Note that using the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics tables on density
of water at std P,
that the weight of one fluid ounce of water at 100C (a standards point)
weighs, within 1% accuracy, one aviordupois ounce.
and at its most dense, one ounce of water weighs, within 4% accuracy, one
avoidupois ounce.
(If I wish to change the present std for pressure in measurements, it can
be at a common point)

Within 5% accuracy, one fluid ounce of water weighs one avoirdupois ounce/

A pint's a pound the world around -
assuming you use US pints, use a standard point for water, use a
standard pressure, and use the modern government-defined conversions between
the two that were put in in the past couple hundred years.

A little farther back........... well

Ever wonder how the British could have such a large empire with such a small
country and so few people, with it having all those various weights and
measures so easily done by average humans back then, compared to larger,
more wealthy countries who insisted on the intellectual superiority of
decimal based measures back then?

comments below

"Bob (this one)" > wrote in message
...
> -- wrote:
>
> I read all the way through the stuff you wrote here and there's a big
> missing piece that you don't seem to grasp. Those standards of measure
> were initially arrived at on the street, not in labs or kingly courts
> and they weren't necessarily universal, just useful to the time an
> place.

I think you confuse measure with standard and standard set of measures, and
thus miss the core.

In short,
1) a measure is a commonly agreed upon amount, , e.g., I'll trade a bag of
your oats for a bag of my wheat - "bag of" being the measure. Society makes
these informally as the need arises. They use 3s, 4s, and the like.

while
2) a standard set of measures is a well known amount having support by a
standard. E.g., I'll trade a pound of oats for a pound of wheat. Best guess
is that neither you or I have a pound weight in our pocket to use as
reference, but we measure it against a standard 1 lb weight. Members of
society adopt, not make, these in reponse to a standard being created or
defined.

And
3) a standard is way to establish the accuracy of a measure, OR force the
replacement of an existing measure.
In Washington somewhere, there is a block of metal that once was THE US
one pound standard. It can be referenced to another standard, e.g., one
inch is exactly one of 39.32 equal parts of the platinum irridium 1 meter
bar held in Paris. Only an authority makes these.
(OK, the bar was replaced, by eager arrogants, by the atomic standard for
so many wavelengths of light in a vaccum - against the advice, I might add,
of those who advised that just because Einstein found that light is a
constant in this gravity field and this space, it may not be always true
here - as we recently found it wasn't.)

For any usefulness, the measure needs to be some readily available container
or device, conceptually recognizable to the user, and preferably already in
use.
If confusion even peeks out, the government (tribal leader, emporer,
etc.) steps in and says what measure is acceptable for commerce. E.g., if
your group wants to use a cup and mine want to use a dup, then social
commerce is affected, and the government says "Use cups". Dups fade.

When that standardizing of the measure by an authority happens, the
government almost always at the same time also directly or indirectly
assigns a standard for that measure. "The carat shall be the weight of a
seed of .....", then writes it down using (in old days) a rare person who
can write and very expensive parchment, and sends the word out - on
precious stuff, showing how important it is.
As time goes on, needed accuracy of the measure increases, and the length
from the kings thumb to his nose, measured and a stick of that length put in
the royal library to forever be "the yard" (original yard - as good a
measure as a meter, once the physical standard is created), no longer can be
approximated by holding your arm out - you need a yardstick.

And more importantly, as time goes on in a commercial society, more and more
specialized measures are created, agreed upon by the users, and enter the
stream of commerce. Pretty soon that library at the royal society is full
of standards.
Simplification is required.
SUch as replacing and old standard with a definition in terms of another
existing standard, e.g., "the yard shall now be 36 inches. Period. See
inches for the standard. Now toss out that old yard stick with the snot on
one end and dirt on the other"
Common multiples are employeed in this standardizing of measure. E.g., a
15 ounce pound becomes a 16 ounce pound.

And if you are required to provide standards that must be replicable
before and after an experiement so as to have a standardized set or
measurement for that experiment to considered be valid, you need to use
readily available AND REPLICABLE items to provide the standard for those
measures - water, wavelength of argon, etc.


Balance beams of whatever sophistication were common more than
> five millennia ago. Standards had to be created to deal with two major
> issues - trade and did I grow enough food for us to survive the
> winter. Value for value had to be established and the traders and
> commercial forces behind them created all the weights. It has been
> like a tower of babel throughout human history in the matter of
> standards and, to a lesser extent, still is.
>
> When the measure was to stay within a single culture, it could be as
> quirky as they wanted it to be. When it became a matter of usage
> between cultures, equivalence had to be established. And it was. And
> there were thousands of standards. I'm going to try to give you a
> benefit of doubt here and offer the notion that we may be using the
> word "standards" to mean different things.
>

and I saw this after I came to the same conclusion above and responded as
above.
I do not think, however, that the weights and measures were established
millenia ago for international trade, but rather for intranational trade.
If you think about it, you are bartering your goods for other goods or even
for a weight of gold or silver. And your standard of measure bar you
carried in your purse was not the one the other guy carried in his purse,
nor the ones the hundred other cultures brought to the port.

