méchain survey
findings to confirm the metric standards and definitions. They held a conference on the
decimal metric system that is now believed to be the first international scientific
conference ever held anywhere in the world.
Before the conference many of the visiting international scientists inspected the progress
that had already been made following contributions from the UK (Wilkins), from the
USA (Franklin and Jefferson), and from many scientists in France. The international
scientists also took the opportunity to visit French educational and scientific laboratories
and to tour major French industrial facilities.
The international delegates included: Henricus Aeneae from the Batavian Republic;
Balbo, Mascheroni, Multedo, Franchini and Fabbroni from Italy; Thomas Bugge from
Denmark; Ciscar and Pedrayes from Spain; Trallès from Switzerland; and Jean Henri van
Swinden from the Netherlands. There were also delegates from the Cisalpine Republic,
the Ligurian Republic, Sardinia, and Tuscany.
The French scientists, including Coulomb, Mechain, Delambre, Laplace, Legendre, and
Lagrange, who had already been working on the decimal metric system for some years,
joined these international scientists for the conference.
Although scientists from the UK and from the USA did not specifically take part in this
meeting, contributions to the decimal nature of the system and its overall structure had
been discussed by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, in person in the 1780s and
by correspondence since then. Contributions had also been made through
correspondence from other nations such as the UK.
An international meeting of experts was called on November 28 to consider Delambre's
and Méchain's survey results. One of the meeting's committees consisted of four persons,
each of whom independently calculated the length of the metre from the measurements,
and from certain assumptions about the shape of the earth; their calculations agreed.
Two commissions were set up in France.
The first of these, chaired by Jean Henri van Swinden (1746/1823) from the Netherlands,
checked the results of Delambre and Méchain who had completed the measurement of
the arc of meridian so that the exact length of the metre could be determined. Platinum
and iron standards of the metre were then constructed. Van Swinden's committee also
90
number of other countries occupied during the Napoleonic period, and a large number of
European nations had adopted decimal currency by 1815.
1804
Delambre published Decimal trigonometrical tables to extend Borda's work toward
rational decimal measurements of angles, instead of the old Babylonian division into
degrees, minutes, and seconds. Borda divided a right angle into 100 grades, each degree
into 100 centigrades, and each centigrade by decimal fractions. Borda's system required
new trigonometrical tables to be constructed; Borda organised these calculations and the
new trigonometrical tables were published by Delambre in 1804.
In a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society, Matthew Flinders
suggests that the name Australia should replace the name New Holland that was
previously used. The name Australia appears in the 1806 Philosophical Transactions of
the Royal Society.
1805
Ferdinand R. Hassler, a Swiss immigrant to the USA, brought a standard metre back
home from a visit to Europe. This standard metre was a gift from his friend J. G. Tralles,
who had been the Swiss delegate to the 1799 International Institute on the Metre in Paris.
Because Tralles had chaired the institute's committee on the construction of the standard
metres he was given two, when each of the other delegates was given only one standard
metre to take home. Hassler presented his standard metre to the Philosophical Society of
Philadelphia for safekeeping.
John Dalton (1766/1844) proposed his theory that substances are made from atoms.
Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalton#Atomic_theory lists the five
main points of Dalton's atomic theory as:
Elements are made of tiny particles called atoms.
All atoms of a given element are identical.
The atoms of a given element are different from those of any other element; the
atoms of different elements can be distinguished from one another by their
respective relative weights.
Atoms of one element can combine with atoms of other elements to form
chemical compounds; a given compound always has the same relative numbers
of types of atoms.
Atoms cannot be created, divided into smaller particles, nor destroyed in the
chemical process; a chemical reaction simply changes the way atoms are grouped
together.
Most, but not all of these ideas are still in use by chemists and physicists.
1806
Dominique François Jean Arago (1786/1853) travelled to Spain to complete the
measurement of an arc of meridian of the Earth, that had not been quite completed by
Delambre and Méchain. Arago's additional measurements took from 1806 till 1809.
Later, Arago became director of the Paris Observatory.
1807
Ferdinand R. Hassler became superintendent of the newly organized Coast Survey, so the
Philosophical Society of Philadelphia returned the standard metre to him to use in the
survey. The Coast Survey used this standard metre to verify other measures until 1890,
when it was placed in the vault of the Bureau of Standards.
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1809
Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre reported the time for light to travel from the Sun to the
Earth as 8 minutes and 12 seconds. This yields the speed of light as just a little more than
300 000 kilometres per second. Its modern value is exactly 299 792.458 kilometres
per second.
1809
On August 17 the Mayor of Turin declared that from 1809 October 1 the metric system
would be obligatory.
1809-26
At Monticello, Thomas Jefferson drew up plans, supervised construction, and outlined
curriculum of the University of Virginia.
1811
Thomas Jefferson outlined his ideas for a decimal system of measurement in a letter to
Dr. Robert Patterson (See: http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl212.htm ) in
which he writes:
What ratio shall we adopt for the parts and multiples of this unit? The decimal
without a doubt. Our arithmatic [sic] being founded in a decimal numeration, the
same numeration in a system of measures, weights and coins, tallies at once with
that. On this question, I believe, there has been no difference of opinion.
Peter Barlow writes about the Decimal System in his book: An Elementary Investigation
of the Theory of Numbers: with its application to the indeterminate and Diophantine
analysis, the analytical and geometrical division of the circle, and several other curious
algebraical and arithmetical problems (J. Johnson and Co, London 1811),.
1812
Following protests about the new system of measurement, Napoleon Bonaparte
temporarily suspended the compulsory provisions of the 1795 metric system law by
decree. This decree gave the illusion that he had decided to go back to the old ways and
reintroduce 'mesures usuelles' such as the aune, the boisseau, the livre, and the toise.
However, in reintroducing the names of the old units, Napoleon also had the old names
redefined in metric terms. Length, for example, was measured using a two metres toise
(fathom), and mass by a 500 gram livre (pound). The toise was divided into 6 pieds (feet)
that were each one third of a metre in length. A decree was also issued that the legal
decimal system must be taught in schools and used in all official transactions.
France now had three separate measuring methods and a major problem:
all of the hundreds of old pre-1790 measures,
the metric system (of 1799),
the Napoleonic mesures usuelles, and
all of the thousands of conversion factors between all of these units.
To the French public it seemed that there were far too many separate methods to
measure anything, and this complicated program of different measures led to total
confusion in measurement in France, eventually leading to demonstrations, riots, and
even deaths. The confusion lasted about a generation before the metric system was once
again reinstated as the sole means of measurement in 1837, with a cut-off date in 1840,
and its position in France has never been threatened again.
Gradually neighbouring countries realised the simplicity of the metric system and it
spread rapidly (in historical terms 200 years is not a long time) to the rest of the world.
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This report dealt with the modernisation of the measurement system of the USA and
included some thoughts on 'the metric question'. Here is an excerpt from John Quincy
Adams' 'Report on Weights and Measures by the Secretary of State, made to the Senate
on February 22, 1821':
Weights and Measures may be ranked among the necessaries of life to every
individual of human society. They enter into the economical arrangements and daily
concerns of every family. They are necessary to every occupation of human industry;
to the distribution and security of every species of property; to every transaction of
trade and commerce; to the labors of the husbandman; to the ingenuity of the
artificer; to the studies of the philosopher; to the researches of the antiquarian; to the
navigation of the mariner; and the marches of the soldier; to all the exchanges of
peace, and all the operations of war. The knowledge of them, as in established use, is
among the first elements of education, and is often learned by those who learn
nothing else, not even to read and write. This knowledge is riveted in the memory by
the habitual application of it to the employments of men throughout life.
When Quincy Adams presented his 'Report Upon Weights and Measures' to the USA
Congress he recommended consideration of the international metric system. Specifically
he wrote:
The (metric) system approaches to the ideal perfection of 'uniformity'. (It) will shed
unfading glory upon the age … Considered merely as a labor-saving machine, it is a
new power, offered to man, incomparably greater than that which he has acquired
by the new agency which he has given to steam. It is in design the greatest invention
since that of printing.
Quincy Adams' report then recommended that no immediate change in the system of
weights and measures be made, arguing that the people of the United States were not yet
ready for the metric system. He considered that it would be premature for the United
States to adopt the metric system before it proved to be successful in practice in other
parts of the world. It is probable that the French reversion to the 'mesures usuelles' in
1812 greatly influenced Quincy Adams and the Congress of the USA. But for Napoleon's
'mesures usuelles', the USA could well have changed to metric measures in 1821.
In the UK, the 'Third Report' of the Commissioners appointed to consider weights and
measures was presented to Parliament.
1822
Charles Babbage, in 1822, decided that the job of calculating mathematical tables should
be done by machine. Babbage invented the difference engine to do this work and later he
invented the analytical engine. These computing engines were the world's first
programmable computers. The first computer programmer in the world was Ada
(Countess) Lovelace. Ada was the daughter of the English poet, Lord Byron.
Unfortunately, Charles Babbage never completed any of his computing engines because
he kept adding improvements.
1823
Charles Babbage demonstrated his 'Difference Engine', a mechanical means of
computing mathematical tables, to the Royal Society. Later, Babbage designed Analytical
Engines that could store programs.
1824 June 17
In the UK the Weights and Measures Act 1824, during the reign of George IV, (1820 –
1830) established new methods of measuring for the UK and for the British
Commonwealth. It declared the avoirdupois pound and the yard as 'Imperial Standards'.
The three basic units were the pound avoirdupois, the yard, and the second. This Act also
phased out many of the old measuring words.
97
The Imperial unit of length was defined as the length of the prototype of the imperial
yard made by Bird in 1760. All length measures were to be based on this prototype yard.
The Imperial unit of capacity, the gallon, was defined as the volume of 10 pounds
avoirdupois of distilled water, weighed in air against brass weights at a temperature of
62°F and atmospheric pressure of 30 inches of mercury. This definition of the gallon
might be interpreted as Britain's response to the decimal metric system but it is the only
factor of ten used in the Imperial system; quarts and pints remain as quarters and
eighths of an Imperial gallon.
The state of New South Wales in Australia obtained standards of mass, length and
volume from England to develop an Australian measurement system. As other Australian
states developed their own measurement methods, it was soon recognised that a national
measurement system was needed.
1825
France again allowed the use of metric units, but it did this alongside the 'Mesures
Usuelles' that had been introduced in 1812. France now had dual measures.
George Stephenson put James Watt's high-pressure steam engine on rails in his
'Locomotion No. 1’, which was the first steam locomotive to carry both passengers and
freight on a regular basis. This led to railways being built all around the world. By the
1830s, London even had steam driven buses, one of which was named the 'Automation'.
By the end of the 19th century, steam technology was well enough developed that the
Stanley Steamer competed with cars with gasoline engines for several years.
Sir John Wrottesley introduced a motion into the UK House of Commons to: … inquire
how far the coin of the realm could be adapted to a decimal scale.
Sir John wanted the pound to be divided into ten double-shillings (later called Florins),
each of 100 farthings. In response, the Chancellor of the Exchequer agreed to unify the
currencies of Britain and Ireland, so that there would no longer be thirteen English
pennies to an Irish Shilling.
1825
The UK Weights and Measures Act 1825 came into force in the UK and in all of its
colonies on May 1.
1826
Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the
Declaration of Independence.
Thomas Jefferson never lost interest in the issue of decimal measurement, although
discussion of it in the USA grew less and less as he grew older. In the book, Jefferson And
The Rights Of Man, Dumas Malone writes this about Thomas Jefferson:
When writing his autobiography as an old man, he noted that everybody had readily
comprehended the odometer he used in travelling which divided the mile into "cents,"
and concluded that the people would have soon got used to a decimal system of
weights and measures.
