HISTORY OF MEASUREMENT

The history of measurement is the history of mankind. Since man slew his first animal
and built his first fire, his progress has been built on the foundation of
measurement. The rate of his progress throughout history has been closely related to
his progress in the science of measurement.

However, man discovered at an early age that just the ability to measure was not
enough. If our measurements were to be meaningful, they had to agree with the
measurements of other men. This universal agreement about measurement units required
the adoption of standards from which all men could derive the same units of measure.
The problem was not a simple one. Throughout history there has been confusion because
adopted standards have been changed, corrupted, or destroyed.

The Beginning of Standards

Natural standards of length such as the hand, span, palm, and digit were used from
earliest times, but there is no record of any attempt to establish a permanent
standard until the building of the great Khufu Pyramid in Egypt about 2900 B.C. The
pharaoh Khufu was the first to decree that a standard unit of length be fixed. The
standard chosen was made of black granite and was called the Royal Egyptian Cubit.
History records its length as that of the ruling Pharaoh’s forearm and hand. (Length
from the elbow to the tip of the 3rd digit, plus the width of the palm) It was also
decreed that all working cubits (made of wood) be compared with the granite cubit
every full moon, failure to do so was punishable by death.

Did this standard work? The answer must be an unequivocal, “yes,” when you consider
that no side of the pyramid’s square base deviated from the average side length of
9000 inches by more than 1/20 of 1 percent. Although the history of Egyptians also
knew a great deal about measuring angles, since each of the corners of the Great
Pyramid is a perfect right angle within 3/1000 of a degree. Achieving this precision
is difficult enough today even with all our modern tools and techniques.

Although the Egyptian priests swore by the great Ra to preserve the sacred cubit,
they somehow failed because other cubits of different length came into use.
The Egyptian Royal Cubit

There are several interesting facts concerning the Egyptian Royal Cubit that make it
similar to our modern standards. These features are:

It was defined and established by governmental decree; that is, the establishment
was with some authority. This meant that all of the Artisans were required by law to
use the same measuring system.
This standard was embodied in a physical object capable of application. By using
a physical object rather than an abstract definition all the Artisans who used this
system got the exact same meaning out of the standard rather than allowing the
definition of the standard to be misinterpreted.
The unit was made of a very stable and durable material, one of the best
available in those times. And, as such, would maintain the measurement accuracy for
an indefinite period of time.
 There were secondary standards that were compared at regular intervals to this
primary standard. This would ensure that all of the WORKING STANDARDS, the measuring
instruments that the Artisans used, had their TRACEABLE back to the original
standard.

Other Discoveries of Standards

The Romans, like their predecessors, the Egyptian and Greeks, were also great
architects. This is exemplified by the vast network of roads and aqueducts that they
constructed. Since history indicates that these projects were completed in a
relatively short length of time, it implies that construction must have started
simultaneously at many points along the routes. This could only have been practical
if there was an established standard measurement system for use by the various
artisans who worked on the projects.

If small reservoirs were to be prevented from forming along the route of the
aqueducts, they must have been constructed with a constant incline from the distant
mountain lakes to the coastal cities. It is inconceivable to think that the separated
crews could have aligned all of their project so preciously had they not used
measuring instruments that were compared or related to a set of established
standards.

The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans were, for a time, partially successful in
establishing workable measurement systems and standards that were accepted and
adhered to throughout their nations. In spite of all their short comings, these
systems were relatively strong and workable, but most important, they were accepted
and respected by the artisans that used them.

Man had just started this technological evolution when suddenly the great empires
crumbled. Barbaric tribes invaded Europe, an action which history would later show,
may have set man’s development back ten centuries. Man’s entrance into the Dark Ages
stifled and destroyed that existing knowledge which had been so painfully earned.

The Dark Ages = Retrogression

The Dark Ages brought retrogression. Most measurement systems were forgotten with the
exception of a few attempts by reigning monarchs to establish standards. In Saxon
times there was a yard bar at Winchester which King Edgar designated by decree as the
sole official yard. This meant little, however, since measurement systems were so
lacking that the very concept of a standard had been lost.

There was such a diversity of unrelated units that it staggers the imagination!
Nearly all of the rulers tried to correct the situation since it seemed to require so
little wisdom and power to set standards. All one had to do was decree that a yard
was so long, that so many inches made a foot, so many feet a yard, and that all
barrels used for measuring everything would contain 36 gallons, the same size as the
king’s gallon. The rulers issued decrees, but were seldom able to achieve unity and
order between their measurement standards.

The reigning king would send out his inspectors with copies of his standards, but
trades people kept right on using whatever haphazard standards they had been using
before. The standards and their copies were so poorly executed and of such meager
ability that any system set forth disintegrated rapidly, and therefore was not
trusted by the people.
Advancements in Standards

The Arabic Numeral System introduced by Spain at the end of the 10th century ignited
a spark, but it was not until the 14th century that the fire of scientific
achievement started to blaze. Mankind’s technological reawakening was, at first,
slow. Gunpowder came into use in 1346, a mechanical clock was built in 1360, DaVinci
designed a screw cutting machine, and the printing press was invented. Man started to
move; progress was being made.

Scientists and small village industries needed measuring instruments to explore their
theories and to build better clocks and cannons. Together the scientists and
instrument makers developed increasingly better measuring tools.

In 1631 Pierre Vernier devised a scale that increased the readout capability of
instruments by a factor of 10.
In 1642 astronomer William Gascoigne devised a micrometer using screw threads.

Even with all if these excellent measuring tools and techniques, the scientists and
manufacturers were still handicapped because they could not refer to authoritative
standards of equal or greater merit. What was needed was a common language of
measurement, but there was not national or international system advanced enough to
provide it.

