Talk:English unit

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Articles for deletion

This article was nominated for deletion on December 24, 2005. The result of the discussion was keep. An archived record of this discussion can be found here.

Contents

[edit] Moved from mediæval page

I'm moving the bulk of the content in the English units section of the Medieval weights and measures page. Jimp 13Jul05

[edit] Score

Why was a score listed in the units list I've just moved? There was no mention of a dozen and well there should not have been for these are not units of measurements but words for numbers. Jimp 13Jul05

A Score of 20 lb has been used in much of the Baltic region, being a left over of the Hansiatic pound. We see also that the tower pound, 12 oz of 450 grains troy, is the same ounce that 16 make the pounds of Prussia and Scandinavia (~ 466g or 7200 grains troy)

Wendy.krieger 10:42, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Maybe useful links

Haven't got time now to wade through it but here's something I've just stumbled on whilst looking on the web for "tower pound measurement".

http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/history/measure.html http://www.24carat.co.uk/weightsframe.html

Jimp 15Jul05

[edit] Scottish Units

Should the section on Scottish Units be moved from the mediæval page? Scotland is not part of England, of course, but that's not the point. Are the Scottish units a subset of the English ones (the U.S. ones are & the U.S. isn't part of England either)? Jimp 19Jul05

No, the Scottish units are more a parallel system. The English units are the ones used in the U.S., and in Scotland for several centuries as well, not the Scottish units. Gene Nygaard 02:05, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Then what do we do with them? Should we make a new article, Scottish unit, and put them there? There's hardly enough there to warrant a whole article ... is there? There's no question of putting them back on the mediæval page because I've split it up by culture & then remerged it with the ancient page. Jimp 7Sep05

Gene, you say "The English units are the ones used in the U.S." they were used in the U.K., Ireland & the British Empire/Commonwealth to ... though the ones used here were (a) different version(s). Jimp 2Nov05

US measure is based on pre-imperial measures. The chief reforms of the Imperial Weights and Measures Act 1820 etc, is to clean up the many diverse gallons, remove many obsolete denominations, and to reform administration of the system. The "Winchester Wine Gallon", for example, is derived as such.
A cylinder, six inches in diameter and seven inches high (A.E. Berriman, Historical Metrology, DENT, 1953)
231 cubic inches (since the practice is to round to cubic inches: pi is thence 22/7)
0.8331 Imperial Gallons, where an imperial gallon is rated 277.274 cubic inches
0.8331 Imperial Gallons, in the new rating of 277.420 cu inches.
Unlike the USA, Scotland was independent, when the act of union brought England and Scotland into the United Kingdom. America was a former colony, abandoned in 1873. Such continued to use measures of that time. Wendy.krieger 11:07, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Typo

Sad, now someone fixed that typo (“Untied States”). I love it. Christoph Päper 12:36, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

== Rktect's additions ==

I'd like Rktect to explain what the relevance of his references are. Some books he added:

  • The Ancient Near East
  • The Epic of Gilgamesh
  • Bahrain throught the ages
  • Prehistory and Protohistory of the Arabian Peninsula
  • Mesopotamia 10 The Sumerian Language
  • Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East
  • The Archaeology of Ancient China
  • The Arabic Alphabet

among many others. It seems that he's again just pasting down his ancient civilizations references everywhere he can. Those books are not relevant to English unit. -- (☺drini♫|☎) 19:23, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

English units derive from Roman units. Very few people would dispute that. Roman units derive from Greek and Egyptian units through the Greek orders of architecture and through commerce. Fewer people know that but its well established in mainstream literature. Imperial English Units are the same exact units found in the Bible. If you have never read the Bible you might not know that, but everything I have mentioned so far can be found in Klein. Greek units derive from Egyptian and Mesopotamian units. People who are into coins know this pretty well. Egyptian units derive from Mesopotamian units.
To establish this it helps to read Gardiner and Gillings. Measurements are used to define property. For that I would cite Ken Kitchen. Even though he's not on the list of references you can probably google him if you want to. From the very first instances of international trade people agreed on their relative value and the system prevailed relatively unchanged for Millenia. Unfortunately, the farther back you take it the less familiar most people are with the discussion, so if I start talking about the Mari letters or Sargon talking about the Ships of Melluha, Makkan and Dilmun docking at the quays of Agade it helps to have Bahrain through the Ages and the Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia at your finger tips.
The Ancient Near East contains a number of references to interactions between civilizations that at a very minimum give you a list of whose involved with who and in what ways. The Epic of Gilgamesh and Bahrain through the Ages extend the interactions as far as India. The Pre-History and Protohistory of the Arabian Penninsula brings Arabia into the picture. Bahrain through the Ages begins to get into the weights and measures shared between Meluhha, Makkan, Dilmun and Mesopotamia

with pictures of Weights from Mesopotamia found at Lothal and weights from Mohenjo Daro and Harrappa found at Falika.

The Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East connects Mesopotamia, with Egypt, the Hittites, Greeks and Persians geting into the specifics of trade routes, trade goods, cylinder seals, early systems of mathematics writing weights and measures and and commercial exchange. Mesopotamia 10 is a basic grammar for Sumerian which helps when you are trying to read cuneiform inscriptions. The archaeology of Ancient China comes into the picture with the Silk Road. The Arabic Alphabet is a basic grammar for Arabic. I also included language references for Egyptian, Greek, Latin and Hittite. If you actually read all of those you would begin to understand why the the extent of the commercial networking in Roman times extends from Britain to China. Rktect 20:36, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Ok, please dumb down things to me as I'm not at your level. Why is epic of gilgamesh relevant as REFERENCE? Some units relate to others, but the point of a reference is to backup statements made on the page. How is that epic being used? -- (☺drini♫|☎) 20:59, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

There is a progression, a sequence of steps from origininal independant invention, to final well refined standardized usage. A big part of that is who talked to whom when, and what were they discussing. In the Epic of Gillgamesh (and other stories of the period) you can look at what the word is in the original Sumerian and what the word is in the English translations. The word for cubit in Sumerian is ku. The standard Sumerian volume for grain is a measure called a gur. Gilgamesh and Enkidu go to Lebanon and get Cedar measured in ku, they go to the mountains and get metals measured in talents, mina and shekles, they go to Dilmun and Makkan and Melluha in ships that are designed to cross seas.

You can read about ships of 60 gur coming from Melluha, Makkan and Dilmun to the quays of Agade in the writings of Sargon, You can read about them in the law codes of Hamurrabi. That tells you there is an internationally recognized standard. Then you can add to that "Bahrain through the Ages", "The Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia", "The letter of Nanse", the rod of Gudea and all the tablets mentioning agricultural accounts from the Library at Ebla and add to that the mentions in the Code of Hammurrabbi. At the end of the day you have collected a number of references to units of measure which support one another to the effect that there were cubits used in Mesopotamia to measure the length of strides, the height of gates, the size of the trees used to get the boards to make the gates, the size of the ships, the size of the baskets used to carry the grain, the size of fields, the equivalent value of the containers of grain in silver and copper.

Its all part of the collection of references Rktect 15:27, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

No that's not a reference. I'm sorry. In such case ANY text that talks about "inches" or mention "miles" would become a reference. In all case, and being generous, that'd be a reference for an entry on ancient measures. -- (☺drini♫|☎) 01:48, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Gilgamesh does talk about Miles or at least its English translation does.
" A square mile is a city, a square mile is a date grove, a square mile is claypit, half a square mile is the Temple of Ishtar." Placing the temple at the center with the city around it and the date grove around that and the clay pits on the outskirts you get a ring of concentric circles, or if you prefer squares, or squared circles such that the first contains 1/2 square mile, the second 1 1/2 square miles, the third 2 1/2 square miles and the fourth 3 1/2 square miles. What are their diameters and or sides? What length is the mile in feet or cubits? Its actually quite a neat little math problem as the Epic also includes information about the relative length of feet, cubits, rods, and leagues. In the original form the measures are given in a language many readers are illiterate in so I also provided linguistic references. Also, you don't always get all the information from a single source. Sometimes you need several sources to reinforce one another. Then when you have read all the sources and references things begin to make more sense. Rktect 13:54, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
"Mile" comes from "Mile Passum" in the latin, "a thousand paces" - mile is "thousand". I'm wary of your claim that Gilgamesh in its original uses "mile" and I don't think this is valid unless you can offer some etymological references proving that the Roman word for a thousand came from the language used in Gilgamesh (umm, sorry, would this be Akkadian? I am not sure). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.133.79.7 (talk) 17:03, 2 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Diamond on Stanley tape

