History of measurements

Chronolog
y
430 BC
Herodotus Ancient
2700 BC Greece (Stadium,
Egyptian Breaststroke, Plethro,
Elbow Foot, Talent)

2600 BC
System of Weights and
Standardized measurements
Valley culture
Indo (Pakistan and
Northwest India)
 Chronolog
y

56 BC 1722 – 1732
Diodorus of Sicily / Rome Benoît de Maillet / French
(Foot, Phileterian Stage, Lithic Elbow, Elbow (Standardized
Baladí, Elbow of the Lagidos, Fathom Feet and
Inches)

900 AD
Roman empire
(Elbow, Finger, Black Elbow
Baladí Elbow, Palmo, Elbow
Natural, Royal Elbow, Elbow
Al-Mamun, Elbow
Ordinary )
 Chronolog
y 1889
1791 General Conference of Weights
and
French Metric System Measures. The system was
It was proposed as a unit adopted
the subway is essential original metric
internationally and led to
the International System of
Current units

1799
French Metric System Delivery
meter and the standard kilo and
they make copies.
 Patterns and measurements of
Antiquity
• The cubit was a unit of length used in many cultures due
to its anthropometric origin.

• In almost all of them it was the distance between the

elbow and the end of the open hand (royal elbow) or
closed fist (vulgar elbow).

Logically, its value varied from one country to another,

including
within the country, according to its use.

The Egyptian cubit ( meh ) measured

about 0.45 m.
– The Egyptian royal cubit was 0.523 m.
 Patterns and measurements of
Antiquity
• Later the Greeks introduced other
measurements more for distances and to
measure
mass or
A TALENT
weight. correspon
ds
STADIUM 5 STADIUMS = 923.50 M approxima
10 FATHOMS = 18.47 tely to the
FATHO
M mass of
M
8 FATHOMS
PLETRO 8 PLETROS = 14.78
= 246.26 M water
M needed to
FOOT 30 FEET = 9.24 fill an
M 1600 TALENTS = 41884 KILOGRAMS amphora.
1.5 PLETERS =46.17 METERS
TALENT
40 FEET = 12.31 METERS
1 TALENT = 26178 GRAMS
 Patterns and measurements of
Antiquity
• Later the Romans adopted the Greek measurement
system, spreading it throughout their empire but
without standardizing it.

700 feet = 246.26 meters

600 feet = 211.08 meters
1 Fileteriano Stadium = 211.08 meters
300 feet = 105.54 meters
6 Lithic Elbows = 4.62 meters
1 Baladí Cubit = 1 Lágidos Cubit = 1 Greek Cubit = 0.462 m
1 Fathom = 5 Cubits
 Patterns and measurements of
Other measurements and different equivalences were used
Antiquity
across different times and cultures.

• 243 Roman feet = 71.82 m (Pliny)

• Arab cubit = 0.462 meters (Abul Faradj 829 AD)
• Herodorus Causeway = 10 fathoms wide by 2 or 3 leagues
long
• Pliny's Roman foot = 0.2955 m
• 1 pyramidal inch = 1.0011 English inch = 0.0254264 m
• Eratosthenes divided the earth's circumference into 252,000
Stadia.
 The Path to
For a long time there was no standardized system of
YES
measurements, and each country or region used its own.

The first attempt to standardize measurements is recorded

only between the years 1722 to 1732, where the Frenchman
Benoît de Maillet wrote a book where he
standardized the measurement of the foot
and the inch.
3.5 Feet = 1.14 meters
1 Foot = 0.328 meters
8 Inches = 0.22 Meters
 The Path to
• The first official adoption of the decimal metric
YESin France in 1791 after the
system occurred
French Revolution. The Revolution, with its
official ideology of pure reason, facilitated this
change and proposed the meter (in Greek,
measure) as a fundamental unit.
 The Path
The new system had to:
to
• Be based YES
on things that remained stable in
Nature.
• Be based on a few ways of measuring that
connect with each other logically.
• It had to be a decimal system, that is, where the
multiples of the units varied from 10 to 10.
 The Path to
Scientists of the time agreed that the unit of
measurementYES should have to do with the planet
Earth.

They proposed making the unit of length one ten

millionth of a quarter of a
terrestrial meridian.
 The Path to
It was decided to measure the length of the meridian
YES
that goes from the tower of the fort in Montjuīc, in
Barcelona to Dunkirk, which was
the longest segment on land and
almost entirely within French
territory.
 The Path to
Once the meter that would be the fundamental
measurementYES
was defined, we continued to define
other measurements:
• The decimeter and centimeter were derived from
the meter.
• The Liter was measured as the volume of
something that fits into a cube with a side of 10
cm.
• The Kilogram as the weight of a liter of water.
The Path to
YES
 The Path to
The original metric system was adopted internationally at
YES
the General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1889
and led to the International System of Units (SI).
Currently, approximately 95% of the world's population lives
in countries where the metric system and its derivatives are
used.

The only three countries that

have not adopted the
International System of Units
as a priority or the only one in
their legislation are
highlighted in red; Burma,
Liberia and the United States.
 Unit Definitions

Meter
• Initially this unit of length was created by the French
Academy of Sciences in 1791 and defined as one ten
millionth of the distance that separates the pole from the
line of the Earth's equator.
• In 1889, measurements were made to obtain this length,
which materialized in a platinum and iridium standard
meter deposited at the
International Bureau of Weights
and Measures (Paris).
Unit Definitions

Meter
• The definition given by the International Bureau
of Weights and Measures is as follows:

A meter is the distance that light travels in a

vacuum during an interval of 1/299,792,458 of a
second.
Unit Definitions
Kilogram
• The first definition, decided during the French
Revolution, specified that it was the mass of one
cubic decimeter (one liter) of distilled water at
one atmosphere of pressure and 3.98 °C
• This definition was complicated to make exactly,
because the density of water depends slightly on
pressure, and pressure units include mass as a
factor, introducing a circular dependence into the
definition.
Unit Definitions
Kilogram
To avoid these problems, the kilogram was redefined by
an object, whose mass formalized an exact quantity to
represent the original definition. Since 1889, the
International System of Measurements defines that the
unit must be equal to the mass of the international
prototype of the kilogram (IPK), which is made from an
alloy of platinum and iridium (in a proportion of 90%
and 10%, respectively, measured by weight) and is
machined in the shape of a right circular cylinder (height
= diameter) of 39 millimeters.
Unit Definitions
Kilogram
• It is the only unit that uses a prefix
It is the only SI unit that is still defined by a
standard object and not by a physical
characteristic
fundamental.
Its symbol is kg
Unit Definitions
Second
• Until 1967 it was defined as one eighty-six
thousand four hundredth of the length of the
average solar day between the years 1750 and
1890.
• One minute is equal to 60 seconds and • One
hour is equal to 3600 seconds.
Unit Definitions
Unit Definitions
Second
• According to the definition of the International
System of Units:
• One second is the duration of 9,192,631,770
oscillations of the radiation emitted in the transition
between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state
of the isotope 133 of the cesium atom (133Cs), at a
temperature of 0 K.

Since 1967, its measurement has

been made based on atomic time.
(First atomic clock)