> You obviously don't know the history of how we got here with our
> measures, and you seem to think that standards are those things
> preserved in Washington, dismissing what happens at the farmers'
> markets. And apart from England. The world is a wider place than that.
> And goes back a lot further than medieval England. And goes to many
> places and cultures omitted from your considerations.
>
> > ok - some clarification and background
> >
> > "Bob (this one)" > wrote in message
> > ...
> >
> >>-- wrote:
> >>
> > wrote in message
> ...
> >>>
> >>>>In rec.food.cooking, "Bob (this one)" > wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>Dry ounces are still volume measure, like fluid ounces.
> >>>>
> >>>>Does anyone know how it happened that "ounces" refers to either
> >>>>weight or volume, depending on usage? Is there some nexis
> >>>>between the two? All I can imagine is that one fluid ounce of
> >>>>water at STP weighs one ounce. Is that it?
> >>>
> >>>as i understand -
> >>>
> >>>the old labs of the amateur scientists 400-500 years or so back
> >>>needed a way to calibrate their instruments (tolerance was somewhat
> >>> slack back then than now). Later, after merchants picked up those
> >>> measures, they also needed an easy way to be checked.
> >>>
> >>>Water was commonly available, so weight and temperature scales were
> >>> established and agreed upon using water-related parameters. If you
> >>> had the container of the correct dimensions, call it one "pint",
> >>>and you filled it with water, you had a lb weight. Calibration can
> >>>be done.
> >>>
> >>>So the volume of a pint measure hanging on the wall of the lab
> >>>defined the weight of one pound, and the volume of a pint.
> >>>
> >>>Volume meets weight.
> >>
> >>Um, no. Weight measures were standardized back then (and before) all
> >>over the world, volumes weren't. Merchants came way before scientists.
> >>
> > First, who standardized them? There was no ISO or like organization. A
> > standard is a device to assure common measure.
>
> Exactly so. The merchants and traders standardized the units between
> and amongst themselves. They had to in order to get and give equal
> value.

No, because in any trade, even though there is more reliance on currency
today, value is determined by the buyer and the seller, not by the weight
and measure. My jugs of wine of god knows how many liters for your sheep of
god knows what weight. Bargain made wihtout scales or measures you couldn't
trust anyway.

You mistake what was happening then with the world we live in
> now. There was no governing body to establish and certify all the
> measure units.

No, there has ALWAYS been. From the village elder to the tribal leader to
the king.

(And if you look around, you'll find that even now that
> we have them, people still use measures of common currency where they
> live. So Brits still talk about their weight in "stones." And if you
> wander around in rural China, the only metric measures you'll see are
> in factories.) What had to happen was a form of commercial lingua
> franca that permitted translations from standard to standard. So Arab
> traders used their standards and Europeans theirs. But when they met,
> there was a sort of meta-standard that let them translate from one to
> the other.
>
> You must understand that all measuring systems and all units are
> agreed-upon constructs. Synthetic methods to establish parity. There's
> no such thing as a "natural" measure, only a convenient to the times
> and settings one.
>

Yes, as I noted when you advised the use of ten was natural

> Using a seed from the carob plant as the basis for gem valuation
> wasn't decreed by royal authority, some street-trader noticed that the
> seeds were small and, to the technology of the time, equal in weight.
> So by mutual agreement, it became the standard. Later, it became
> "official" when some body with political power designated so it.
>

But it was not a standard before then. It was merely an aid to barter to
speed up the experience curve of the initiate who may not know the value of
the stone.

> Using a different seed to establish the weight of the "grain" as the
> base unit for a measurement system is likewise a mutually-agreed-upon
> construct.

I would dare say that if I the buyer pulled out an fat wheat grain and you
the buyer pulled out a millet grain, and each demanded their standard was
true and pay up, your fascinating romantric scenario about merchants
devising standards would end in some altercation between merchants.

>
> > After the King left that business, the Royal Academy, formed of amateur
> > scientists (were there any others back then), standardized measures.
>
> Sorry, no. Kings didn't get into it in creating the units way back
> when. They were created and implemented on the street. Those bodies
> either formalized what was already going on or created new ones, or at
> least attempted to simplify what was already in common usage. As when
> Elizabeth I decreed that a mile was exactly 8 furlongs, enlarging the
> mile from the Roman 5,000 feet to 5280 feet. It was an attempt to
> "unify" two disparate systems. In reality, it eliminated the earlier one.
>

Yes, but 5280 is a multiple of 8, and clearly not one of the evil enemy
french multiples of ten. A loyal move by Elizabeth.

No, governments did not, and do not, create units. They created standards.

> > Since there were no lab service companies, they adopted the water
> > standard. And all measures from time before that, no matter where the
WORD
> > came from be it sanskrit or latin, were changed to meet the standard.
>
> That's been a constant process. Measures and their units have *always*
> been in a state of flux. That water standard business isn't true,
> though. In actual fact, an American pint doesn't weigh a pound. NOr
> does an Imperial pint.
>

The American pint weighs exactly one pound at 212F at about 29.92 inches HG.
(and 212 F would be the perfect temperature to measure if one is steam power
oriented. And at other temps and pressures, the 1% one gets at std P was
easily close enough for rudimentary lab work in the 1600s. but not enough
for a modern measure