Perhaps nothing short of revolution could have overcome inertia sufficiently to cause
such a system to be established, and there was no revolution in America in this
decade as there was in France.
Thus Jefferson lost a title to fame which he might have cherished more than any of
the political honours he gained or the offices he held.
1827
Georg Ohm (1787/1854) in Die galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet (The
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The only standard pound in the USA was the Troy pound that was defined as
5760 grains. The avoirdupois pound was defined as 7000 grains so, as the USA did not
have a standard avoirdupois pound, it was simply defined as 7000/5760 Troy pounds,.
Charles Babbage, in his book, 'On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures',
recommending changing to decimal measurements and decimal currency.
1833
The German mathematician, Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777/1855) strongly promoted the
application of a metric system, together with the astronomical second, as the unit of time
for use in science. His system was based on millimetres, grams, and seconds, and he
devised a coherent system of units for the physical sciences. The millimetre and the gram
were defined by the standard metre and kilogram and Gauss added the astronomical
second.
Examples of Gauss' use of this coherent system included absolute measurements of the
earth's magnetic force. In later years, Gauss and Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1804/1891)
extended these measurements so that the system could also include electrical
phenomena. Gauss especially promoted these units for the physical sciences because they
were coherent.
In the USA, the Treasury Department directed Hassler to construct and distribute
standards of length, mass, volume, and balances by which masses might be compared, to
all of the states.
1834
Less than ten years after the establishment of Imperial measures, the UK Houses of
Parliament burned down on October 16, and the three standard measures, the yard, the
pound and the gallon, that defined British measures, were destroyed. In particular, Bird's
yards – the 1758 and the 1760 – were both destroyed, so the UK and all the colonies had
no standard for length. This despite the fact that the 1824 Act of Parliament that legalized
the 1760 bar as the standard for England, had made a provision that, in the event that
Bird's bar was lost or destroyed, it should be replaced using the pendulum method to
determine its length. This was not done.
The UK passed the Weights and Measures Act 1834.
1836
Belgium, Holland, and Luxemburg withdraw official use of all old measures in favour of
the metric system.
1837
Napoleon's armies were again forced to retreat from Moscow and Napoleon was banished
to Elba.
The new emperor, Louis Phillipe, made the use of the decimal metric system obligatory
with a law passed on 1837 July 4. This law also declared the 'Mesures Usuelles' illegal in
France and ordered that the only units to be used in France were to be units of the
decimal metric system. France once again changed to the 1799 metric system, with a law
that strictly banned all the old non-metric measures and the Napoleonic measures from
1840 January 1 onwards. From that date using old measures became a penal offence.
1838
A survey of Switzerland found that the Swiss foot had 37 different regional lengths and
the Swiss ell had 68 different lengths There were 83 different Swiss measures for dry
grain, 70 different measures for liquids, and 63 different measures for weights.
Starting this year, standards representing units of length, capacity, and mass (troy and
avoirdupois) were manufactured and delivered to each of the states of the USA. The
100
length and capacity standards were based on the metre and the mass (weight) was based
on the Troy pound in the mint of the USA.
1839
When William Henry Fox Talbot described his process of 'photogenic drawing' to the
Royal Society, Sir John Herschel recognised his invention as 'the first new art form in
centuries' and quickly renamed it 'photography'.
1840
The metric system was reinstated as the compulsory measurement system of France on
January 1. French people who did not use the decimal metric units were threatened with
large fines and severe penalties. It was illegal to use or even own non-metric weights and
measures. Non-metric units were banned in public and private correspondence.
Inspectors were empowered to confiscate old weights and measures. Schools and
business adopted the new system rapidly and it has been used in France ever since. It had
taken France just under 50 years to change to metric.
Greece, the Netherlands, and Italy changed to the metric system.
1841
The USA finally received a complete set of the official French standards. These included
a steel metre that had been compared with the metre of the Conservatory of Arts and
Measures, and a standard kilogram that had been compared with the kilogram of the
French Archives.
1844
The last English standard, the Imperial Standard Yard, was manufactured in bronze in
1844. This new Imperial Standard Yard was to replace the previous standard that been
destroyed in the fire that burned down the Houses of Parliament in 1834. Copies of this
yard were sent to the USA.
Antoine LeCoultre, who established the watchmaking company Jaeger-LeCoultre,
invented the 'Millionometer'. This was the first instrument capable of measuring
components to the nearest micrometre. The 'Millionometer' revolutionised the
watchmaking concept of precision and reliability and it established the metric system as
the watch-making industry's worldwide measurement standard.
1845
James Prescott Joule (1784/1858) performed a series of experiment to demonstrate the
transformation of energy from one form to another. In the first experiment he placed a
paddle wheel in a tank of water, then measured the temperature of the water. After he
had cranked the wheel in the water for a measured time, he took the temperature again
and found that the temperature of the water rose as he cranked the paddle wheel. When
he quantified and compared his observations from many experiments, he discovered that
an equal amount of energy was always required to raise the temperature of the water by
the same amount. Later he did other experiments to show that he could raise the
temperature using other forms of energy. Joule obtained similar results with electrical or
magnetic energy as he did with mechanical energy.
Joule's demonstrations showed that different forms of energy can be converted from one
form to another. Later, Joule's observations came to be known as the 'Law of
conservation of energy' that states that whenever energy is transferred between two
objects, or converted from one form into another, no energy is created and none is
destroyed. The total amount of energy involved in the process remains the same.
1847
Many nations in the world used the USA as a model when they wanted to abolish their
101
old, inefficient money currencies and move to decimal currencies. They then used the
change to decimal currency as a stepping-stone to full metrication of all of their weights
and measures. This was recognised in the USA, in 1847, when the Treasury Secretary of
the USA, R. J. Walker wrote:
… our decimal system of coinage … will be adopted, and lead as far as practicable to
the introduction of the decimal system of weights and measures … throughout the
world.
Secretary Walker's words proved true for all nations except for the USA where decimal
currency began.
In the UK, Sir John Bowring, a future Governor of Hong Kong, proposed that there
should be a new coin, the Queen, at ten to the pound, and another new coin, the Victoria,
at one hundred to the pound. His patriotic arguments obviously won the debate, and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer agreed to 'gradually' introduce decimal currency. The Queen
was renamed the Florin and introduced in 1849.
1848
Chile converted to metric measures.
1849
Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Spain converted to metric measures.
The UK made its first attempt to introduce decimal currency when they introduced the
Florin, which was carefully labelled 'One Florin – one Tenth of a pound'.
The Florin was introduced with the aim that 'at the very worst a decimal coin could do
no harm', and that 'the present system could go on if that failed'. We now know that the
Florin, the UK's first decimal coin didn't fail, and the second part of the change was
introduced in 1971, once the population had become used to the new coin, having used it
for 122 years. These days the Florin is known as ten pence, or by its abbreviation, 10 p.
1850
Norman Robert Pogson (1829/1891), an English astronomer, suggested a classification
for the brightness of stars with decimal increments of magnitude. On Pogson's scale a
first magnitude star is one hundred times brighter than a sixth magnitude star.
1850s
During the early 1850s, Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777/1855) worked with Wilhelm Eduard
Weber (1804/1891) to develop a logical system of fundamental units for electricity and
magnetism. Their system was developed and promoted, under the active leadership of
James Clerk Maxwell (1831/1879) and William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin (1824/1907)
through the British Association for the Advancement of Science (the BAAS). Maxwell and
Thomson helped to formulate the requirements for a coherent system of units with base
units and derived units.
In particular William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) played a major part in creating the
international system of units used in the world today. He was known to have called the
English system of weights and measures 'barbarous.' In a lecture demonstration with a
muzzle-loader rifle, confusion between the avoirdupois dram (about 1.8 grams) and the
apothecary's dram (about 3.9 grams) caused a student to put into Thomson's muzzle-
loader more than twice as much gunpowder as he should have. This could have blown
Thomson's head off. However, Thomson's finicky attention to details led him to check the
amount with the student before the demonstration. Perhaps this near-death experience
with old units stirred Thomson's interest in better methods of measurement.
1851
The British Government awarded the Royal Society its first annual Government Grant of
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especially with the influence of Charles Piazzi Smyth (see 1863 September 30 below).
1860
In the USA, the state of Maine expressed its desire for the adoption of the metric system
as the universal system of weights and measures.
1861
The British Association for the Advancement of Science set up an international
committee, under the chairmanship of William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, to choose
the best unit for electrical resistance. This committee published its work between 1863
and 1867, and it was this committee who initially proposed definitions for the ohm, the
volt and the farad. This committee, that also included James Clerk Maxwell and James
Prescott Joule among its members, introduced the concept of a system of units for the
first time. They recognised that they could describe electrical activity with only four
equations chosen from the work of Ampère, Coulomb, Joule, and Ohm.
The State of Connecticut suggested the adoption of the metric system in the USA. The
Secretary of the USA Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, invited Congress to attend … to the
importance of … a uniform nomenclature of weights, measures and coins to the
commerce of the world.
1862
A House of Commons Select Committee in the UK rejected a suggestion that there should
be an amalgamation of the decimal system with the English units of measure. This was
rejected on the grounds of expense, as it would have cost just as much to do this as it
would cost to fully adopt the metric system, but without offering equal gains.
When they finished their deliberations, they released a 'Report of the Select Committee
appointed to consider the practicality of adopting a simple and uniform system of
weights and measures'. This House of Commons Select Committee unanimously
recommended the adoption of metric units for all public administration in the UK. Their
report included the line … no nation which has adopted the metric system has failed to
derive the greatest benefit from such adoption, or, after adoption has shown any desire
to abandon it.
Brazil, Mexico, and Uruguay converted to metric measures.
1863
An Act of Congress founded the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. In its first
report the President of the Academy wrote: The discussions in the body of this committee
were strongly in favour of the adoption of the French metrical system.
The USA was represented at two important international weights and measures
congresses.
The International Statistical Congress, meeting in Berlin, declared that uniformity
in weights and measures was of the highest importance, particularly for
international commerce.
The Postal Congress, held in Paris, adopted the metric system for international
postal services.
Argentina and Sicily converted to metric measures.
Alfred Holbrook wrote 'The Normal: or, Methods of Teaching the Common Branches,
Orthoepy, Orthography, Grammar, Geography, Arithmetic and Elocution. In it he said:
The separatrix (decimal marker) is the most important character used in decimals, and
no pains should be spared to impress this on the minds of pupils.
Italy converted to metric measures.
104
1863
On July 1, a Bill in the UK for a compulsory change to the metric system was approved by
110 to 75 votes. Speakers argued many of the points we hear today. On the one hand
supporters argued its logic and simplicity, savings in time and money, advantages to
trade and education. Opponents stressed the undesirability of following the precedent of
France and the problems of conversion for the uneducated and disadvantaged. However
no specific cut-off dates were proposed, and there was no provision for deprecating the
old pre-metric unit names and removing them from laws and statutes.
Sir John Herschell delivered and published a highly influential lecture on September 30
that belittled the 'French Metrical System' and promoted an alternative of his own
devising that was based on the idea that the Earth's quadrant was 500 500 000 inches
exactly. This lecture became a major reference in Charles Davies' book, 'The Metric
System Considered With Reference To Its Introduction Into The United States', A. S.
Barnes and Company, New York 1871.
To put Sir John Herschell's contribution in context it should be noted that he was a
supporter of many ideas in measurement, such as those of no less a personage than the
Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Charles Piazzi Smyth.
Smyth was a pupil of Sir John Herschell and, like Herschell, he objected to the use of the
metric system and this may account for some of the extraordinary theories he later
proposed. I quote from: http://www.adam.com.au/bstett/PaPyramids13.htm:
Finding that one of the casing stones of the Great Pyramid was approximately
25 inches, equal to (a) cubit, Smyth decided that the inch (one twenty-fifth of a cubit
and approximately one 10 millionth part of the Earth's polar radius) must have been
the divine unit of length. When it was discovered that the original casing stone was a
bit over 25 inches (25.025 in fact), Smyth proposed that the 'Pyramid inch' of 1.001
was the actual divine unit (the British unit presumably got worn down a bit in the
pocket of one of the Lost Tribesmen).
