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between the imperial system and the U.S. customary units (also called standard or English units) or older British/English units/systems and newer additions is often not drawn precisely. Most length units are shared between the imperial and U.S. systems, albeit partially and temporally defined differently. Capacity measures differ the most due to the introduction of the imperial gallon and the unification of wet and dry measures. The avoirdupois system applies only to weights; it has a long designation and a short designation for the hundredweight and ton. The term imperial should not be applied to English units that were outlawed in Weights and Measures Act of 1824 or earlier, or which had fallen out of use by that time, nor to post-imperial inventions such as the slug or poundal.
Although most of the units are defined in more than one system, some subsidiary units were used to a much greater extent, or for different purposes, in one area rather than the other.
[edit] Measures of length
Imperial standards of length 1876 in Trafalgar Square, London.
Imperial standards of length 1876 in Trafalgar Square, London.
After the 1 July 1959 deadline, agreed upon in 1958, the U.S. and the British yard were defined identically, at 0.9144 m to match the international yard. Metric equivalents in this article usually assume this latest official definition. Before this date, the most precise measurement of the imperial Standard Yard was 0.914398416 m (Sears et al. 1928. Phil Trans A 227:281).
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In 1586, the Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin published a small pamphlet called De Thiende ("the tenth"). Decimal fractions had been employed for the extraction of square roots some five centuries before his time, but nobody established their daily use before Stevin. He felt that this innovation was so significant that he declared the universal introduction of decimal coinage, measures and weights to be merely a question of time.
The idea of a metric system has been attributed to John Wilkins, first secretary of the Royal Society of London in 1668.[2] The idea did not catch on, and England continued with its existing system of various weights and measures.
In 1670 Gabriel Mouton, a French abbot and scientist, proposed a decimal system of measurement based on the circumference of the Earth. His suggestion was a unit, milliare, that was defined as a minute of arc along a meridian. He then suggested a system of sub-units, dividing successively by factors of ten into the centuria, decuria, virga, virgula, decima, centesima, and millesima.
His ideas attracted interest at the time, and were supported by Jean Picard as well as Huygens in 1673, and also studied at Royal Society in London. In 1673, Gottfried Leibniz independently made proposals similar to those of Mouton.
The proliferation of disparate measurement systems was one of the most frequent causes of disputes amongst merchants and between citizens and tax collectors. A unified country with a single currency and a countrywide market, as most European countries were becoming by the end of the 18th century, had a very strong economic incentive and was in a position to break with this situation and standardise on a measuring system. The inconsistency problem was not one of different units but one of differing sized units so instead of simply standardising size of the existing units, the leaders of the French revolutionary governments decided that a completely new system should be adopted.
The first official adoption of such a system occurred in France in 1791 after the French Revolution of 1789. The creators of this metric system tried to choose units that were logical and practical. The revolution gave an opportunity for drastic change with an official ideology of "pure reason". It was proposed as a considerable improvement over the inconsistent collection of customary units that existed before, and that it be based on units of ten, because scientists, engineers, and bureaucrats at the time found this more convenient for the complex unit conversion they often must do.
The adoption of the metric system in France was slow, but its desirability as an international system was advocated by geodesists and others. Since then a number of variations on the system evolved. Their use spread throughout the world, first to the non-English-speaking countries, and more recently to the English-speaking countries.
The whole system was derived from the properties of natural objects, namely the size of the Earth and the density of water, and simple relations in between one unit and the other. In order to determine as precisely as possible the size of the Earth, several teams were sent over several years to measure the length of as long a segment of a meridian as feasible. It was decided to measure the meridian spanning Barcelona and Dunkirk which was the longest segment almost fully over land within French territory. It should be noted that even though, during the many years of the measurement, hostilities broke out between France and Spain, the development of such a standard was considered of such value that Spanish troops escorted the French team while in Spanish territory to ensure their safety.[citation needed]
The whole process ended in the proclamation on June 22, 1799 of the metric system with the storage in the Archives of the Republic of the physical embodiments of the standard, the prototype metre and the prototype kilogram, both made in a platinum alloy, witnessed by representatives of the French and several foreign governments and most important natural philosophers of the time. The motto adopted for the metric system was: "for all men, for all time".
In revolutionary France the system was not particularly well accepted, and the old units, now illegal, remained in widespread use. On February 12, 1812, Napoleon, who had other concerns than enforcement of the system, authorised the usage of Mesures usuelles, traditional French measures redefined on the base of Metric System (toise as 2 metres, livre as 500 grams, etc.), and finally in 1816 a law made these Mesures usuelles standards. This law was cancelled in 1825 and the metric system reinstated fully in 1837.[3] It had already been reinstated in 1820 by a somewhat unlikely person, King William I of the neighbouring (United) Netherlands. Although he was generally considered more conservative, he was desperate to bring at least some form of unity to his rather disunited kingdom and stimulate the industrial development of the South. Although the imposed system was metric, a number of old local names like 'pond' (pound) and 'ons' (ounce) were substituted for 500 g and 100 g respectively, and although they were officially abolished in the 1870s, they survive to the present day. The king's attempts were in vain in that Belgium claimed its independence from the Netherlands, but the metric system survived and began a slow but steady conquest of the world. In 1866 the U.S. passed a law making the metric system legal.[4]
On May 20, 1875 an international treaty known as the Convention du Mètre (Metre Convention) was signed by 17 states. This treaty established the following organisations to conduct international activities relating to a uniform system for measurements:
1. Conférence générale des poids et mesures (CGPM), an intergovernmental conference of official delegates of member nations and the supreme authority for all actions;
2. Comité international des poids et mesures (CIPM), consisting of selected scientists and metrologists, which prepares and executes the decisions of the CGPM and is responsible for the supervision of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures;
3. Bureau international des poids et mesures (BIPM), a permanent laboratory and world centre of scientific metrology, the activities of which include the establishment of the basic standards and scales of the principal physical quantities and maintenance of the international prototype standards.