> > The 15 ounces of a pound used from the 12 century was changed to 16
> > ounces,
> >
> > http://www.lajzar.co.uk/unit/system/imp_brit.html
>
> Do go find some history about the evolutions of what pounds were and
> have become. This web site is about time of the British empire - 1844.
> Hardly a long view of history, and confined to one country. And even
> so, looking at the standardization of volume measure, it's based on
> the weight of water.
>
> "The British Imperial gallon was defined in 1824 to be the volume of
> water which weighs 10 pounds at 62 deg F with a pressure of 30 inHg.
> In 1963 it was defined to be the space occupied by 10 pounds of
> distilled water of density 0.998859 g/ml weighed in air of density
> 0.001217 g/ml against weights of density 8.136 g/ml. The gallon is now
> officially defined relative to SI units; the above value is exact."
>
> It's based on weight.
>

Note however, several interesting things-
First, merchants did not define it, the government did. How does this sit
with your position of merchants as all standards creators?
Second, I doubt the government created the measure out of the sky.
Third, note that there is EXACTLY 10 pounds and exactly 30inHg. Why is
that in 1824?
Fourth, note that WATER is used as the standard. ANd still is. The same
water that, with the proper accuracy and the proper temperature, weighs 16
ounces in a pint.
The same water as a standard that makes 16 fluid ounces of water weigh a
pound
Fifth - that it has ONE gallon. It defines the gallon, not the number of
gills or pints in the gallon. Nor how many of anything in it.

So I do not see how it is germaine to the discussion on why someone did or
did not try to get 16 ounces to equal 16 ounces

> > In our labs, we had to replicate all the old means of achieving a
> > standard for measures.
>
> We didn't do that at all. In modern times we changed a lot of them to
> make them more consistently exact, but we didn't go weigh out 8 pounds
> of barley or wheat to make a gallon, we gave it a volumetric measure
> apart from any weight measures because we now have the technology to
> make exact-volume vessels. Look at how the gallon was finally defined.
> Nothing to do with "all the old means." And also note that the unit
> "10" is the basic consideration.
>
> >>If you read old recipes - I mean OLD - you'll find that volume
> >>measures were given as "half an eggshell" and "a wineglass of..." and
> >>"the size of a pigeon's egg."
> >
> > I do have two very old cookbooks- and they do measure as you said,
However,
> > first, an 18th century kitchen is not a lab, and second, they are
measuring
> > weights by using volume, as acceptable a method as measuring a force by
> > using a mass.
>
> I'm talking 5th century, not 18th.

which culture ?

They measured weights by weight and
> volume by widely varying variability. As for culinary measure, what's
> actually being measured is ratios. How much flour to how much water to
> how much salt to how much butter, etc. That's how professional recipes
> are written, because finally that's what it's about. Commercial
> recipes are stated in percents based off one ingredient.
>

I have consulted to commercial kitchens, and the recipes there were by
weight, not by ratio.

Besides, if it were in ratio, what would it say? 5% butter and 7% raisens
and 18% flour?

> The units for home use are arrived at by custom, not decree of a
> government agency. So in the US, the vast preponderance of people cook
> by volume for reasons I've already explained. Elsewhere, they use
> weight for their particular reasons. But it's silly to say they're
> measuring weights by volume. The converse is equally true and equally
> false, that Germans, for example, are measuring volume by weight when
> they use their kitchen scales.
>

You really are having a hard time with lab 101 here. Once again, I will
explain.
There are two ways to measure. Direct, and indirect.
For example, if I want you to go six miles and turn, and I tell you to
drive for six minutes at 60 miles and hour and then turn, how is that
distance travelled different from the distance travelled by my telling you
to go 6 miles and then turn? The same. One is direct, and the other
indirect. Equally valid measures to get six miles covered.
So if I want a pound of butter in the recipe, I can either tell you to
put in two cups of butter (indirect) or I can tell you to put in one pound
of butter (direct).

But more to the efficiency of indirect measu
I can tell you to put in 1 tbsp of vanilla extract (done by one utensil
measure), or Ican tell you to put in 10 grams of vanilla extract (put in by
getitng a clean container for the scale, measuring tare of a clean utensil
for the scale, transferring extract to the container, reading a measurement
off a scale of indicating units, adding more as required, and then adding it
to the recipe).
The tablespoon is an indirect measurement that is far more efficient in
mixing the cake than the direct measurement of the weight I specified in the
recipe.