Of course it did serve to prove that the British measurement system was divinely
inspired, which was one in the eye for those nasty French. Smyth used the pyramid
inch and various other measurements made at the Great Pyramid to calculate the
density of the Earth, its population and, for all we know, the winner of the third at
Ascot.
1864
The British House of Lords debated a Bill to permit the use of metric weights and
measures in trade. Parliament passed the Bill and this became the Metric Weights and
Measures Act 1864 (27 and 28 Victoria, c. 117). The Act, which contained only three
clauses, only applied to trade 'contracts and dealings'; the Metric Weights and Measures
Act did not legalise the use of metric units in day-to-day trade. This Act catalogued all the
metric units as they existed at the time and authorized these equivalents:
1 metre = 1 yard 0 feet 3·3708 inches
1 kilogram 2 lbs 3oz 4·3830 drams = 15432·3487 grains
1 are = 119·6033 square yards
1 litre = 1·76077 pints
In the Act other metric weights were catalogued in the appropriate imperial units in cwt,
qtr, st, lb, oz, and dr. It was clear from the way the Act was worded that the legal drafters
thought that the metric system was much simpler than the old pre-metric measures; and
drafted it in a way that, in itself, was a good advertisement for the metric system.
In the USA, Connecticut passed laws that provided for teaching the metric system in all
the schools of that State.
105
In the USA, the state legislature of New Hampshire urged the federal Congress to adopt a
decimal system of weights and measures nationally.
Charles Darwin received the Royal Society's Copley Medal, but his book 'On the Origin of
Species' was controversially excluded from the citation. However, a speech given to the
Royal Society at the time affirms: It is with that work that the public … will naturally
recollect the honour.
Basing his theories on John Taylor's book, The Great Pyramid (see 1859 above), Charles
Piazzi Smyth published another book based on the idea that the design of the great
pyramid of Giza held measuring secrets. In books such as Our Inheritance in the Great
Pyramid and The Great Pyramid: Its Secrets and Mysteries Revealed Smyth claimed to
have discovered the exact length of the 'pyramid inch' used by the pyramid builders.
Based on his discovery he then calculated exact sizes for the 'pyramid pint', the 'sacred
cubit', and for 'pyramid temperatures'! As Smyth's 'pyramid inch' – according to his
calculation – was exactly equal to 1.001 British inches, it followed (at least in Smyth's
mind) that the British were the inheritors of this sacred measuring methods incorporated
in the structure of the great pyramid at Giza. See Wikipedia web page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Piazzi_Smyth#Pyramidological_researches
Smyth claimed, and presumably believed, that the pyramid inch was a God-given
measure handed down through the centuries from the time of Israel, and that the
architects of the pyramid could only have been directed by the hand of God. To
support this Smyth said that, in measuring the pyramid, he found the number of
inches in the perimeter of the base equalled one thousand times the number of days
in a year, and found a numeric relationship between the height of the pyramid in
inches to the distance from Earth to the Sun, measured in statute miles.
In a recent journal article, The Battle of the Standards: Great Pyramid Metrology and
British Identity 1859-1890 (The Historian, Vol. 65, 2003) Eric Michael Reisenauer
writes:
The current clash over the euro is something of a distant echo of a controversy from
the latter half of the nineteenth century. This dispute centred around the curious and
remarkable theory of Great Pyramid metrology (the study of weights and measures).
Like its modern counterpart, the debate involved the potential ousting of a
traditional British system in favour of a Continental scheme--in this case British
imperial weights and measures for the French metric system ….
The process of identity formation found in the Great Pyramid theory operated in two
ways. One involved the incitement of fear in response to a foreign system seeking to
challenge and displace a national tradition--the quintessential Other. While
important, however, simply vilifying the Other is not enough. A nation's identity is
also validated through its own merits and, if possible, with the sanction of God. The
second method did this by asserting and demonstrating an inherent superiority,
based in both science and religion, of the traditional system over its potential rival ….
Great Pyramid metrology consisted of two distinct but related notions: first, that the
Great Pyramid of Egypt at Gizeh was not built as a tomb for the pharaohs but as a
storehouse for a divinely-inspired metrological system, and second, that the modern
British people, indeed the whole 'Anglo-Saxon race,' had inherited these same
standards, virtually unaltered for thousands of years, as a racial patrimony in their
own system of weights and measures. Great Pyramid metrologists contended that
the base unit used to construct the monument was the Hebrew 'sacred cubit'
composed of twenty-five so-called 'pyramid inches.' The pyramid inch, they went on,
was virtually identical (save 1/1000th part) to the modern British inch. Britain had
therefore inherited a system of weights and measures far older, far more sacred,
and, emanating as it did from the mind of God, far more scientific than any other
metrological system on earth …. Great Pyramid metrology worked its way into the
106
(25.237 44 millimetres instead of about 25.4 millimetres). Hawks printing point was now
only approximately 1/72 of the Imperial inch used in the USA at that time. The
Association of Typefounders of the United States convention in Saratoga officially
adopted Hawks' point system as a national standard in 1868.
When computer programmers first encountered all of this old printers jargon they
(usually as individuals and within organisations) tried to adapt it to modern computers.
Some chose to use the fraction 1/72 and to base their point on that value without
knowing that this applied to various old pre-metric inches; others chose the imperial inch
as their standard and modified the fraction 1/72 a little to make it fit. Needless to say we
now have a choice of old pre-metric points that look almost post-modern in their
retrofitted construction. Here are the main ones available today – with their approximate
value in whole micrometres:
1 point (ATA) = 0.3514598 mm = 0.0138366 inch o ≈ 351 micrometres
1 point (Didot) = 0.3759 mm = 1/72 French Royal inch (27.07 mm) = about 1/68 in.
o ≈ 376 micrometres
1 point (l'Imprimerie nationale, IN) = 0.4 mm o = 400 micrometres
1 point (Postscript) = 0.3527777778 mm = 1/72 inch o ≈ 353 micrometres
1 point (TeX) = 0.3514598035 mm = 1/72.27 inch o ≈ 351 micrometres
1 point (Truchet) = 0.188 mm o ≈ 188 micrometres
1870
Just a few months before the fall of the Empire, Napoleon III gave approval for the
installation of an astrophysical observatory at the Pavillon de Breteuil, naming Dr Jules
Janssen as Director.
During the Franco-Prussian war (1870-71) Paris was besieged. The Pavillon de Breteuil
was seriously damaged by shells aimed by the French army at a Prussian battery installed
on the hill just above the Pavillon. The stables and outbuildings in the courtyard were
completely demolished, but the servants’ quarters in the Petit Pavillon just to the south of
the main building were untouched.
1871
When the German Empire formed out of several smaller states, it made the metric
system compulsory.
Austria adopted the metric system.
Britain almost became a metric country on July 26 when the government lost the Bill to
make metric compulsory after two years, by only 82 votes to 77 votes. An argument that
might have influenced opponents was a plea that Britain would be:
… letting down America and our colonies who had harmonised their systems with
those of Britain.
At that time the American Congress had emulated Britain by allowing contracts that used
metric units (see 1866).
Use of the metric system was legalised by an Act of Parliament in Canada.
As a reaction to the acceptance of the metric system for trade by Congress in 1866, the
University Convocation of the State of New York published an anti-metric book to
counter this trend toward metrication. 'The Metric System Considered With Reference
To Its Introduction Into The United States' by Charles Davies LL. D. was published by
A. S. Barnes and Company, New York. As Davies was chairman of the Committee on
coins, weights and measures of the University convocation of the State of New York, this
108
book had considerable influence in the USA. This first resolution of their report read:
1. Resolved. That the subject of changing our entire system of weights and measures
and substituting therefor [sic] the Metric System of France, is too grave and too
important to be acted upon without a very full and careful examination of all its
bearings and all its consequences.
Probably their major achievement was producing confusion through obfuscation; they
promoted the pro-metric support of John Quincy Adams and the anti-metric ideas of
John Herschell (see 1863 Sept. 30 above) together with a mish-mash of their own ideas.
1872
The French Government convened an International Commission to meet in Paris. Called
the International Commission of the Metre, it became the forerunner of the Conférence
Générale des Poids et Mesures (CGPM). Members from the USA attended this meeting,
and the Warden of the Standards attended from the UK.
The International Commission of the Metre named the Metre of the Archives as the
official definition of the metre and as the standard of length. The delegates were aware
that the original measurements made to fix the length of the metre to the quadrant of the
Earth in the 1790s had not been exact, so they confirmed that the Metre of the Archives
would be the international standard for the world.
This Commission also advocated the construction of international metric standards that
were to be kept by an international bureau located near Paris. They arranged for
30 copies to be made of the 'Metre of the Archives' as it embodied the official definition
of the metre and the international standard of length. The Commission used the 'Metre of
the Archives' as the reference to make the new prototype metres.
1873
A British Association for the Advancement of Science (the BAAS) committee proposed
the centimetre, gram, and second as base units for a coherent system of metric units.
This became known as the cgs system and it used prefixes from micro to mega. The BAAS
committee also proposed a unit of electrical resistance that was later named the ohm.
The American Metrological Society was formed for the purpose of improving systems of
weights, measures, and money in the USA.
The term 'horsepower' was used by James Watt to market his steam engine. It is likely
that Watt decided on a figure at 33,000 foot pounds per minute (746 watt) based on the
marketing principle of 'under promise and over deliver' as it was well known at the time
that few horses could achieve, let alone maintain, that much effort for very long.
1874
James Clerk Maxwell (1831/1879) and William Thomson (1824/1907) – later Lord
Kelvin, further formulated the requirement for a coherent system of units with base units
and derived units. In 1874 the British Association for the Advancement of Science (the
BAAS) introduced the cgs system, a three dimensional coherent unit system based on
centimetres, grams and seconds. The BAAS was also instrumental in having the range of
metric prefixes expanded from micro to mega to express submultiples and multiples of
units.
Hungary adopted the metric system.
109
1875
On May 20, a major international conference was held in Paris to discuss standards of
measurement. Twenty nations attended but only seventeen nations signed the original
Convention du Mètre (from now on referred to as Treaty of the Metre) during the
final session of this conference. The nations that signed were: Argentina, Austria-
Hungary, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Peru, Portugal, Russia,
Spain, Sweden-Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States of America, and
Venezuela.
Here is the official statement from the SI Brochure:
Le Bureau international des poids et mesures (the BIPM) a été créé par la Convention
du Mètre signée à Paris le 20 mai 1875 par dix-sept États, lors de la dernière séance
de la Conférence diplomatique du Mètre.
The UK, the Netherlands and Hellenic Republic (Greece) attended the conference but
refrained from signing.
The UK and Northern Ireland signed the Treaty of the Metre in 1884, the Netherlands in
1929, and Greece in 2001.
The UK was not one of the signatories to the original Treaty of the Metre because, as the
Warden of the Standards declared in 1877:
… they could not recommend to Parliament any expenditure connected with the
metric system, which is not legalized in this country, nor in support of a permanent
institution established in a foreign country for its encouragement. They have
consequently declined to take part in the Convention or to contribute to the expenses
of the new Metric Bureau, and have directed the Warden of the Standards to decline
being appointed a member of the new International Committee or to take part in the
direction of the new International Metric Bureau.
On the Science of Weighing and Measuring by H. W. Chisholm (Warden of the Standards), 1877
Notably the USA was one of the original signatories.