The Diamond is useful to thrifty carpenters who want to save one stud, joist or rafter in seven by going to a slightly thicker plywood and adding the labor of cutting insulation, and its becoming a more common division with engineered lumber. The real reason for its existence is architectural and goes back through the Romans and Greeks and Persians to the Egyptians and Babylonians all of whom maintained this ratio of foot, remen and cubit which we know as...
The Golden Ratio: 1 x 0.7937 x 1.2599
Example: Desired net volume is 2.00 cf.
Take the cube root: 1.26 ft = 15.12 inch = Side A.
Now multiply side A x 0.7937 to get side B, or 12.00 in. Side C = side A x 1.2599 = 19.05 in. So
we have:
Side A = 15.12 inch = 1 Remen
Side B = 12.00 inch = 1 Foot
Side C = 19.05 inch = 1 Cubit
[diamond]
"19-2.In Persia some buildings at Persepolis and other places (25) are constructed on a foot of 9-6, or cubit of 19-2; while the modern Persian arish is 38.27 or 2X1913. The same is found very clearly in Asia Minor (25), averaging 193; and it is known in literature as the Pythic foot (18, 33) of 9.75, or 1/2 of I95, if Censorinus is rightly understood. It may be shown by a mark (33) on the 26th digit of Sharpes Egyptian cubit = 19.2 in."
[19.2" cubit]
In the time of Herodotus the Persian Empire included the territory of the Punics. The Punics were the people who brought the tin of the Chanel islands to the Mediterranean world to combine with copper to make bronze so this measure would have preceeded the use of Roman standards in Britain by several centuries. [unsigned by Rktect 13:06 UTC 14 October 2005]
What's your point, 3rkt3ct?
  1. You have at most some disjointed, unconnected lengths that happen to be, very roughly, the same size.
  2. How much of the above is direct quotes?
  3. Who are you quoting?
  4. What is each quote supposed to show?
  5. Why are you indenting your comments, 3rky, when yours are the first ones in this section? Don't you ever have any respect whatsoever for any formatting rules?
If we have a standard size for plywood and similar construction materials, and we want to support them on studs or rafters, then we want the ends of the sheets to meet on a stud. But we also need to have some support in between. So if you have an 8 ft sheet, splitting that 96 inches into six parts gives you the 16 inch spacing commonly used for wall studs in construction in English units. But in some applications, that much support isn't necessary. But you still want to divide the sheet into a number of parts that is a whole number, so that the ends of the sheet still end up on a support. The next integer less than six is five. There aren't any legitimate options in between. Splitting an 8 ft sheet into five parts means you need to space them at 8/5 ft = 1.6 ft, the spacing of those diamonds. Thus you save one stud in six on a long run, though not that much overall (how in the world did you come up with one in seven—must have forgotten that the ones on the end are shared by two sheets?). It really is as simple as that. It has nothing whatsoever to do with cubits, nor with the golden number. Gene Nygaard 16:04, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Moved from Feudal measurement

Maybe someone should point out that these measurements only apply to ENGLAND! In the rest of Europe the measures were totally different (besides having totally different names). Luis rib 20:07, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good reason to add these non-English units to the article, perhaps by breaking down the existing categories into national sub-categories. Geoff NoNick 21:15, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
Or better still: to merge the article with English unit. Note: there are articles for various other mediæval systems of measurement (just follow the link). Jimp 15Dec05
Agreed - go to it. Geoff NoNick 15:25, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
In fact the article could be split. The short introduction is quite general and might be moved to Systems of measurement#Mediæval measurements. The bulk of the article, however, as Luis Rib points out, concerns measurements only apply to England (except of some mention of Irish & Scottish units). Much of this parallels the info at English unit. What this article covers and English unit is missing could certainly be used over there. I think I'll begin the process of merging them. The first step will be duplicating the info here to English unit (Note: doing this will, of course, not necessitate merging the articles). Were the articles to be merged, though, I'd suggest redirecting this article to Systems of measurement. ... Later: The duplication has been done. What's left is to make the page a redirect as suggested. However, this talk page I'll redirect to Talk: English unit after moving the text there. ... Later still: It is done. Jimp 16Dec05

Might also want to point out that these measures were in no way precise and that the modern equivalents are totally approximated.... Morgan2317 03:41, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Foolish

Its not only foolish using such inferior pathetic untis as these are. Its stupid. CANT you guys get it that my weight is 70 kg and not 140 pounds? and that im 170cm tall and not 5 foot and 7 inches? i bought 4 liters water, not a galleon. Stop bieng one of the stupid ones and join us smart and intelligent people. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.100.13.232 (talk • contribs) .