> >>Whereas weights were given in specific
> >>units. Commerce demanded transferable units hence the tiny "carat"
> >>which was the weight of an exceedingly small seed. Here's a document
> >>from the 13th century that deals with weights...
> >><http://www.sizes.com/library/Britain/ponderibus.htm>
> >>
> > which has little to do with standardizing measures for the required
> > interchageability and science of an era that came 300 years later.
>
> It has *everything* to do with it. That's where the bases come from -
> custom.
>
> But is that what you're talking about here; narrowing it down to this
> one point? That modern standardization is happening because earlier
> people were somehow stupid and we've now reached the pinnacle of
> measurement wisdom?
>
> I thought we were talking about what the actual measures were and are.
> I don't think we're talking about the same things. It seems that
> you're talking about global standards and I'm talking about ones used
> by the people who need them. And who create them to suit the
> conditions and situations where they are. And the sources of modern
> measure. So the carat still is the unit that jewelers use, defined to
> modern technological capacity.
>
> In any event, do you think that modern standards just sprang from
> Topsy's head with no historical roots? Why retain the names from
> thousands of years before if they weren't evolutions of old, old, old
> standards?
>
> >>" the wine gallon is the space occupied by a quantity of wheat
> >>weighing 8 pounds. This interpretation is made explicit in some of the
> >>other manuscript versions. However, what we now call the wine gallon,
> >>used time out of mind by the English excise before being legalized in
> >>1707, and the basis of the U. S. gallon, contains 231 cubic inches.
> >>That volume is as close to the volume of 8 liber mercatoriae of wine
> >>as to the volume of 8 Troy pounds of wheat." Weights were
> >>well-established, volumes were not.
> >
> >
> > Weight NAMES were well established, but not the standard of that
measure.
>
> Did you not see the rather exact definitions there? They couldn't
> define them any better than their technology permitted. So it's silly
> to fault people in the 15th century for not being able to measure out
> to four decimal places. Standards in common usage needed to be only as
> precise as the demands placed on them. So the precision needed was
> what was created. And no more than that. Now we want everything to be
> more detailed and systematic because our society requires it. Machine
> tools need enormous precision to create the mechanical and electronic
> goods we need now. In an agrarian society, that precision wasn't
> needed or useful. So different kinds of standards.
>
> > further, there were 31.5 wine gallons in a barrel; 36 beer gallons in a
> > barrel, 40 spirit gallons in a barrel, 42 gallons of petroleum in a
barrel
>
> But they were all measured in gallons, weren't they? That's the final
> standard. Not all barrels need to be the same size, do they? Different
> sizes for different applications. How much does a barrel of petroleum
> hold? How about a barrel of paint? Barrel is trade-specific as a unit
> of measure. It's a standard for each of the users. Different from each
> other, but standard within the trade.
>

no, a barrel is a noiw a standard number of gallons. Has been STANDARDized
for soem time.
Your link was a herring for the topic.

> >>"A Chef of Fustian consisteth of Fourteen Ells. [A Chef of Sindon
> >>containeth Ten Ells.]" Ells are yards.
> >
> > Sorry, you are wrong again - Ells vary from 27 inches (Flemish) to 45
inches
> > (French)
>
> Yes, I am technically wrong. Ells aren't yards. They emerge from the
> same need for standards, though. Someone makes fabric and wants to
> sell it. How much have they made? A standard that will be understood
> by purchasers needs to exist. It doesn't have to be the same
> worldwide, it just needs to suit the demands at hand. A local
> standard. But if that weaver wants to sell far away, he'd better be
> able to explain to those customers how much they're getting so they
> understand it.
>
> That's why Swahili was created. A synthetic language to use between
> traders who didn't speak the same languages and didn't necessarily use
> the same units of measure.
>
> "ell
> "a traditional unit of length used primarily for measuring cloth.
> In the English system, one ell equals 20 nails, 45 inches, or 1.25
> yards; in metric terms, an English ell equals exactly 1.143 meters.
> The word comes from the Latin ulna, which originally meant the elbow
> and is now the name of the bone on the outside of the forearm.
> Unfortunately, the same word ulna was also used for the yard, creating
> frequent confusion between the two units in medieval documents.
> Probably the ell originated through a custom of measuring lengths of
> cloth using two forearms, with the hands touching or overlapping. The
> ell was used with a similar length in France (where it was called the
> aune). In Scotland, the ell was practically the same as the yard,
> being equal to 37 Scots inches or 37.2 English inches (94.5
> centimeters). This Scottish length appears to reflect an old practice
> of cloth merchants in giving an extra inch with each yard, to allow
> for any irregular cutting at the ends of the piece. In eastern Europe,
> the ell was a shorter distance: see next entry.
>
> "elle
> "a traditional unit of distance in German speaking countries. The
> elle varied considerably, but it was always shorter than the English
> ell or French aune. A typical value in northern Germany was exactly 2
> fuss (German feet), which would be close to 24 inches or 60
> centimeters. In the south, the elle was usually longer, about 2.5
> fuss. In Vienna, the elle was eventually standardized at 30.68 inches
> (77.93 centimeters). Although the German word elle is often translated
> "yard" in English, this is not a very good equivalent.
>

and after all that, an ell is still not a yard, as you said, is it?

> >>Fustian is a fabric and they're
> >>still measured by the yard in the US today.
> >
> > We measure all cloth in shops by the yard. By the meter elsewhere.
>
> Uh, sure. That's why I said "in the US today" so there would be a
> distinction like I've kept throughout this.
>
> >>Old, old habits die hard.
> >>
> >>>The old easily-remembered-by-ordinary-uneducated-humans 3 by 4
> >>>system in use at the time was not good enough for them, so someone
> >>>wanted to change it to a more logical 8 based system.
> >>>
> >>>Divide the measure into 2x8 parts and call it an ounce, and if you
> >>>are not too careful defining which measure it was, and either by
> >>>design so we could remember it or by accident, we get 16 ounces
> >>>and 16 ounces, weight and volume.
> >>
> >>This is unfortunately all fictional.
> >
> > Sorry, you are once again wrong.
>
> No. Not about the division of "the measure into 2x8 parts." The ounce
> predates the cup (whether imperial or US measure) which became a
> convention much, much later.
>

the NAME ounce predates the present ounce. Did you not see the link to the
15 ounce pound being changed to a 16 ounce pound? Ounces of weight are
different, and still are.

And I seriously doubt the ounce came after the cup as you say. Cups are over
30,000 years old.