Australia did not attend this first conference and did not sign the international
agreement, as they and all other Commonwealth countries were represented by the
delegation from the UK. Australia did not sign the Treaty in its own right until 1947.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre_Convention
As well as founding Le Bureau international des poids et mesures (BIPM) and laying
down the way in which the activities of the BIPM should be financed and managed, the
Treaty of the Metre established a permanent organizational structure for member
governments to act in common accord on all matters relating to units of measurement.
The Treaty gave authority to the:
Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures (CGPM),
Comité International des Poids et Mesures (CIPM), and the
Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (the BIPM)
to act in matters of world metrology, in particular the demand for measurement
standards of ever increasing accuracy, range and diversity, and the need to demonstrate
equivalence between national measurement standards.
The BIPM operates under the supervision of the CIPM, which itself comes under the
authority of the CGPM. In order to ensure worldwide uniformity in units of
measurement, the CIPM acts directly or submits proposals for sanction by the CGPM.
CGPM General Conference on Weights and Measures
CIPM International Committee for Weights and Measures
BIPM International Bureau of Weights and Measures
CCE Consultative Committee for Electricity; now the CCEM – Consultative Committee for Electricity and Magnetism
BAAS British Association for the Advancement of Science
AAAS American Association for the Advancement of Science
110
and to construct a new laboratory building to house the instruments and equipment
required by the BIPM. Govi from Italy was appointed as the Director – 1875 to 1877.
The 1875 Treaty of the Metre, which was modified slightly in 1921, remains the basis of
all international agreement on units of measurement.
Following the establishment of the BIPM in France, various nations soon set up their
own National Institutions for Measurement. Examples are the Physikalisch Technische
Reichsanstalt in Germany (1887), the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Britain
(1900) and the National Bureau of Standards in the United States (1901).
These National Institutions for Measurement were founded in response to the growing
needs from academics, government, and industry for greater accuracy and increased
precision for measurements of quantities such as capacity, force, length, mass, pressure,
temperature and time.
1876
The original laboratories of the BIPM were begun at the Pavillon de Breteuil in the Parc
de Saint-Cloud. Construction took until 1878.
This is an extract from an unknown reviewer of the book Time Lord: the biography of Sir
Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time by Clark Blaise.
Here, Sandford Fleming enters the scene. At 5:10 p.m. on a bright July day in 1876,
in the country station of Bandoran, Ireland, a balding figure with a salt-and-pepper
mattress-stuffer of a beard, wearing a gentleman's formal frock coat, alighted from
a horse-drawn taxi 25 minutes before the scheduled arrival of the Londonderry
train. At 5:35 p.m., nothing came. When Fleming checked, he found that his Irish
Railroad Travelers' Guide was mistaken. The train was to arrive at 5:35 a.m.
Fleming, chief engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway, would be a prisoner for the
night in Bandoran station. In those hours, a plan took form that would define the
Decade of Time.
This single event motivated Sandford Fleming to rationalise time measurements into
zones all around the world measured by 24 hour clocks.
1877
J Pernet from Switzerland, Director of the BIPM from 1877 to 1879.
1878
The UK passed the Weights and Measures Act 1878. The yard was defined as the distance
at 62°F between a pair of lines etched in gold plugs set in a bronze bar. This bronze bar
was kept at the Standards Department of the Board of Trade in London, together with the
Imperial Standard Pound. The metric equivalents of these Imperial pound and yard
standards are 0.45359243 kg, and 0.9143992 m respectively. These legal measures were
also the standards for all in the British Commonwealth of nations.
The English, during the reign of Queen Victoria, reacted to the world shift toward
metrication by having the troy pound declared illegal, and by declaring that commercial
trade would be carried out in these quantities: 56lb, 28lb, 14lb, 7lb, 4lb, 2lb, 1lb, 8oz, 4oz,
2oz, 1oz, 1/2oz, 1/4oz, 2dr, 1dr. However this law had effect in some areas but not in
others. For example, butchers used the 'butcher's stone' of 8 pounds until the 1950s, and
the butcher's stone can be compared to the fruiterer's stone of 14 pounds.
In the USA, the Senate ratified the Treaty of the Metre and President Rutherford R.
Hayes proclaimed it on September 27. Note that the USA signed the Treaty of the Metre
in 1875 and ratified it in 1878; signing and ratification are two separate but necessary
steps in the treaty process. At the same time, various Federal agencies responded
unfavourably to the decision of Congress on the use of the metric system in government
transactions and purchases. For example, the mint officially adopted the Troy pound as
the basis for USA coins. Go to http://www.nist.gov/pml/pubs/sp447/
to see Weights and Measures Standards of the United States – A brief history
by Louis E. Barbrow and Lewis V. Judson (1976).
The US House of Representatives resolution of November 6, 1877, read:
Resolved, That the heads of the executive departments of the government be, and that
they are hereby, requested to report to this House, at as early a date as practicable,
what objections, if any, there are to making obligatory in all governmental
transactions the metrical system of weights and measures, whose use has been
authorized in the United States by act of Congress, and also how long a preliminary
notice should be given before such obligatory use can be introduced without
detriment to the public service; and that they are also requested to state what
objections there are, if any, to making the metrical system obligatory in all
transactions between individuals, and what is the earliest date that can be set for the
obligatory use of the metrical system throughout the United States.
J. K. Upton, chief clerk of the Treasury Department, wrote a reply to Congress that was
very favourable to metrication. His report began:
Sir: In compliance with your verbal request that I present to you, in writing, any
suggestions that may occur to me in the matter of the proposed introduction into this
country of the metric system of weights and measures, that the same may be
transmitted to Congress with your reply to the resolution of the House of
Representatives dated November 6, 1877, I have the honour to submit the following:
PRESENT STANDARDS.
The necessity of uniform standards for measuring distances, weights, capacity, and
values among people intimately associated is universally acknowledged, and the
Constitution of this country has wisely given to Congress the power to fix these
standards. This power has not been freely exercised, and consequently there is no
uniform or authoritative standards of measurement throughout the country.
See http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/laws/upton-1878-03-06.html to view the complete
report.
1879
O. J. Broch from Norway, Director of the BIPM from 1879 to 1889.
Enthusiasm for the adoption of the metric system was at a high point in the USA. A
monthly magazine called "THE METRIC REFORM" was produced to achieve this. On an
eBay auction in 2010 one article from the 1879 magazine was described as:
This wonderful, 8 page, illustrated magazine article presents the arguments for and
against the adoption of the metric system of measures to be used in the United States.
The article is very well-written and thoroughly covers every aspect of the Conversion
Controversy. It seems from the tone of the article that a conversion to the Metric
system in America was imminent in 1879 …
1880
Most of Europe and South America legally adopted the metric system.
1880s
During the 1880s, the cgs units were applied in many areas of science and engineering.
CGPM General Conference on Weights and Measures
CIPM International Committee for Weights and Measures
BIPM International Bureau of Weights and Measures
CCE Consultative Committee for Electricity; now the CCEM – Consultative Committee for Electricity and Magnetism
BAAS British Association for the Advancement of Science
AAAS American Association for the Advancement of Science
113
In use, the sizes of the coherent cgs units proved to be inconvenient, especially in the
fields of electricity and magnetism. The BAAS and the International Electrical Congress
approved a mutually coherent set of practical units. Among these units were the ohm for
electrical resistance, the volt for electromotive force and the ampere for electric current.
1881
The BAAS recommended definitions for five practical electrical metric units to the First
International Electrical Congress in Paris; these were ampere, coulomb, farad, ohm, and
volt. The Congress adopted these recommendations.
The USA Congress required that sets of metric standards be distributed to State land
grant colleges by the Treasury Department with a Joint Resolution.
1883
The volcano Krakatoa exploded killing an estimated 40 000 people in Indonesia. As this
was a global phenomenon, the Royal Society sought observations from the public and
letters poured in from many nations, describing the effects of Krakatoa in their regions.
1884
The UK joined the Metric Convention by signing the Treaty of the Metre.
Delegates from 27 nations met in Washington, D.C., for a Meridian Conference and
agreed on a comprehensive plan for worldwide standard time, developed in the late
1870s by Sir Sandford Fleming, a Canadian railway planner and engineer, The need for a
standard time system was particularly felt in the USA and Canada, where extensive
railway routes passed through places that differed by several hours in local time.
Fleming's system uses 24 standard meridians of longitude 15˚ apart, starting with the
prime meridian through Greenwich, England. The time is the same in each zone and
forms the basis for international legal and scientific time.
Local time varies from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) by an integral number of
hours; minutes and seconds are the same. This is basically the same system that we still
all use everyday.
At the Pavillon de Breteuil the laboratory building called the 'Observatoire' was opened.
1887
In Germany they set up a national institution for measurement called the Physikalisch
Technische Reichsanstalt.
1889
J R Benoît from France, Director of the BIPM from 1889 to 1915.
The first CGPM approved new international prototypes for the metre and the kilogram
and the astronomical second as the unit of time. The metre, kilogram and second now
formed a coherent system based on these three units (metre-kilogram-second) that
became known as the mks system.
It defined the metre as the distance between two lines on a standard bar of an alloy of
platinum with ten percent iridium, measured at the melting point of ice. This
International prototype platinum-iridium metre bar had a cross-section shaped like an X
to give it more stability.
The London firm Johnson, Matthey & Co made a prototype metre which became the
length standard for the whole world when it was adopted as the International Prototype
Metre. It was a bar made of a platinum iridium alloy with lines inscribed at each end. The
metre was defined as the distance between the two graduation lines at 0 °C.
Johnson, Matthey & Co also cast a prototype kilogram that became the international
standard for mass. See details at
http://www.npl.co.uk/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.2083
The CGPM formally required that the international prototypes be deposited at the
Pavillon de Breteuil.
Each member country of the Treaty of the Metre received two copies of the standard with
calibration reports relating them to the International Prototype Metre. The copies of the
length standard were sent to the national standards laboratories of the member nations.
They were accurate, but not identical, replicas of the prototype metre. Each copy was
calibrated, by optical comparison, against the prototype for use as a national standard. As
signatories of the Treaty of the Metre, the USA received a prototype metre and kilogram
as measurement standards. A prototype metre and a prototype kilogram were taken to
Washington and accepted by President Harrison at the White House; they were then
placed in the vault of the Treasury Department. Prototype metre number 27 served as the
USA primary standard from 1889 to 1960. During that period it was returned to the
BIPM for re-comparison four times so that its length was known in terms of the length of
the international prototype. Prototype metre number 27 is now on exhibit in the NIST
Museum at Gaithersburg, Maryland.
A serious problem with an International Prototype Metre standard was that there was no
method to detect a change in its value due to ageing or misuse. Consequently, it was not
possible to state the accuracy or stability of the prototype metre, although calibration
uncertainties of the copy metres can be assigned.
In 1889, the year of Joule's death, the BAAS suggested the name joule for the work and
energy unit to honour the name of James Prescott Joule and his pioneering work on
electricity and energy. The BAAS promoted this idea actively and the Second Congress of
the International Electrical Conference (IEC) adopted as internationally agreed units the
joule as a unit of work and energy, the watt as a unit of power, and a unit of inductance
that was later given the name henry.
The UK passed the Weights and Measures Act 1889.
1890
The United States officially received Metre No. 27 and Kilogram No. 20 from the CGPM.
1891
The 1801 mathematical tables of Borda and Delambre had become scarce, and by now
greater accuracy was required in astronomy and geodesy. Accordingly the French
government issued an eight-figure table containing (besides logarithms of numbers to
120,000) log sines and tangents for every centesimal (hundredth) of the quadrant. This
book was called, 'Service geographique de l'armee: Tables des logarithmes a huit
decimates, publiees par ordre du ministre de la guerre', Paris, Imprimerie Nationale,
1891. These tables are still in use where eight-figure accuracy is required.
1892
Albert Michelson (1852/1931), an American physicist, developed an interferometer and
used it to determine the length of the International Prototype metre in terms of the
cadmium red line wavelength. He had earlier conducted experiments that showed that
the red spectral line of natural cadmium was exceptionally coherent. His measurements
gave the metre a value of 1,553,164.13 times the wavelength of the red spectral line of
cadmium at 760 mm of atmospheric pressure at 15 °C.
