Measurements from the past

[MeunierParticipant @meunier]

Thanks for an interesting, amusing and informative thread. I am surprised, however, that there was no mention of the 'French inch' or 'ligne', (2.256mm) or 1/12th of an English inch – used for measuring the calibre of watch movements.
Tim – if you would provide a dram or two of Brodgar at said Ring, I would be sorely tempted to establish a rendez-vous although 10:58pm might be a little gloomy next Wednesday 20th March !
(still ruing buying only one bottle of bin-end Brodgar at £72 back in the late '80s – hindsight or should that be after-taste – is a wonderful thing)
DaveD

(listening to Tannhauser overture from Wagner's Ring and wondering how many angels can dance on a pin-head, however it might be measured)

[Nick Clarke 3Participant @nickclarke3]

Posted by Meunier on 04/01/2019 20:30:38:

(listening to Tannhauser overture from Wagner's Ring and wondering how many angels can dance on a pin-head, however it might be measured)

Found this on the InterWeb:

The number describing a pin size is the length of the pin in sixteenths of a inch. Thus a #17 dressmakers pin is 17⁄16, or 1 ¹⁄16 inches long. The diameter of the pin depends on the type.

Pin sizes are at least a couple of centuries old. An English author writing in 1804 states:

Pins are distinguished by number; the smaller are called from No. 3, 4, 5, to the 14th, whence they go by twos, viz. No. 16, 18 and 20, which is the largest size. Besides the white pins there are black ones, made for the use of mourning, from No. 4 to No. 10.¹

1. Benjamin Tabert.

The Book of Trades, or the Library of Useful Arts. Part III.

London (1804 or 1805).

Reprinted Jacob Johnson, Whitehall (Philadelphia), 1807. That edition was reprinted as Early Nineteenth-Century Crafts and Trades by Dover Publications in 1992. The passage quoted occurs on page 42.

No I don't really understand either.

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

There was a TV program about sending people into business' to see how they worked and if possible improve production and profit. One program was about the Reliant car company, They found a number of things wrong with production, one was the slow hand laying of fiber glass, so a spray system was introduced, that speeded things up, and improve the product. When the team came back (maybe a year later), they had go back to the old way.

Ian S C

[Bob RodgersonParticipant @bobrodgerson97362]

It is common in the oil industry to measure pipe lengths with a steel line tape that measures in decimal feet. Imagine the confusion that is caused when somebody accidentally supplies a steel line tape that reads in feet and inches.

The Oil industry is full of non standard measurements, for instance some companies measure depth in metres but record things such as weights in Pounds instead of KG, volumes in Barrels or cubic feet instead of Litres or cubic metres.

I believe the measure of metric feet was introduced to make it easier to calculate the depth of hole drilled. Depth is measured by tallying the length of every joint of drill pipe or collars run into the hole. Drill pipe is usually around 31 feet in length per joint but varies give or take about 1 ft depending on the number of times the drill pipe thread has been re-cut and the random length of the base pipe which is made within a certain length tolerance, probably around +/- 6". Measure , given that holes of 20,000 ft depth are not uncommon then it obvious why accurate measurement of the lengths of pipes is important.

[GeorgineerParticipant @georgineer]

Posted by Meunier on 04/01/2019 20:30:38:

Thanks for an interesting, amusing and informative thread. I am surprised, however, that there was no mention of the 'French inch' or 'ligne', (2.256mm) or 1/12th of an English inch – used for measuring the calibre of watch movements. …

Meunier, the ligne is 1/12 of a French inch (pouce). Twelve French inches make up the French foot or pied de Roi. The French foot is equal to 12.79 English inches. If you check the arithmetic, it gives the same value for the ligne as you gave.

I didn't know that the ligne is still used for watch movements, but I understand that it is still used in the American button industry. The ligne was further subdivided into 12 points, but they are not the same as the printer's point, which is 1/72 of an English inch. I could go on…

Incidentally, what unit was used for the original definition of the metre?

George

[peak4Participant @peak4]

Posted by Georgineer on 05/01/2019 16:18:15:

………………

Incidentally, what unit was used for the original definition of the metre?

George

Well unlike the inch, it's been the same since 1795, and I believe was originally defined in relation to the circumference of the earth around the poles.

**LINK**Have a read of this article, which unfortunately doesn't fully explain the old vernier calipers I mentioned earlier in the thread.

 

I was particularly amused by the end of the 1959 entry. 

However, most citizens of the USA do not know that they routinely use metric system measurements. 

http://metricationmatters.com/docs/WhichInch.pdf 

Bill

 

Edited By peak4 on 05/01/2019 19:23:20

[Nick Clarke 3Participant @nickclarke3]

Posted by Georgineer on 05/01/2019 16:18:15:

Incidentally, what unit was used for the original definition of the metre?

The original definition proposed was based upon the length of a pendulum with a period of one second, however the first to be formally adopted was equal to one ten-millionth of the distance between the North Pole and the Equator.

As a result of reading this discussion I have read the fascinating Wikipedia article on the Metre. Worth a Look!

(Sorry if your definition of fascinating is different to mine but I used to be a physicist )

[Nick PassmoreParticipant @nickpassmore75850]

I'm old enough to have grown up using feet and inches and, although I can work in metric units, I can't really think in them. I think I was scarred for life by people using centimetres, which are neither use nor ornament.

It makes me smile when people on American websites talk about the UK having converted to the metric system. I assume they would be a bit surprised by both our pubs and our road signs . . . .

A few months ago I was talking to a highly-intelligent and well-educated young person (in their twenties) who described something as being about three metres long. I asked her how tall she was and after giving me a slightly old-fashioned look she said five foot seven. She couldn’t understand why I laughed.

And printers' points are actually a relatively recent standardisation. As Adobe PostScript became the (more or less) universal page description language from the mid-eighties on, its internal use of the ratio of 72 points to a standard inch became the norm but if you look at an old metal typescale from the days when Linotype, Monotype and many others still had their own page description languages (and when I was first working in publishing) you will see that 10 inches doesn't line up with 720 points by about 3/64".

Nick

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

… I asked her how tall she was and after giving me a slightly old-fashioned look she said five foot seven. She couldn’t understand why I laughed.…

same with weight ( I am sure you would not be so impolite as to ask the young lady)

many schoolchildren know their height and weght in Imperial but don’t have a clue of how many inches or pounds make up a stone or foot!

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