> > First, anyone with leadership traning for high stress environments
knows
> > the basic rule of three items for low level skills in humans. One of the
> > basics, an absolute fundamental. And the rule of four.
>
> <LOL> I didn't dispute the business about groups of 3 or 4, just what
> you're claiming about 16 ounces being some universal. Recall that I
> agreed by citing that phone numbers are broken into groups of 3 and 4.
>
> > Second, I could once again explain it,
>
> But you haven't explained it, merely asserted it.
>
> > but how about you tell us all why
> > there are 16 ounces in a pound and 16 ounces in a pint when before about
> > 1500 there were 15 ounces in pound?
>
> Um, there are 20 ounces in an Imperial pint, not 16.

That is pure obfuscation. You are ducking the question once again.
If you have any knowledge of measurement history at all, you know there
were two gallons in england - the ale gallon and the wine gallon.
And the Imperial gallon was not invented until three centuries AFTER the
pound was changed from 15 to 16 ounces. Back when the pint was 16 ounces.

You did not answer - why did they change from the 15 ounce to the 16 ounce
pound, when they had a 16 ounce pint?
And while you are at it, why does 16 ounces of water at 212F weigh one
pound?
And what does one pound of steam mean?

The American pint
> is 16 different-sized ounces than the English standard. You're
> *assuming* a reason for the change based on incorrect values.
>
> > If not made 16 from 15 by design, then
> > was it just coincidence that they changed the ounces to 16 when they
already
> > had fluid ounces at 16 - that the body that was to standardize weights
and
> > measures used the same number 16 was just coincidence?
>
> You're taking England to be the whole world. Not even close. There
> were variant pounds in use then, as there are now. The English pint
> came into common usage as the volume occupied by one pound of wheat or
> 1/8 of a gallon back when it was the volume of 8 pounds of wheat. With
> the creation of the Imperial gallon, the pint became larger - from 16
> to 20 ounces.
>
> >>Ounces came from Latin, so did
> >>librum for pound. That's why they're abbreviated "lb."
> >
> > The WORD came from latin. In the early centuries in England before
> > standardization, there were 15 ounces in a pound.
> > Did the romans have 15 ounces or 13 or how many in apound?
>
> It's a little funny for you to be asking that question. For somebody
> who's ostensibly been involved with standards and measures for 30
> years as you claim, it would seem to be incumbent on you to know some
> history of what you're working in. The Romans used neither a 15-ounce
> pound or one of 13 ounces. Look it up, measure-master.
>
> "1215 - reign of King John (lackland)
> An agreement to have a national standard of weights and measures
> was incorporated into the magna carta.
>
> 1266 - reign of Henry III
> An act of this date established that a penny (money) should weigh
> the same as 32 grains of wheat, twenty pennies to make one ounce, and
> twelve ounces to the pound. Eight pounds was to be the weight of a
> gallon of wine. You will notice the link between money and weight, and
> that 240 pennies equals one pound.
>
> 1304 - reign of Edward I
> This is where things got complicated. A statute declared that for
> medicines a pound would be of 20 shillings, or 12 ounces. All other
> things would be weighed with a pound containing 15 ounces - in all
> cases an ounce being 20 pennies.
>
> 1532 - reign of Henry VIII
> An act of this year laid down that butchers should sell meat by
> haver du pois weight - from where we get avoirdupois."
> <http://home.clara.net/brianp/history.html>
>
> Here's a fun bit of info on the changes and evolutions in measures in
> England, a bit of the continent and the US.
> <http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A471476>
>
> >>The language of the pharmacy is Latin. Look here for measures still in
> >>use millennia later. And note that volume measures were merely the
> >>volumes of known weights.
> >
> >
<http://www.pharmaceutical-drug-manuf...al-glossary/ph
> > armaceutical-abbreviations.html#Weights-measures>
> >
> > I did look, and I found no such information. The link you put up has
> > absolutley nothing about measures coming from latin or Rome.
>
> Um, do go back and see it again.

no change - the latin is for frequncy of dosage. Perhaps you have the
wrong URL?