His development of the interferometer inspired Michelson to suggest that light radiation
could be used as a standard of length rather than a physical prototype. Using light had
many advantages; for example, the international standard of length could be reproduced
simultaneously in many places, and the standard would not deteriorate over time.
1893
The Congress of the USA defeated a measure to adopt the metric system.
The prototype metre and a prototype kilogram received by the USA from the CGPM were
declared the nation's 'fundamental standards' by an administrative action of Thomas C.
Mendenhall, Superintendent of Weights and Measures. The USA Secretary of the
Treasury then sanctioned this decision and the metric prototypes were legally declared to
be the 'fundamental standards of length and mass' for the USA.
From 1893, following the Mendenhall Order, the old measures such as yards and pounds
were officially defined in terms of the international metric system by the USA. The USA
yard was defined in the Mendenhall Order as:
1 yard = 3600/3937 metre (approximately 0.914 401 83 metre) and
1 inch = 25.400 050 8 millimetres.
This yard is still the basis for the statute foot in the USA. Metre No. 27 served as the
standard of length of the USA from 1893 to 1960.
Albert Michelson standardised the measurement of the metre
1894
The USA Congress established an enquiry to study the adoption of the international
metric system. The Congress passed a Bill to adopt the metric system, then sent the Bill
to a committee – it's still there.
However, in the same year Congress passed a law defining and establishing metric units
for electrical measurement. As these units were based on the metric system the USA has
used these metric units every day for all electrical purposes since 1894.
Following a Royal Society lecture (1852/1916) agreed with Lord Rayleigh (John William
Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh – 1842/1919) that they would research atmospheric gases. In a
research tour-de-force they discovered argon, helium, neon, krypton and xenon between
1894 and 1898.
1895
In the UK, a House of Commons Select Committee was appointed to enquire into
whether any and what changes in the present system of weights and measures should be
adopted. This Select Committee recommended immediate legalisation of metric units for
all purposes. They recommended: That after a lapse of two years the metrical system be
rendered compulsory by Act of Parliament, and that the metric system be taught in
elementary schools.
In the USA a resolution to establish a commission to study and report on the feasibility of
metric adoption was passed by the House of Representatives. By mistake, the resolution
was recorded as requiring the concurrence of the Senate in order to be put into effect.
Consequently, the commission was never formally organized.
The Constitution of the State of Utah, in Article X, Section 11, required that ‘The Metric
System shall be taught in the public schools of the State’, but this section of the
constitution was later repealed.
1896
The UK passed the Weights and Measures (Metric System) Act, defined as: An Act to
legalise the use of weights and measures of the metric system.
This legalised the metric system for all purposes, but did not make it compulsory. It
standardised the Imperial gallon by defining it in terms of the cubic decimetre, and
permitted the use of metric weights and measures in trade. It also required the Board of
Trade to include metric denominations among its standards.
1897
The UK legalised the metric system for use in all parts of life.
Vega. H. Schubert published 'Funfstellige Tafeln and Gegentafeln' in Leipzig. This
contained tables for the conversion of angles in sexagesimals (based on 60s) into
centesimals (based on the decimal 100s).
1897 August 6
A comprehensive debate in the British Parliament concluded by legalising the use of
metric for all purposes in 'An Act to legalize the use of weights and measures of the
metric system, 60 and 61 Victoria, c. 46'. There were no contrary votes. This Act
permitted the use of metric weights and measures in all trade, and it required the Board
of Trade to include metric denominations among its standards. The UK Imperial yard
was measured against the international standard metre and found to be:
1 yard = 0.914 399 metre or 1 inch = 25.399 972 mm
This is the Act of Parliament that most references indicate to be the beginning of
metrication in the UK.
1900
In the UK the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) was begun as a government-funded
body managed by fellows of the Royal Society and representatives from industry.
Inevitably, there was conflict between scientific research and commercial activity at NPL.
The government's civil servants were unsympathetic to fundamental science and were
convinced that scientific research should in the long run be financially self-supporting.
1901
Giovanni Giorgi (1871/1950) was an Italian physicist who studied civil engineering at the
Institute of Technology in Rome and later taught at the University of Rome. He also held
appointments at the universities of Cagliari and Palermo and at the Royal Institute for
Higher Mathematics.
Giorgi showed that it was possible to combine the mechanical units of the metre-
kilogram-second system with the practical electric units to form a single coherent four-
dimensional system. Giorgi pointed out that to do this, we would need a fourth electrical
unit, such as the ampere or the ohm, coupled to a rewriting of the basic
electromagnetism equations.
In addition to his work on units, Giorgi also contributed to the development of
hydroelectric installations, electric distribution networks, and tramways.
Giorgi's system of measurement was first published in 1901 and later it became known as
the mksA system because its basic units were the metre, kilogram, second and ampere. In
1960 the General Conference of Weights and Measures endorsed Giorgi's system, after
modification, as the Système International d'Unités (International System of Units) SI.
The Australian Commonwealth Constitution of 1901, Section 51 (XV) gave the power to
CGPM General Conference on Weights and Measures
CIPM International Committee for Weights and Measures
BIPM International Bureau of Weights and Measures
CCE Consultative Committee for Electricity; now the CCEM – Consultative Committee for Electricity and Magnetism
BAAS British Association for the Advancement of Science
AAAS American Association for the Advancement of Science
117
make laws in respect of weights and measures for the Commonwealth of Australia.
During the life of the first Australian Parliament after Federation, the adoption of the
metric units of weights and measures was considered, but not adopted, when it was
moved that Australia should investigate the adoption of the metric system.
The USA established the National Bureau of Standards.
1902
A Congressional Bill to make the metric system mandatory within the Federal
Government of the USA was defeated.
1904
The British House of Lords unanimously voted to make metric compulsory after two
years. The Government said they would not obstruct the proposal, but the Bill was never
adopted in the House of Commons.
During this debate, an opponent of the metric system, Lord Lansdowne, stated:
Considering this question with due attention to the units in actual use and to their
relations, the British system of weights and measures is simpler and more uniform
than any other system in the world. No traditional system of weights and measures
has ever, in fact, been ousted by the metric system.
In the UK, a White Paper was published that stated that the British colonies (such as
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa) preferred the metric system to
Imperial measures.
The UK passed the Weights and Measures Act 1904.
1905
The National Bureau of Standards of the USA sponsored the first meeting of the National
Conference on Weights and Measures.
1906
The length of the metre was re-specified as 1 000 000/0.643 846 96 wavelengths in air of
the red line of the cadmium spectrum.
Although the Philippines was under US occupation from 1899 to 1941, the use of the
metric system was legalised in 1906, and was actively promoted from 1973.
1907
Two more debates in the British Houses of Parliament failed to have the metric system
introduced. One of the major arguments against the metric system was that 'an
agricultural labourer would never ask for 0.56825 of a litre of beer'. The vote against
making the metric system compulsory rose from 118 votes to 150 votes.
In the USA, following a refusal by the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures to
report favourably on a metric bill, promotional efforts in favour of the metric system died
down until the end of World War I.
1908
The Australian Commonwealth Government established the Commonwealth
Laboratories as part of the Department of Trade and Customs. They were to provide
laboratory services to support excise collection and impose tariffs on imported goods, but
their tasks soon also included meat inspection, food analysis and other work.
The Imperial Ambassador of China, after a visit to the International Bureau of Weights
mercury, neon, thallium, and zinc to find which might prove best for defining lengths.
From this time, the Michelson interferometer was in regular use at the BIPM for
measuring length.
Albert Einstein was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society after astronomers had
confirmed his general relativity theory to the Royal Society, using observations made
during a total eclipse of the Sun of 1919.
1922
In the UK, the National Physical Laboratory made comparisons between the Imperial
Standard Yard and the International Metre, which yielded differing values for the inch
over the years. The 1922 value of 25.399 956 millimetres per inch was arbitrarily selected
for use in calibrating the most precise measuring devices.
1923
Japan commenced conversion to the metric system.
1926
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was established in Australia.
Among its activities related to standards and measurement were: the testing and
standardisation of scientific apparatus and other instruments.
China became officially metric.
The UK passed the Weights and Measures Act 1926.
1927
The seventh CGPM adjusted the definition of the metre to be the distance, at 0 °C,
between the axes of the two central lines marked on the prototype bar of platinum-
iridium, this bar being subject to one standard atmosphere of pressure and supported on
two cylinders of at least ten millimetres diameter, symmetrically placed in the same
horizontal plane at a distance of 571 millimetres from each other.
The CIPM set up the Comité Consultatif d'Electricité (CCE) and gave the BIPM the
additional responsibility for measurements and standards of electricity. Following this
move the Giorgi proposal was thoroughly discussed by the International Electrotechnical
Commission (IEC), the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), and
other international organizations.
Harvard University commissioned an engineer, Arthur Kennelly, to go to Europe to
observe the progress of the acceptance of the decimal metric system in those countries
that had adopted it. In his report he wrote:
Since the year 1800, a wonderful sociological phenomenon has presented itself in
Continental Europe. Setting aside Soviet Russia and Turkey, a group of more than
thirty countries, with an aggregate population today exceeding three hundred
millions, have, one after another, officially adopted the metric system to the abolition
of their respective national systems. The change has been voluntary.
1929
The Pavillon de Breteuil laboratories were enlarged, mostly by extensions to the
Observatoire. This was funded by a gift from the Rockefeller Foundation.
1932
James Chadwick published a paper with the Royal Society on his detection of the
neutron, and in 1935 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery. This prepared the
energy – joule, the unit for force – newton and the unit for power – watt. These were all
named for eminent English scientists and engineers. The CGPM and the CIPM also
formally changed the name 'degree centigrade' to 'degree Celsius' but kept the same
symbol: °C.
The mksA system gradually evolved into The International System of Units (SI), and this
was completed in 1960.
In the USA, the 'Twentieth Yearbook of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics'
was devoted solely to a discussion of the need for, and advantages of using the metric
system, particularly for educational purposes.
The Australian Weights and Measures (National Standards) Act 1948 came into effect.
It also provided for the creation of the National Standards Commission (NSC).
1949
The decennial inspection of the London standards for the yard and the pound (carried
out in 1947 and 1948) showed that these standards were changing and no longer met the
required degree of accuracy. At the same time the same measures in the USA were being
referred to the metre and the kilogram in Paris. This meant that British measuring units
would begin to diverge substantially from the identically named American yard and
pound, causing further difficulties.
1950
The Hodgson Report was published in the UK. After arguing all the points for and against
the metric system, it favoured a change to metric.
A new definition of the metre was to be based on the wavelength of Cadmium 114,
Mercury 198, or Krypton 86.
Before 1950 the International Organization for Standardization (and perhaps the
preceding International Standardizing Association) had adopted an international inch
of 25.4 mm. In 1950, Canada decided to adopt the ISO inch. This meant that the
Canadian inch was 25.4 millimetres; the English inch was 25.399 972 millimetres; and
the USA inch was 25.400 050 8 millimetres. Australia, New Zealand and South Africa
continued to use the UK inch of 25.399 972 millimetres.
The Australian National Standards Commission (NSC) was appointed to administer
weights and measures legislation for Australia and its territories.
1951
C. Volet from Switzerland, Director of the BIPM from 1951 to 1961.
A British Government White Paper on Weights and Measures was produced by a Board
of Trade committee in response to the Hodgson Committee Report published in 1949.