James Watt, a Scottish inventor and instrument maker, who was close to the scientists
of France and active in the Royal Society in England, urged that all scientists join
together in promoting a completely new system of measurement. He proposed that this
system be found on a standard unit of length from which all other measurements would
be derived.

During the French Revolution, Prince Talleyrand, realizing that unity of weights and
standards was one of the keys to national unit, directed the Royal Academy of Science
to construct a new system based on the ideas proposed by Watt. Leading French
scientist such as Laplace and Laoiser were summoned to help.

There was no question on how the system was to be constructed, but what was the
fundamental standard to be?

They first considered TIME, proposing to derive the unity of length from the swing of
a pendulum. This idea was rejected, partly because existing techniques for this
measurement did not offer sufficient precision, and partly because it could not be
reproduced with absolute certainty due to variations in the earth’s gravitational
pull at different locations.

They decided instead to derive the unit of length from a dimension of the earth. The
meter, from the Greek word, METRON, meaning measure, was to be the basic distance
from the equator to the North Pole. Since this distance was already known with fair
precision, a provisional unit was adopted at once. The agreement on and
implementation of the metric system should have brought with it unification of
measurements throughout Europe, but it, like its predecessors, failed.
The Metric System

The metric system was born during the French Revolution, and with the death or
imprisonment of many of its founders, it fell into disuse.

The United States, having won its independence, inherited the problems of Europe. The
founders of the constitution recognized the need for acceptable standards and with
good intent vested the power with Congress “to fix the standards of weights and
measures.” George Washington urged the Congress to act, but Congress accomplished
nothing. The United States was infected with the same disease that for centuries had
eaten away at the progress of Europe. Each state had its own system of measurement: A
bushel of oats weighed

24 pounds in Connecticut
32 in New Jersey
33 ½ in Kentucky
36 pounds was the standard out in the Washington Territory.

In 1807 Congress decided to have a survey made of the coast and formed the Coast
Survey under the Treasury Department. Ferdinand R. Hassler, who was then a
mathematics instructor at West Point, submitted an acceptable proposal to the
Secretary of the Treasury was chosen as the first superintendent of the Coast Survey.
When Hassler arrived in Washington he found an impressive title but no funds, for
Congress had neglected to provide any money for the survey. Hassler decided to act,
and without the slightest authority he determined what his—or rather our—national
standards should be and began manufacturing copies of these standards for
distribution to the state governments.

The standard unit of length which Hassler chose was a bar made by Edward Troughton,
an English instrument maker. Although he knew that this particular bar had never been
compared to the Parliamentary Yard, he decided that if any discrepancy was later
discovered, the Parliamentary Yard would be the ultimate authority. He never got a
chance to compare the original, however, because the Parliamentary Yard was destroyed
by fire in 1834.

The Parliamentary Yard was ultimately restored and reliable copies were made for safe
keeping and distribution. Two of the bars were sent to the United States. One of
them, Bronze No. 11, was compared with Hassler’s Troughton scale and found to
be0.00087 inch shorter. The Troughton scale was discarded, and for a time Bronze No.
11 became the accepted standard of length in the United States.

The Metric System in Europe

While not gaining popular acceptance in the United States, the complete metric system
was slowly being adopted throughout Europe. In 1875, seventeen nations, including the
United States, held an International Conference on Weights and Measures, and on May
20th of the same year signed the “Treaty of the Meter.” Committees were appointed to
construct permanent standards that would be technically superior to those made during
the French Revolution. The treaty also provided for an International Bureau of
Weights and Measures to be established on neutral ground in Sevres, France.

The construction work completed in 1889, and the best of several prototype meter bars
and kilograms were chosen to be the ultimate authority for the meter and kilogram.
These two specimens were deposited for safety in an underground vault beneath the
neutral ground provided by the treaty. They were undisturbed during both world wars.

Other meter and kilogram prototypes were distributed by lot among the treaty nations.
Meter Bar No. 27 and Kilogram No. 20 were unpacked at a ceremony in the office of
President Benjamin Harrison, and in 1893 they were accepted by the Congress of the
United States as our FUNDAMENTAL national standards.

This ceremony, though impressive, was really meaningless. The industries of the
United States were beginning to prepare for mass production, but history had shown
too well that mass production cannot occur within the confines of a single factory.
Each industry must be able to utilize the working products of other factories if
interchangeability and total mass production were to become a reality.

While the newly adopted meter and kilogram standards were still in their shipping
crates, there were over 100 different types and sizes of electrical lamp bases being
used in American homes. This nonconformity of supposedly similar items was the rule
rather than the exception. Agreements between manufactures and industries had been
attempted, but the standards on which they had sought to build were still uncertain.
The existing Office of Weights and Measures simply could not cope with the problem.
Most European nations had built fine national laboratories to regulate measurements
and standards and to act as an overseer of uniformity. American was falling behind.
The Adoption of Standards in the United States

The problem was an urgent one, and Congress finally acted. In 1901, a law was passed
creating the National Bureau of Standards, now the National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST). The Bureau was to have custody of existing standards and to
create new standards as required. Today NIST maintains over 800 different standards
in addition to conducting basic research in many related fields.

It took man 5,000 years to evolve from the Royal Egyptian Cubit to his first defined
standard, the meter, which was adopted about 1900. Consider for a moment the rate of
his progress since he became armed with this new weapon. Each era of history
considered its standards to be ultimate at the time. Is our present day confidence in
our ability justified, or will future generations look back on the twentieth century
as the Dark Ages of their history.