This is of course a highly biased view. Wikipedia has a policy of neutral point of view, so despite what you may feel about the subject please stop trying to convert every article using imperial measures over to metric - it often results in changes to precision, and Wikipedia has a major audience (Americans) who don't use metric so it can be confusing. Add a metric conversion as an alternative if you like, that's more useful to everyone. Bryan 21:03, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
ok i´ll stop, but the only way for them to learn metric is for them to feel forced to use it. If everything is in metric dont you agree then they are forced to change?
I too prefer metric but this is not the point. Nor is Wikipedia a vehicle for metrication. It is not the purpose of the encyclopædia to force people to learn metric. One of its main purposes is to inform. Therefore it is handy to have dual measurements. Conversions, however, are less precise, as Bryan mentions, and should therefore go in brackets. Jimp 04:02, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Any time you have to almost universally force people to do something, there's a problem...and not with the people, themselves.
In the case of English units of measure, the problem is that while engineers and bureaucrats constantly convert units of measure mathematically with a complex base-10 system, common people do not. It is much more convenient to cook with a binary system (a concept foreign to the relatively primitive science of the 18th century inventors of the SI system, who thought base-10 was the be-all and end-all of numbers) which divides fluid measure in halves, allowing a unit to fall close to what you need, than to deal in hundreds of milliliters. And if you're doubling a recipe from a quarter cup to a half cup, then you're told you must instead double 59 milliliters, you instantly see how English units are more convenient.
One can as reasonably condemn the stupidity of people willing to let their governments force them to switch to an arbitrary, barely post-renaissance system of tenths of units, just so their governments can find bureaucracy a bit more convenient. America's full of people whose ancestors left other countries, rather than deal with the arbitrary whims of authoritarian government...it's natural that they are still culturally and behaviorally resistant to inconvenient government mandates, unlike their more passive, compliant cousins in the Old World. --Kaz 16:21, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
A "complex" base 10 system? What base do you count in? Imperial units have nothing to do with binary, and the only aspects of SI I can think of which depend on base 10 are the prefixes (k, M, G, etc.), which aren't really necessary, and the definition of the Amp (which involves 10 − 7N). Anyway, presumably there are legal standards in the USA which "force" people to use particular definitions of imperial units, just the same as those in countries which use SI units? I should also point out that if you read Binary numeral system, you will find out that binary was invented long before the 18th century. Oh, and all countries are full of people whose ancestors left other countries, otherwise how did they get there? :) 81.98.34.193 19:59, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm lead to believe that decimal counting is something like normal counting, except that you jump from 99 straight to 100, and from 999 to a thousand (omg). Wendy.krieger 07:50, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Volume/mass conversion

Under the volume section, a mouthful is listed as equal to 1/2 ounce - this makes no sense unless the material which this applies to for is listed. e.g. a mouthful of lead will weigh a lot more than a mouthful of water...

Half a fluid ounce, i.e. about 15 ml. It makes perfect sense. Jimp 15:33, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] grain

Why revert? The exact value doesn't take up much space and adds information. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 15:29, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

This exact Value is only the current Definition, but the Value has differed (slightly) throughout History. Therefore a less accurate Figure is more appropriate. (Note that this Article is not just about the quite recent Imperial or US Customary System.) Christoph Päper 11:54, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
One should understand that the troy grain is so called, because there were formerly other grains, and that the most accurate weight was for that of precious metals, and that typically, avoirdepoise, or Handelmass, were defined in terms of jewelers weight. There was a grain avoirdupoise, 30 make a dram, 16 drams make the oz avoir. The tower grain reflects the old germanic division, where 1 lb = 12 oz, 1 oz = 20 dwt, 1 dwt = 32 grains, that 450 grains troy makes 640 grains tower. See reference below for this.
Zupko, Ronald Edward. A Dictionary of English Weights and Measures: From Anglo-Saxon Times to the Nineteenth Century. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968.
The imperial pound was defined in terms of prototype. Until 1844, this was a weight of 2 lb troy, or 11520 grains troy. When this standard was lost and a new one created, the new pound was constructed to 7000 grains troy.
Miller's 1844 figure, sanctioned for conversion factors in 1864, is 1 kg = 15432.34874 gt. In 1886, Broch found the kilogram to be 15 432.35639 gt, the 10 figure rounding of lb/kg forms the Mendenhall Order or US value. In 1933, the Pound yielded 0.453592338 kg. The international value was meant to be a multiple of 7 between the last two values, origionally 0.4535923, but later as 0.45359237 kg. Wendy.krieger 10:57, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

The disambiguation page for "handle" says that a handle is 1.76 liters. I always use the word handle to describe a big bottle o' rum - should it be on here? It's what I came here looking for after all. --84.198.27.16 03:43, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ambiguity

The final paragraph of the intro reads:

Usage of the term "English System" or "English Unit" is common in the US, but it is problematical. It can be ambiguous. It usually refers to either the Imperial System or the US Customary System, and in cases where these two systems differ, it is not clear which system is being described. Some people also call 'it' the "British system" in the US. It is interesting to note that referring to 'this system' as the British or English system almost only occurs in the United States, mainly causing confusion in the United Kingdom when reading from American sources.

Now, I appreciate the rhetorical power of making this paragraph illustrate the very problem it describes, but it is perhaps less than useful. What do "it" and "this system" in the above paragraph refer to? The measurements used in England? The measurements used in the US? Or could we rephrase the last two sentences so that they doesn't imply that the term applies to one specific system? VoluntarySlave (talk) 19:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)