This was the 28th Report about the metric system put to Parliament during the preceding
100 years. This very knowledgeable report quite unambiguously supported the
introduction of the metric system into the UK. The committee recommended 'an
organised change' to the metric system. The report stated that:
… the British or Imperial system did not have the standing of the metric system and
was not truly international.
The United States used British units but also related them to the metre as the
standard of reference.
The Imperial system was not based on an international convention, nor could it
boast an international administrative centre as the metric system did.
… that the cost of metrication would be considerable, but the sooner the inevitable
reform was introduced the less expensive it would be.
There should be three conditions of going over to the metric system:
1 an agreement with other members of the Commonwealth binding them to a
similar reform simultaneously:
2 decimalization of currency and,
3 an intensive propaganda-cum-education campaign on behalf of the new
system.
Canada passed an Act of Parliament to redefine old measures according to metric
definitions. The pound was defined as 0.45359237 kilogram and the inch was defined as
25.4 millimetres exactly. Canada then led the world with its metric definitions; the rest of
the English-speaking world followed Canada's lead by adopting these definitions in 1959.
A British Empire Scientific Conference insisted that the British measures should be
redefined in terms of the standard metre in Paris, and the necessary investigations were
concluded, establishing the ratios of one yard equal to 0.9143 metre, and one pound
equal to 0.453592 kilogram.
1952 November
Contrary to all expectations, the UK Minister of Trade decided against implementing the
measurement reform recommended by the Board of Trade the previous year, saying that
a metric change was seen as premature.
1953
In a paper to the Royal Society, Francis Crick and James Watson gave details of the
structure of DNA, describing it as 'the secret of life'. This single scientific paper continues
to radically change science.
1954
The 10th CGPM in 1954 approved as base units the introduction of the ampere for electric
current, the kelvin for thermodynamic temperature, and the candela for luminous
intensity. This brought the number of base units to six. These base units measured the
following six quantities: length, mass, time, electric current, thermodynamic temperature
and luminous intensity. The 10th CGPM also decided to develop an International System
of Units based on the metric system.
1955
ICI, the international company originally called Imperial Chemical Industries, decided to
'go metric' for all of their processes.
1956
The Royal Society established a scientific research base at Halley Bay, Antarctica. In 1985
dramatic losses in the ozone layer were observed and the base remains an important
location for climate research.
1957
The Army in the USA issued a regulation establishing metric linear units as the basis for
weapons and related equipment. This regulation is still current.
A committee of the Organization of American States proposed that the metric system be
adopted throughout North and South America.
India changed to the metric system in 1957, and then to the International System of Units
in 1960.
1959
Following a conference of English speaking nations, the participants agreed to unify their
standards of length and mass, and to define them in terms of metric units. Before that,
the UK inch measured 25.399 972 mm (see 1897 August 6) while the USA inch was
25.400 050 8 mm. Basically, they adopted the ISO inch of 25.4 mm. The National Bureau
of Standards in the USA reported that:
As a result of many years of preliminary discussion, the directors of the national
standards laboratories of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK,
and the United States entered into agreement, effective July 1, 1959, whereby
uniformity was established for use in the scientific and technical fields. The
equivalents 1 yard = 0.9144 metre (whence 1 inch = 25.4 millimetres) …
NBS Miscellaneous Publication 247 issued 1963 October, page 20
From 1959 July 1, the inch has been standardised as exactly 25.4 mm. Before this
agreement, there had never been a standard inch. We could consider 1959, as both
the first time there was an international definition of an inch and also as the point
when all the different inch-pound standards ceased to exist. As a result, the American
yard was shortened and the Imperial yard was lengthened. Since 1959, everywhere
in the world, all the old measures such as the inch, the foot, and the yard have now
been defined in terms of metres and millimetres. The old pre-metric measures could
now be considered as the metric inch, the metric foot, the metric yard, and the metric
mile.
However, in the USA they decided to keep the old Mendenhall foot for some purposes in
some states, with the result that the USA now has two different standards for a foot. The
yard in the USA (and hence the foot and inch) has been defined in different sizes in 1815,
1856, 1893, and 1959.
The People's Republic of China again decreed metric reform. They proceeded slowly
because the terminology of the metric system was alien to the Chinese language and full
of sounds that simply did not exist in it. Eventually, the cheng was made equal to the
litre, the tsin to half a kilogram, the mu to one-sixteenth of the hectare, and the chi
actually to one-third of the metre. All of these measures relate to the international
definition of a metre.
Old Chinese measures and masses were confiscated by the thousand, melted down, then
used in the production of new ones, with considerable saving of raw materials as well as
safeguarding the people against potential swindles. Within five months, the operation
apparently resulted in there being enough new weights and measures to equip all China;
they were made obligatory from 1959, while the former measures of feudal lords were
consigned to museums so that the Chinese people could see how others had been cheated
in the past. As an example, in the house of a former landowner in Szechuan province the
two different measures of capacity that he once used are exhibited. The measure is the
tou, which should be the equivalent of ten litres, but the two specimens differ by 3.6
litres. The large tou was used in collecting dues in kind from the peasants, and the small
tou when loans of grain were made to them.
1960 October 14
The 11th CGPM 1960, Resolution 12, adopted the name Système International
d'Unités, with the international abbreviation SI.
The official English translation of the French name is the International System of
Units (SI) and the official abbreviation of the system, in any language, is SI.
The CGPM approved a comprehensive specification for units of measurement that laid
down the rules for the prefixes, the derived units, and other matters, for this practical
system.
Since then successive meetings of the CGPM and CIPM have added to, and modified as
necessary, the original structure of the SI to take into account any relevant scientific
advances, as well as the changing needs of SI users.
Just as the original metric system grew out of problems that scientists encountered in
dealing with old units, so the International System grew out of the problems that an
enlarged scientific community faced in the proliferation of subsystems of the metric
system, improvised to serve particular scientific disciplines. At the same time, it was clear
that the original 18th century standards were not sufficiently accurate or precise for
20th century science.
The CGPM also redefined and adopted a definition of the International Standard of
Length as 1,650,763.73 vacuum wavelengths of light resulting from an unperturbed
atomic energy level transition of the krypton isotope having an atomic weight of 86. This
change in definition achieved not only an increase in accuracy, but also progress toward
the goal of using fundamental physical quantities as standards.
The BIPM was given the additional responsibility for measurements and standards of
ionising radiations.
Australia legally adopted the International System of Units (SI). The Weights and
Measures (National Standards) Act 1948 was replaced by the National Measurement
Act 1960. It defined Australia's units and standards of measurement and the roles of the
National Standards Commission and CSIRO in its system of weights and measures.
1961
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was changed to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) by
international agreement.
1962
J. Terrien from France, Director of the BIPM from 1962 to 1977.
1963
The 'Weights and Measures Act 1963' was passed in the UK. This defined the basic
measures of the yard and the pound in terms of the metre and the kilogram. The UK
formally redefined the yard as 0.9144 metres and the pound as 0.453 592 37 kilograms.
Since then the old English measures have all legally depended on the SI standards, metre
and kilogram. Many of the old Imperial measures were abolished. Examples are: drachm,
scruple, minim, chaldron, quarter, rod, pole, perch.
The British Standards Institution produced a survey that indicated a significant majority
of industry in the UK favoured metrication.
1964
Extensions of the activities of the BIPM required the construction of additional buildings.
Two laboratory buildings were constructed at Pavillon de Breteuil for work on ionising
radiation. These also required an extension to the site, bringing it to about 40 000 m2.
Helium-Neon stabilized laser wavelengths were coming into use as length standards.
Although the laser wavelength was generally accepted as a secondary standard, its
widening use was mainly based on its remarkable coherence. Long distances, that would
be impossible to measure with atomic light sources, could be readily measured with laser
interferometry.
In the USA, the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) made The International System of
Units (SI) its standard 'except when the use of these units would obviously impair
communication or reduce the usefulness of a report'.
Dorothy Hodgkin, supported by the Royal Society, was the UK's only female Nobel Prize
winner, receiving it for her x-ray crystallography work on penicillin and vitamin B12.
1965
At the request of industry in the UK, the president of the Board of Trade finally
announced that the metric system would be adopted in the UK. The Government
announced financial support for metricating the UK with a target for completion within
10 years. The UK Board of Trade estimated that the cost would run into millions and they
were aware that this was immeasurably more than if the step had been taken in 1862,
1904 or 1911.
The governing body of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the UK was dismissed,
the long-term link with the Royal Society was ended, and the NPL became part of the
Ministry of Technology.
Many of the Commonwealth and other countries decided to follow Britain's example
(New Zealand and South Africa in 1967, Australia and Canada in 1970).
The Australian National Standards Commission was given responsibility to 'pattern
approve' measuring instruments used for trade.
1968
Following a report by the UK Standing Committee on Metrication, 'Change to the Metric
System in the United Kingdom', the Metrication Board was established in the UK.
However, the Metrication Board was restricted to only providing metric information; it
was not permitted to promote the benefits of the metric system. Curiously, the formation
of the UK Metrication Board took place in the 300th anniversary year of John Wilkins
first design for a 'universal measure' in 1668 (see above).
The USA Congress passed the 'Metric Study Act' and President Lyndon B. Johnson
signed this act into law. This study was to place particular emphasis on the feasibility of
the USA adopting SI as its metric system.
Following the enactment of this law, the Secretary of Commerce authorised the National
Bureau of Standards (NBS) to undertake a three year study to determine the impact of
increasing metric use on the USA. Specifically the NBS was 'to determine advantages
and disadvantages of increased use of metric system in the United States.'
The report of the 45-member advisory panel concluded that the USA would eventually
join the rest of the world in the use of the metric system of measurement. This conclusion
was based on extensive consultation with hundreds of business organizations,
consumers, labour unions, manufacturers, and local and state government officials. The
report of this study was produced in 1971, and it recommended that the USA adopt a ten
year plan for metrication. The 1971 Report to the Congress (see below) was entitled:
A Metric America, a decision whose time has come.
1969
The international status of the BIPM with regard to the French Government was
formalized in an agreement signed between the CIPM and the French government. The
CGPM General Conference on Weights and Measures
CIPM International Committee for Weights and Measures
BIPM International Bureau of Weights and Measures
CCE Consultative Committee for Electricity; now the CCEM – Consultative Committee for Electricity and Magnetism
BAAS British Association for the Advancement of Science
AAAS American Association for the Advancement of Science
127
site of the Pavillon de Breteuil is now considered international territory and the BIPM
has all the rights and privileges accorded to an intergovernmental organization. No doubt
the Baron de Breteuil, as an international diplomat with an interest in science, would be
pleased to know that the Pavillon that bears his name has become the permanent home
of the BIPM, a truly international scientific organisation.
The New Zealand Government appointed a Metric Advisory Board with Ian D. Stevenson
as Chairman. The Board set up 14 Sector Committees, 24 Divisional Committees, and a
number of industrial committees with liaison to the Board. In order to give metrication a
human face, Ian Stevenson found a baby girl who he named 'Miss Metric'. He published
pictures of the baby, together with her body measurements given in metric system units,
in the newspapers. The New Zealand papers followed her development through her
school years, again with metric data.
The UK Government established the Metrication Board in 1969 after the Confederation
of British Industry and the British Standards Institution announced that industry was in
favour of metrication. The goal of the UK Metrication Board was to help industry go
metric in an orderly fashion; the Board was to educate the public and business, and to
encourage the adoption of the metric system. For example, the apothecaries system was
deprecated (obsolete) for dispensing medicines and it was replaced by the metric system.