Later improvements in the measurement of both the size of the Earth and the properties of water revealed discrepancies between the metric standards and their originally intended values. The Industrial Revolution was well under way and the standardisation of mechanical parts, mainly bolts and nuts, was of great importance and they relied on precise measurements. Though these discrepancies would be mostly hidden in the manufacturing tolerances of those days, changing the prototypes to conform to the new and more precise measurements would have been impractical particularly since new and improved instruments would continually change them.
It was decided to break the linkage between the prototypes and the natural properties they were derived from. The prototypes then became the basis of the system. The use of prototypes, however, is problematic for a number of reasons. There is the potential for loss, damage or destruction. There is also the problem of variance of the standard with the changes that any artifact can be expected to go through, though they be slight. Also whilst there may be copies, there must be only one official prototype which cannot be universally accessible.
The metre had been defined in terms of such a prototype and remained so until 1960. At that time, the metre was defined as a certain number of wavelengths of a particular frequency of light emitted by a certain element. Since 1983 the metre has been defined as the distance light travels in a given fraction of a second in a vacuum. Thus the definition of the metre ultimately regained a linkage with a natural property, this time a property thought immutable in our universe and truly universal. The kilogram is now the only base unit still defined in terms of a prototype. Since 1899, the kilogram has been formally anchored to a single platinum-iridium cylinder in Sèvres, France.
The metric system is used widely for scientific purposes but there are some exceptions, especially at large and small scales, such as the parsec. By the 1960s, the majority of nations were on the metric system and most that were not had started programmes to fully convert to the metric system (metrication). As of 2006, 95% of the world's population live in metricated countries, although non-metric units are still used for some purposes in some countries. Only three countries, Burma, Liberia, and the United States had not officially adopted the metric system.
The Egyptian cubit, the Indus Valley units of length referred to above and the Mesopotamian cubit were used in the 3rd millennium BC and are the earliest known units used by ancient peoples to measure length. The measures of length used in ancient India included the dhanus (bow), the krosa (cry, or cow-call) and the jojana (stage).
The common cubit was the length of the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. It was divided into the span of the hand (one-half cubit), the palm or width of the hand (one sixth), and the digit or width of the middle finger (one twenty-fourth) and the span or the length between the tip little finger to the tip of the thumb. The Sacred Cubit, which was a standard cubit enhanced by an extra span—thus 7 spans or 28 digits long—was used in constructing buildings and monuments and in surveying in ancient Egypt; it may have been based on an astronomical measurement.[2] The inch, foot, and yard evolved from these units through a complicated transformation not yet fully understood. Some believe they evolved from cubic measures; others believe they were simple proportions or multiples of the cubit. In whichever case, the Greeks and Romans inherited the foot from the Egyptians. The Roman foot (~296 mm) was divided into both 12 unciae (inches) (~24.7 mm) and 16 digits (~18.5 mm). The Romans also introduced the mille passus (1000 paces) or double steps, the pace being equal to five Roman feet (~1480 mm). The Roman mile of 5000 feet (1480 m) was introduced into England during the occupation. Queen Elizabeth I (reigned from 1558 to 1603) changed, by statute, the mile to 5280 feet (~1609 m) or 8 furlongs, a furlong being 40 rod (unit)s (~201 m) of 5.5 yards (~5.03 m)each.
The introduction of the yard (0.9144 m) as a unit of length came later, but its origin is not definitely known. Some believe the origin was the double cubit, others believe that it originated from cubic measure. Whatever its origin, the early yard was divided by the binary method into 2, 4, 8, and 16 parts called the half-yard, span, finger, and nail. The association of the yard with the "gird" or circumference of a person's waist or with the distance from the tip of the nose to the end of the thumb of King Henry I (reigned 1100 - 1135) are probably standardizing actions, since several yards were in use in Britain. There were also Rods, Poles and Perches for measurements of length. The following table lists the equivalents. Length 12 lines = 1 inch 12 inches = 1 foot 3 feet = 1 yard 1760 yards = 1 mile 36 inches = 1 yard 440 yards = quarter mile 880 yards = half mile
100 links = 1 chain 10 chains = 1 furlong 8 furlongs = 1 mile 4 inches = 1 hand 22 yards = 1 chain 5.5 yards = 1 rod, pole or perch 4 poles = 1 chain 40 poles = 1 furlong