The words come from the original
> latin and do define volumes - by weight - all based on the "grain" as
> the basic unit. Volumes were computed by the amount of space a
> specific number of seeds would occupy. I assumed that you would know
> the origins of at least some of them since you claim to be actively
> involved in
>
> > And their are only weights, not volumes.
>
> Um I said that up above. Here, let me refresh your memory... "And note
> that volume measures were merely the volumes of known weights." See
> how much you can learn if you just read what's in front of you?
>
> > And your link only has the abbreviations for frequency of dose in
latin -
> > which by way was the language of the church and was in use as a dead
> > language in many sciences. Read your links more carefully next time.
>
> Bite my entire ass. Ok? The basic unit of weight - the grain - comes
> directly from the Romans. *Everything* after that was posited on that
> standard.
>
> >>"...The avoirdupois ounce, the unit commonly used in the United
> >>States, is 1/16 pound or about 28.3495 grams.... The word ounce is
> >>from the Latin uncia, meaning a 1/12 part, because the Roman pound was
> >>divided into 12 ounces. The word "inch," meaning 1/12 foot, has the
> >>same root. The symbol "oz" is from the old Italian word onza (now
> >>spelled oncia) for an ounce."
> >>
> > the derivation of the word "meter" may well be greek, but it didn't mean
the
> > greeks defined the ISO meter
>
> How splendidly irrelevant and smelling like a red herring. The fact is
> that the Romans *did* define the pound. Now we're only talking about
> ISO standards? Moving the goalposts a bit are we...?
>
> >>and...
> >>
> >>"fluid ounce:
> >>
> >>"A traditional unit of liquid volume, called the fluid ounce to avoid
> >>confusion with the weight ounce. In the U. S. customary system there
> >>are 16 fluid ounces in a pint, so each fluid ounce represents
> >>1.804,687 cubic inches or 29.573,531 milliliters. In the British
> >>imperial system there are 20 fluid ounces in an imperial pint, so each
> >>fluid ounce represents about 1.733,871 cubic inches or 28.413,063
> >>milliliters. A fluid ounce of water weighs just a bit more than one
> >>ounce avoirdupois."
> >><http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20000717.html>
> >>
> >>Base 8 is a rare system with 10 being the most common, then 7, 12, 24,
> >>60, and 365 for measuring time.
> >
> > Apparently you are not technically trained. base 10 is less common than
> > binary or octal. The binary method, the basis of all computers, was used
by
> > Russian peasants for hundreds of years. It is the math of dna.
>
> Bullshit. Any math is the math of DNA. In fact, you could more
> reasonably say that base 4 is the math of DNA.
>
> > Octal is the basis for nearly all programming,
> > The other numbers you claim are bases are almost unheard of as bases.
The
> > numbers you cite are used in the context of base 10 - a base 10 "12" is
12
> > units. A base 7 "12" is 8 units.
> >
> >>Nothing is commonly base 8. These
> >>units are a triumph of human resistance to change, not some superior
> >>calculational creation.
> >>
> >>The cup being 8 ounces is a coincidence of convenience.
> >>
> > So it is your learned position that all the measures noted are
happenstance
> > and mere convenience.
>
> Aside from this shittiness of that statement, it does appear that I'm
> more learned about measures and standards than you are, despite your
> claims of many decades of experience with them. You're sadly ignorant
> about common conventions, history and sources of modern measure.
>

and once agian you did not answer the question, but shifted topic.

> -That they are all of the same 8 and its multiples are coincidence,
>
> <LOL> They are divisions of a whole divided in half many times because
> halving is something that can be done by eye and doesn't require
> anything more sophisticated than that two people agree that it's a
> fair division. So a gallon can be divided in half, then in half again
> then in half again and, voila a pint. The value applied to the
> original gallon is arbitrary; that is it has no natural reason for
> being exactly what it is, as is the case with *all* measurement.
>
> > -that the universal standard for lab calibration being the nexis is just
> > coincidence
> > -that the steam/water measurement units that simplify calculation to an
> > eighth of that required by metrics are just coincidence
> > - that when the Academy coordinated all these measurements to a
standard,
> > it was done willy- nilly and without coordination - so it is all just
> > happenstance
>
> Still caught up in only the formalized standards, aren't you? Still
> trying to make the ones endorsed by "official" groups the only ones?
>
> Don't be silly. The citations you just offered are merely the latest
> in the ongoing saga of defining and formalizing measurements and
> values. They're the newest, not the end of the line.
>
> >>>------------------- Similar for the metric system, except someone
> >>>in France decided that one millionth of the distance from the
> >>>equator to the pole was better than using the weight of water in a
> >>>measured container that those evil English were using.
> >>>
> >>>They then set the nexis at 1ml liquid = 1gram mass = 1 cubic
> >>>centimeter volume when using water, so instruments could also be
> >>>calibrated easily in the metric system.
> >>
> >>The laws of physics set those relationships, not some committee.
> >
> > No, you are once again wrong. Laws of physics are phenomena that merely
> > exist, they do not establish nexi.
>
> Pay careful attention. I cc of water weighs a gram because it does.

You have a very one-facet view of this. Think - Did the meter come before
the liter or the gram, or were they defined in relation to the meter?

Was it that they defined 1 gram as 1 cc of water at its maximum density?
Which is EXACTLY what they did.

Was it that they defined a ml as 1 gram of water at its maximum density.
Which is EXACTLY what they did.

man put them there at that spot, not God aligning them off the millionth of
the distance between the pole and the equator to that point.

> The organizing committees merely posited a definition based on what
> already existed. It weighed (and massed) what it did, so they named
> that weight and mass a gram. It was a matter of *creating* convenience.
>

How is this any different from what I said before you wandered off about no,
its the laws of physics?
The meter and the liter and the gram all existed before the French
Acadmeie made the metric system? BS. Pure BS.

> > On the other hand, humans wanting to be able to establish an easy
> > standard to calibrate instruments when unable to send the device out to
a
> > calibration lab then must calibrate by using a common medium, and they
NEED
> > a common point.
>
> You seem to be stuck in a lab. Come out to the real world and see what
> the vast majority of people do. They don't live in your world of such
> pecksniffian precision. They live in a sea of human scale measures.
>
and what does that comment have to do with the comment that standards have
to be replicable?

> > If you had basic technical physics, if you had ever done any of the
> > calibration labs which perform these tasks as part of the basic physics
> > courses, then you would know that you would pass the course after you
> > understood that the three basic western measurement standards were all
> > designed. western science is not based on happy coincidence.
>
> Do try to understand the difference between engineering and science.
> Science gathers information, often without any sense of its
> application, and maybe engineering uses it. Engineering is an
> application of practical principles derived from experience.
> Engineering is a discipline of approximations. Murphy's Law came from
> engineers, not scientists. I had a big sign over my desk at
> Westinghouse that said, "Measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk,
> cut with a hatchet..." Not original, but exactly what the real world
> demands.
>
I know of your firms engineering. They paid me well for several jobs on
their steam turbines that their engineers could not make work.