A target date of 1975 was set, by which time it was anticipated that the UK would be
substantially metric. On July 21, 'The Times' in London published a special report on
Decimal Currency and Metrication. This paragraph is from the article:
The change to the metric system is more profound and complex than decimalizing the
coinage. There is no simple way of saying that such-and-such will happen: it
certainly cannot be done by diktat. The impact of the change will be spread widely
through the economy and widely through time. Nevertheless, the Government has set
a target date – the end of 1975.
1970
Ordnance Survey maps began to include metric elevations during re-surveying of UK.
The Australian Government passed the Metric Conversion Act with the aim of making the
metric system the sole system of legal measurements in Australia. The Metric Conversion
Board was established and Australia commenced its rapid change to metric units for
almost all activities.
The Canadian government also decided to 'Go metric' by issuing a statement that said
that metrication is a definite objective of Canadian policy. Government parties supported
the Canadian White Paper on Metric Conversion unanimously.
1971
The 10th CGPM (1954, Resolution 6) and the 14th CGPM (1971, Resolution 3) adopted as
base units of this practical system of units the units of the following seven quantities:
length, mass, time, electric current, thermodynamic temperature, amount of substance,
and luminous intensity. Adding the mole as the base unit for amount of substance,
bringing the total number of base units to seven, completed the current version of The
International System of Units (SI).
The USA National Bureau of Standards Metric Study presented its 13-volume USA Metric
Study Report; the summary was entitled 'A Metric America – A Decision Whose Time
Has Come'. The report concluded that the USA should deliberately and carefully ‘go
metric' through a coordinated national program, and should establish a target date
10 years ahead, by which time the USA would be predominantly metric. Here is a copy of
the covering letter of that report:
Minister for metric conversion in the new British government. The transition to
metrication and the role of the Board were given positive support and encouragement.
There was at this time a wealth of information within the Department of Trade to show
that a clear retail cut-off date was both desirable and inevitable exactly as 19th Century
parliamentarians had foreseen. However, no cut-off dates were set. This proved
particularly relevant to retailers of 'loose weight' products over the next 35 years.
Australian grains, dairy products, and eggs used metric measurements for trade. Some
primary schools began to teach the old 1850s cgs system alongside the old units.
1973
The International System of Units (SI) began to be taught in Australian secondary
schools. Sadly, this was done alongside the teaching of cgs, mksA, and other old metric
units, and had the net effect of making the teaching of measurement more complex than
it needed to be.
Tobacco, sugar, and peanuts were sold in grams and kilograms in Australia. The leather
tanning industry began to use some metric units in parallel with their old units.
In the UK, the European Communities Act involved giving responsibility for weights and
measures legislation to the European Economic Community (EEC). This was the
inevitable result of the UK decision to join the EEC, and by joining the EEC the UK
government re-affirmed its commitment to adopt the metric system.
The United States Metric Association (USMA) and other professional groups combined
to convene a National Metric Conference. The National Metric Conference was the largest
ever held with 1700 registrants. At this conference, the American National Metric Council
(ANMC) was formed to plan and coordinate the metric system implementation by USA
industry.
The Philippines began active promotion of the metric system. The Philippines first
legalised the use of the metric system in 1906.
1974
By the end of 1974, most industries in Australia had converted to metric, e.g. building
industry, timber, paper and printing industry, agricultural and veterinary chemicals,
meteorological services, photography, postal and communication charges, road transport
and travel, textile industry, gas and electricity services, land and surveying, sport and
recreation, water and sewerage, mining and metallurgy, rubber, chemicals and petroleum
derivatives, fabricated metal products, automotive engineering, all beverages apart from
spirits, ship building, aeronautical engineering.
The metric system began to be taught in schools in the UK and items in metric packaging
began to appear in UK shops.
The USA Education Amendments encouraged educational institutions to prepare
students to use the metric system of measurement as part of their educational program.
This was the first official legislation concerning conversion to the metric system as part of
Public Law 93-380, to extend and amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
of 1965. Under section 403 of this Act entitled, 'Education for the Use of the Metric
System of Measurement' it states:
… the metric system of measurement will have increased use in the United States,
and as such, the metric system will become the dominant system of weights and
measures in the United States.
This legislative change subsequently had little support in educational institutions.
The House of Representatives in the USA (in a 240 to 153 vote) also defeated a motion to
suspend the rules to consider metric conversion legislation (HR 11035) without any
amendments being attached.
1975
By 1975, many Australian industries had changed to metric measures. These included
building, timber, paper, agricultural and veterinary chemicals (but not human),
meteorological services, postal charges, road transport and travel, gas charges, surveying,
sport and recreation, water and sewerage, mining and metallurgy (except gold and tin),
rubber, chemicals and petroleum, fabricated metal products, automotive engineering,
beverages, ship building and aeronautical engineering.
In the USA, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act of 1975. The Act established the
USA Metric Board 'to coordinate and plan the increasing use of the metric system in the
United States' and 'to coordinate and plan the increasing use and voluntary conversion to
the metric system'. While one aim of the Metric Conversion Act' was 'to foster voluntary
conversion' to the metric system, there was no 'ten year plan' as recommended in the
1971 report, 'A Metric America – A Decision Whose Time Has Come'. This Act had little
apparent effect without a specified time period and it took only two lobbyists and
political insiders, Republican Lyn Nofziger and Democrat Frank Mankiewicz, to sabotage
the metrication effort in 1981 (see below).
Metric product labelling began in Canada. Canadian weather forecasters began to use
degrees Celsius and to report rainfall and snowfall in metric units. Canadian schools
began to teach using metric only.
1976
On 5 May 1976 the Australian Minister for Trade and Industry and the Minister for
Labour issued a press release that said:
Building and construction, transportation, and a wide range of manufacturing and
processing industries had substantially completed the metric changeover, and all
other industries were well on the way. The Australian Government would ensure
that the changeover was made thoroughly and well by outlawing the old system of
measurements as early as it could efficiently do so.
In Australia, by the end of 1976, all packaged goods were required to be labelled in metric
sizes, and the following were also converted to metric: air transport industry, food
energy, petrol pumps, machine tools, electronic and electrical engineering appliance
manufacturing.
The UK passed another Weights and Measures Act 1976 gradually abolishing various old
measuring units as well as redefining their measuring standards using metric standards.
Apothecaries' measures were now gone, but they kept the Troy ounce after redefining it
in grams.
From 1 April 1976, Canadian wind speed, visibility, and atmospheric pressure were in
metric units, with air pressure in kilopascals.
Members were appointed to the Metric Board of the USA.
1977
In Australia, verification of non-metric weighing or measuring appliances used in trading
ceased. Products sold by length or area, such as textile products and floor coverings, were
to be sold in metres, and all pricing and advertising was to be in metric.
The Department of Prices and Consumer Protection presented a 'Metrication Report' to
the UK Parliament.
All new cars in Canada were required to have metric speedometers and odometers and all
road signs were marked in metric
1978
P Giacomo from France, Director of the BIPM from 1978 to 1988,
SI became the legal system of units in the nations of the European Union.
The necessary order for cut-off dates, drafted by the UK Board of Trade, was agreed by a
huge range of retail trade, industry, engineering, consumer, trade union, elderly person,
sporting and educational organisations, and the overwhelming number of
parliamentarians. However, the initiative was in the hands of Secretary of State for
Trade, Roy Hattersley and a General Election was expected in 1979. He chose not to test
the opinion of the Parliament and withdrew the draft order. Labour lost the election.
Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister and appointed Sally Oppenheim, a long time
critic of the metric program, as junior Minister of Consumer Affairs at the Department of
Trade and Industry with metrication as part of her portfolio.
The Australian National Measurement Laboratory (NML), formerly the National
Standards Laboratory, moved to Lindfield, a suburb of Sydney.
1979
Despite the fact that many sectors of UK industry had already changed to metric units
and many others were preparing to do so, the newly elected Conservative government
abolished the Metrication Board.
In the USA, the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
required wine producers and importers to switch to metric bottles in standard, litre and
millilitre sizes.
1980
The iodine stabilized Helium-Neon laser wavelength was accepted by CGPM as a length
standard. At the time, it had a wavelength uncertainty of 1 part in 1010. This uncertainty is
equivalent to an accuracy of 1 mm in 10 000 km.
Recognising that most Commonwealth countries had completed their metric conversion
and that the UK lagged behind significantly, the British Parliament approved a Statutory
instrument (1980/1070) which began the progressive phasing out of the Imperial system
by withdrawing authorisation of a substantial number of units, such as the British
thermal unit (Btu), the cran, the furlong, the horsepower, the hundredweight, the ton,
and the Fahrenheit degree.
The 'Final Report of the UK Metrication Board' was presented to Parliament. See:
http://www.metric.org.uk/Docs/DTI/met1980.pdf for a full copy and for an historical
perspective by the last Director of the UK Metrication Board see:
However, increased production costs from continuing to work in dual systems of
measuring were still an issue. A report to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) in
1980 estimated 'the extra cost of continuing to work in dual systems of measuring was
around £5 000 million every year'. For companies on which the survey was based,
increased production costs were equal to 9% of the companies' gross profit and 14% of
their net profit. To put this into perspective: in 1980 £5 000 million was roughly half the
cost of the entire UK National Health Service; in today's currency 5 000 M£ is equivalent
to about 12 000 M£; and the net saving from 1980 to 2006 is about 110 000 M£ – plus
compounding interest for ever year since 1980.
The USA Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms required
distilled spirits bottles to conform to standard metric sizes in litres and millilitres. As the
USA changed to metric bottle sizes they were able to rationalise the number of sizes from
38 different sizes to 6 different bottles.
Canadian fabrics began to be sold by the metre.
1981
The Australian Metric Conversion Board was dissolved.
Canadian automotive fuels began to be sold in litres.
In a Washington Post ‘remembrance’ of the late Reagan Press Secretary and leading
Republican Lyn Nofziger, long-time political rival Democrat Frank Mankiewicz claims
that the two of them had secretly worked together to kill the metric system in the United
States. Mankiewicz wrote in the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/03/28/AR2006032802142.html)
… during that first year of Reagan's presidency, I sent Lyn another copy of a column
I had written a few years before, attacking and satirizing the attempt by some
organized do-gooders to inflict the metric system on Americans, a view of mine Lyn
had enthusiastically endorsed. So, in 1981, when I reminded him that a commission actually
existed to further the adoption of the metric system and the damage we both felt this could
wreak on our country, Lyn went to work with material provided by each of us. He was able,
he told me, to prevail on the president to dissolve the commission and make sure that, at least
in the Reagan presidency, there would be no further effort to sell metric.
It was a signal victory, but one which we recognized would have to be shared only between
the two of us, lest public opinion once again began to head toward metrification.
1982
President Ronald Reagan disbanded the USA Metric Board and cancelled its funding.
Responsibility for metric coordination was transferred to the Office of Metric Programs
in the Department of Commerce.
1983
The CGPM again redefined the metre, this time as the length of the path travelled by light
in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second (17th CGPM, Resolution 1).
This was based on the speed of light as c = 299 792 458 m/s exactly. As always when the
CGPM changed this definition, the goal was not only to improve the precision of the
definition, but also to change its actual length as little as possible. The unit of length is
one of the seven base units in SI and this is its current definition.
The modern length standard has now evolved over 200 years and it can now be
continually improved without the necessity of changing its definition. The CGPM
recognised that advances in the technology of lasers would lead to a new concept for the
length standard definition and chose to base this standard on the speed of light. Because
this was not based on any particular radiation, it opened the way to improvements in the
precision with which the metre can be realised without changing its length.
The BIPM stipulated that the metre can be realised by any of the following three
methods.
The metre can be realized by a direct measurement of the distance that light travels
in a vacuum in a measured time interval. Although this method follows directly
from the definition, it cannot achieve the accuracy possible with the other two and
so it is not used for practical purposes.
Dramatic losses in the ozone layer were observed from the Royal Society established
research base at Halley Bay in Antarctica.
1986
The Canadian deadline for full metric conversion of advertising and signage for
individually weighed items passed without any attempt at enforcing these laws.
1987
Australian real estate trading conducted using metric measures.
1988
British scientist Dr Terry Quinn from U.K. appointed 10th Director of the BIPM. Like
most of the other Directors, he lived in the Pavillon de Breg136
teuil in the Parc de Saint-Cloud. The BIPM was given the additional responsibility for
measurements and standards of time scales and a new building was constructed and
opened at the Pavillon de Breteuil to serve as a new library and offices.
In the USA, the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act amended and strengthened the
Metric Conversion Act of 1975, designating the SI metric system as the preferred
measurement system, and requiring each federal agency to be metric by the end of 1992.
This Act also changed the National Bureau of Standards to the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST).
The Australian government passed laws that withdrew the remaining Imperial units from
general legal use. However, some were listed in the regulations as temporary exceptions
– these are still in use in 2008.
The Canadian Measurement Information Division was abolished. No further official
effort has been made to complete metrication in Canada.
1989
The European Union (EU) issued Directives on Weights and Measures. This declared the
metric system as the official measurement system of all member countries. The main
effects of the EU Directives were to mandate the use of metric units for all pre-packed
goods by the end of 1994, and for all bulk goods to be priced in terms of metric units by
the end of 1999. Some politicians felt that this directive placed considerable pressure on
the UK, so the UK government began negotiations with the EEC to delay implementation
of aspects of the metric system.
A Canadian opinion poll found that 79% of the population think in degrees Celsius.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee proposed a global hypertext computer language that resulted in the
creation of the World Wide Web.
1991
President George Bush signed Executive Order 12770, 'Metric Usage in Federal
Government Programs', directing federal departments and agencies to use the metric
system in all its dealings, including construction and public works.
1992
The summary of Australia's metrication experience was published as: Metrication in
Australia by Kevin Wilks, which provides a valuable historical record of the Australian
metrication process. This is an extract from its foreword:
Metrication effectively began in Australia in 1966 with the successful conversion to
decimal currency under the auspices of the Decimal Currency Board. The conversion
CGPM General Conference on Weights and Measures
CIPM International Committee for Weights and Measures
BIPM International Bureau of Weights and Measures
CCE Consultative Committee for Electricity; now the CCEM – Consultative Committee for Electricity and Magnetism
BAAS British Association for the Advancement of Science
AAAS American Association for the Advancement of Science
135
In the USA, Tennessee adopted the Uniform Packaging and Labelling Regulations, based
on the Fair Packaging and Labelling Act of 1994.
2001
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) changed to decimal trading. Prior to this they had
used the 'pieces-of-eight' that they originally adopted in 1792.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his proposal of a global
hypertext project (see 1989 above) that resulted in the creation of the World Wide Web.
2002
The CIPM recommended that the 1983 definition be restricted to:
lengths which are sufficiently short for the effects predicted by general relativity to
be negligible with respect to the uncertainties of realisation.
In a speech to the United Nations, President George W Bush of the USA, referred to
'litres of anthrax,' 'metric tons' and '150 kilometre range missiles.'
2004 January 1
Professor Andrew Wallard was appointed Director of the BIPM. Before this, he had been
Deputy Director and Chief Metrologist of the National Physical Laboratory in the UK. He
replaced Dr Terry Quinn CBE FRS, who had been Director of the BIPM since 1988. Upon
his retirement, Dr Quinn became Director Emeritus of the BIPM.
The Australian National Measurement Institute (NMI) was established by uniting the
Australian Government Analytical Laboratory (AGAL), National Measurement
Laboratory (NML), and the National Standards Commission (NSC). It advises the
Australian and state governments on the scientific, technical and legislative requirements
and coordinates the Australia's national measurement system.
2006
Stephen Hawking was presented with the Royal Society Copley Medal for his
contributions to theoretical physics. Before Stephen Hawking received his Copley Medal
from the Royal Society, it was first flown into space aboard NASA's Space Shuttle.
2007
The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) agreed that the Commonwealth should
assume responsibility for trade measurement.
Australian scientists are to use two highly polished spheres to determine how many
silicon atoms make up a kilogram. This could then be used as the new definition,
bringing the kilogram into line with other base units such as the metre and the second,
which are all defined by physical constants. This is a truly international project in that
the silicon, which has taken three years to produce, was made in Russia and grown into a
near-perfect crystal in Germany. See: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/making-
an-exact difference/2007/06/14/1181414466901.html
2008
The BIPM still has its headquarters near Paris, in the grounds of the Pavillon de Breteuil.
Surrounding the Pavillon de Breteuil is the 'Parc de Saint-Cloud'. The French
Government placed this land at the disposal of the BIPM; its area of 43 500 m2
(4.35 hectares) is regarded as international territory, and its upkeep is financed jointly by
the Member States of the Treaty of the Metre.
The BIPM has a staff of about 70 and its status is similar to that of other inter-
government organizations based in France. The physicists and technicians who work at
the BIPM conduct measuring research called metrological research. Their main jobs are
to make international comparisons of the realisations of units, and to check the
standards used in metrology.
Because of the range of work carried out by the BIPM, the CIPM has set up Comités
Consultatifs to which it can refer matters. The Committees can form temporary or
permanent working groups to study special subjects, and they are responsible for
coordinating the international work carried out in their respective fields, and for
proposing recommendations concerning units.
The Committees have common regulations and they meet at irregular intervals. The
chairman of each Consultative Committee is designated by the CIPM. The members of
the Committee are usually people from metrology laboratories and specialized institutes,
together with representation from the BIPM. At present there are ten such committees:
Consultative Committee for Electricity and Magnetism (CCEM)
Consultative Committee for Photometry and Radiometry (CCPR)
Consultative Committee for Thermometry (CCT)
Consultative Committee for Length (CCL)
Consultative Committee for Time and Frequency (CCTF)
Consultative Committee for Ionizing Radiation (CCRI)
Consultative Committee for Units (CCU)
Consultative Committee for Mass and Related Quantities (CCM)
Consultative Committee for Amount of Substance (CCQM)
Consultative Committee for Acoustics, Ultrasound and Vibration (CCAUV)
Conclusion
It's hard to pinpoint the exact date that the modern metric system, the International
System of Units (SI), actually began. What is a young student to do when confronted with
the question: when was the metric system invented?
Did the International System of Units (SI) begin when the Royal Society published
John Wilkins', 'An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical
Language' on 1668 April 13?
Do we take the date of the decision of the Académie Française to promote a decimal
system on 1790 August 22 as the starting point?
Do we take the issuing of the first report of the French Academy of Sciences who in
their first report of 1790 October 27 recommended the decimal division of
money, weights, and measures for France?
Do we take the date of the original French legislation, on 1791 March 26, or do we
consider the date(s) of subsequent legislation?
Do we use the legal origin of the metre as the day when the Republican Government
of France adopted a report from the Académie Française and decreed the unit of
length was to be called the 'metre' and it was to be 1/10 000 000 (10-7) of the earth's
quadrant on 1793 August 1.
Do we take the day that the Republic of France legally adopted the Academy of
Sciences’ recommendation for a decimal metric system on 1795 April 7.
Some say that it's better to date the metric system from a definite event, such as the
deposition of the two platinum standards, in the Archives de la République in Paris
on 1799 June 22. This event is regarded as of prime importance by the BIPM, who
say that this is a key to the development of the international system of units.
The BIPM brochure says:
The creation of the Decimal Metric System at the time of the French Revolution and
the subsequent deposition of two platinum standards representing the metre and the
kilogram, on 22 June 1799, in the Archives de la République in Paris can be seen as
the first step in the development of the present International System of Units.
The future
Science and technology, by their nature, are constantly changing. We can expect many
new demands for new measuring methods as sciences and technologies develop.
However there will always be a need for standardisation, so the international and
national standards institutions will remain, but they will often have to operate
differently. For example, in the early 21st century, we are seeing a trend toward online
calibration, where software at a standards institution can analyse the measurements
from a remote machine, even control the measuring equipment at a distant laboratory,
and can then issue a test certificate showing its accuracy and its precision. This is already
possible using standard computer connections over the internet.
References
BIPM
The definitive source of information about the International System of Units (SI) is from
the BIPM. You can access the English language web pages at:
http://www.bipm.org/en/home/ or you can download a complete copy of the
International System of Units (SI) brochure from
http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/general.html where section 1.8 is a relevant
'Historical Note'.
For those particularly interested in history you might like to refer to:
http://www.bipm.org/en/si/history-si/ and http://www.bipm.org/en/bipm/history/
ISO
ISO 31. Quantities and Units. International Organization for Standardization (ISO),
Geneva, Switzerland. 1992-1998 (14 volumes). Available in the U.S. from the American
National Standards Institute (ANSI). Comprehensive description of physical quantities,
their symbols, and the SI units used to measure them. Volume 0 covers general
principles and rules for correct use. This document is available for purchase.
NIST
Free copies of the Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI) can be
downloaded at NIST SP 811. It is published by the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD 20899-0001. Special Publication 811. The 1995
edition has 74 pages and it gives detailed rules for using SI, explains the rounding rules,
and lists numerous compound derived units. Lists deprecated (obsolete) metric units and
conversion factors to be used for converting some 400 non-SI units to SI.
NIST also has two web pages that give relevant information on the history of the metric
system in the USA. You can find them at:
http://ts.nist.gov/WeightsAndMeasures/Metric/lc1136a.cfm and
http://www.mel.nist.gov/div821/museum/timeline.htm
ANSI
Standard for Use of the International System of Units (SI): The Modern Metric System is
a 70 page American National Standards Institute (ANSI) document published by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the American Society for
Testing and Materials (ASTM International). This document is available for purchase
from ANSI
ATI
The Applied Technology Institute (ATI) has a broad view of the metric system at
http://www.aticourses.com/international_system_units.htm
‘The International System of Units – Its History and Use in Science and Industry', is an
article by Robert A. Nelson.
Egypt
The University College of London web pages at
http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/weights/lenght.html provide reliable information on
the history of Egypt.
Metric Methods
Jim Frysinger's Metric Methods web page contains reliable reference information that is
particularly relevant to the USA. You can find the Metric Methods web page at
CGPM General Conference on Weights and Measures
CIPM International Committee for Weights and Measures
BIPM International Bureau of Weights and Measures
CCE Consultative Committee for Electricity; now the CCEM – Consultative Committee for Electricity and Magnetism
BAAS British Association for the Advancement of Science
AAAS American Association for the Advancement of Science
142
http://www.metricmethods.com
The UK Metric Association has an interesting insight into the development of the
metric system in the UK where Jim Humble OBE writes of:
'Historical perspectives by the last Director of the UK Metrication Board'.
See http://www.metric.org.uk/press/humble.htm
USMA
The United States Metric Association (USMA) has a chronology of the SI metric system
that lists the important dates in the history of the modern metric system at
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/dates.htm You can contact USMA through this link.
USMA also publishes the USMA SI Guide. It is a Guide to the Use of the Metric System
(SI Version), 17th edition, 2007 with 34 pages. It is a primary source of information for
using the modern version of the metric system (SI) and it is available for $18 post paid
from: USMA, 10245 Andasol Avenue, Northridge CA 91325-1504. Phone/Fax: 818-363-
5606
John Wilkins
See my articles
Tito Livio Burattini
http://www.roma1.infn.it/~dagos/history/sm/node19.html
Simon Stevin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Stevin
The Measure of Enlightenment
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6d5nb455&chunk.id=d0
e9255&toc.depth=1&brand=ucpress
Books
‘Measures and Men’ by Witold Kula (Translated by R Szreter), Princeton University
Press 1986
‘The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London’ by Lisa
Jardine HarperCollinsPublishers 2003