> > And if you were on any of the committees that establish standards (I
have
> > been on a US national standards committee for over 30 years), you would
know
> > we integrate the standards all the time, but we don't publish
explanations
> > of what parts we do or do not integrate.
>
> This makes no sense.

And derivatives make no sense to a fourth grader. It does to anyone who
makes standards.
So what does that mean, "makes no sense", exactly?

It would be interesting to know exactly what
> standards you're busily integrating. And why you seem not to know
> where they originally came from.

Ah, Rush Limbaugh who makes statements assuming facts not in evidence and
builds on those assumptions to a false conslusion, I DO know where they come
from, which is why i am on the commitee.

The logic of it is that is you do not know of the bases of measurement
theory or its contextual history, you would then not be able to come to
valid conclusions. One must have valid experience to find truth, not
experience.

>
> > But
> >
> >>it is why the basic unit was so designated. It's no longer that
> >>distance measure, but something hopelessly out of the hands of
> >>amateurs. It was redefined in 1983 as the distance traveled by light
> >>in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
> >>
> > determined by measuring the original platinum iridium bar
>
> Which was made to reflect the calculated value of a meter.
>
> >>>------------ humans remember 3s and 4s groups more readily than any
> >>>other values
> >>
> >>Hence phone numbers. But how about postal codes...?
> >
> > check the names for the acronym for zip code and ask yourself if the
> > creators considered human parameters.
>
> Jeeezus. Slow down. I just agreed with you. We can remember groups of
> 3 or 4 more easily and quickly. But we can also remember longer
> strings of numbers when they become important to us.
>
> > The common pop-conception that ten is basic to human is often accepted
> > without consideration by those who do not have to lead, but merely
follow
> > and hold onto a technical touchstone. There is no one sytem that is
better
> > than another for all things - thus mankind has many systems of numbers.
>
> Sure they do. But ease of utility has made base 10 far and away the
> most common. Look at metric, look at currencies, look at
> classification systems from libraries to factory inventory.
>
> As for it's being "basic to human," I don't thinks anyone has said
> that. Merely that it's easier to calculate with it.
>

I will agree on that this far - if you are using base 10, and you are using
more than a dozen items in counting.
Base 8 and binary are taught in jr high in the US- although not as much
as they were a couple decades back, where entire quarters of school math
were done in base 8.

> >>>sets of 8 is the most natural when using octal or counting when
> >>>your thumbs are used as the next digit (why octal for the
> >>>uneducated? count to eight twice using your fingers as the ones and
> >>> use the thumbs as the next-place-holder eights, and you get two
> >>>thumbs worth, i.e., 16 - you can count to sixteen on your hands
> >>>without remembering in octal, while the evil enemy the french with
> >>>their new-fangled metrics can only count to ten before they have to
> >>> scratch a mark in the dirt to go higher)
> >>
> >>Primitive people don't use anything like that. They work off base 10
> >>for the most part as the numbers of commerce and trade and make
> >>multiples of 10 by secondary gestures. Count all the fingers - that's
> >>10, then count them again and tap the wrist - that's 20. Then count
> >>them again and tap halfway up the forearm - that's 30, and so forth.
> >>I've seen that in widely separated cultures.
> >>
> > seen it in any cultures not already influenced by western culture?
> > You cannot have.
>
> <LOL> Right. You must have that ability to read minds - what's it
> called - mental neuropathy. Yeah, that's it.
>
> I'm typing slowly here. Base 10 is the most commonly used numerication
> system because it's more readily useful than any other one.
>

I do believe that was not an accepted statement, and you are not suppoerting
your claim that it is, only ridiv=culking hte messenger and then restating
it.
Useful where? For what? By what specific measure do you make this claim

> > And if you will note, I said that the change was to 8 by human design,
done
> > by those who felt they had the answer to ills by moving from the old 3-4
to
> > a new 8 system. I know well firsthand of the politics of the move to
change
> > to metrics, and it was not for improved efficiency for the US.
>
> You're merely guessing. So you're saying that in the 15th century,
> people knew about the 3-4 business and consciously decided to start
> using 8 as a common factor? I'd like to see a source for that. I flat
> out disbelieve it. What does counting on your fingers have to do with
> liquid measure?
>

what does your comments about base 10 have to do with liquid measure?
\
> >>>the original metric had (and some still do have) 100 degrees in a
> >>>circle, 100 degrees between water boiling and freezing,
> >>
> >>I've never seen anything even remotely like this.
> >
> > And thus it must not exist, and so all information about it or its
> > derivation is false?
>
> No, sludgewit. It means I've never seen anything like that. It means I
> can't speak to it.
>
> > FYI, The "degrees" of 100 "degrees" in a circle are called gradians. All
HP
> > engineeering calculators that I have seen have it.
> >
> > FYI, Celsius and centigrade (and Kelvin) thermometers are calibrated by
> > making 100 gradations between boiling water and an ice water solution
(they
> > are .01 degree apart.
>
> > > always linear because they measured expansion in two dimensions.
> >
> >>>100 parts
> >>>to a time and geometry minute,
> >>
> >>Military minute. Time-study minute. But not common currency.
> >>
> > The use of 100 resisted because the ten was not a natural number and did
not
> > work.
>
> "Natural number." Right. So 12 eggs is a more "natural" number. Or 7
> days. Or 60 minutes. Or 6 bottles of beer.
>
> >> > 10 increments in everything. works
> >>
> >>>ok in theory, and quite well in many applications, but in geometry,
> >>>in time, in most water-based applications such as steam
> >>>calculations which were devised to be simple by using "specific"
> >>>parameters, forces (several measures), pressures (there are
> >>>probably six or seven metric measures that can drive the engineer
> >>>nuts), and rapid mental calculation of small digital amounts, the
> >>>British 3-4 and octal length-force-second system and the 60
> >>>multiple time, temperature, and geometry units beats the original
> >>>metric length-meter-mass hands down.
> >>
> >>Sorry. No. If that were the case, all those engineers I worked with at
> >>Westinghouse would still be using those units. The simple fact of the
> >>matter is that functioning in 10s and multiples and divisibles of tens
> >>is simpler for any sort of computation you want to consider.
>

try steam turbine calculations without a binary computer

>
> > computer - (all binary)
>
> Binary is easier for *machines* to use - a circuit is either open or
> closed. For people living in the real world, decimal is easier.
>
> > and never even close to simpler for steam power calculations.
>
> Don't be silly. Watts is a perfectly fine defining value for
> calculations of power. It's like saying there's a "natural" way to
> calculate how much water a pump moves. We stick with horsepower or
> joules or calories as definitions because of the sheer perversity of
> humans who don't want to change a familiar unit. There are many such
> units in currency all over the world. The convenient ones survive. The
> other fall by the wayside, no matter what the committees say.
>

Your comments reagarding basic british measure vs metric show you have
absolutely positively no idea about the basic steam calcualtions that formed
the indutrial revolution.
Watts are not the problem. Check out a steam table (the one for enthalpy
etc, not the one at lunch). Seen the metric one?

> > the europeans to this day can't even use the right measure for weight -
they
> > use the unit for mass as weight.
>
> <LOL> Jeez. Where they're interchangeable and so defined, like in
> earth's gravity well, it's six of one; half a dozen of another. Um,
> that's base 12.
>

So kg and newtons are as easily interchangeable, same then as feet for
meters, for the average person?

Or dynes. Or pascals or newtons per cc or newtons per m^2 or g per cc or kg
per dc or dynes per cc.

Yup, decimal metric looks a lot simpler than their british equivalent, psi,
in pressure, at least.

> >>These numbering systems are holdovers from earlier times and remain
> >>conventions mostly because we're familiar with them.
> >
> > If ten is so simple, why were those unnatural systems like the
sexagesimal
> > of the baylonianian empire, the binary of the Russians, the septal of
> > Univac, and 3-4 of Europe, the egyptian system, and all the other
> > non-decimal systems, developed? Because they liked unnatural? One
cultures
> > natural is another cultures awkward.
>
> Not really, it's because that genius who would develop the concept of
> zero hadn't come along yet. That lack was one of the major problems
> with that Babylonian system. Ten is a simple system base as evidenced
> by the legal, if not customary, adoption of the metric system by
> virtually every country on earth. History, old fellow, history.
>

the old myth of the lack of zero as a concept - don't buy into that.
chinese, mayans, the greeks had the concept of zero - it is in many of
their mathematical proofs.
The romans, whose empire was the largest ever known and thrived in trade,
did not have a symbol for zero, because they didn't need it. If there was
nothing on the line, then there was nothing.

> There is no "natural."
>
> >>Getting people to
> >>change is an interesting exercise. My grandparents were born in Italy
> >>in the late 1800's. The spoke of both "kili" and "libri" when talking
> >>about weight measures. "Gallone" was the standard liquid measure,
> >>except they also said that "quatro litri fa un gallone." "Four liters
> >>make a gallon."
> >
> > again a four from a native measure system
>
> Nah. It was to create a compromise between different standards. The
> American gallon is four quarts; they're just fitting the familiar
> ("litri") into the new, to them, system. Relative measures, close
> enough for daily living.
>
> >>>All those odd measure - chains, barrels, tons, are standards for
> >>>specific purpose that were used by both countries in international
> >>>commerce are blamed on the british system.
> >>
> >>Every culture has had unique measures that suited the needs they
> >>filled. No one blamed measures on anyone else, they merely used their
> >>own. And still do except for commerce that crosses borders, and even
> >>then many still do. You can still buy koku of rice in Japan.
> >>
> >>>As I understand, one of
> >>>the french kings had all of France surveyed in great part to scrap
> >>>the old and get the new measure in place
> >>
> >>That would be Napoleon. And he had all the houses in France uniquely
> >>numbered. That's where the cosmetic company called "The house of 4711"
> >>got its name.
> >>
> > no, it was well before napoleon. An early Louis.
> >
> >>>or so the story goes
> >>
> >>Um, sure. Soon to be a major motion picture.
> >
> > actually, it was in a documentary on maps.
> >
> >>Pastorio
> >
> > bottom line - all that you get to see is not all that occurs.
>
> FOITN. You're trying to make the world history of measurements what
> happened in England. And you're trying to make your experience into a
> universal. And you're trying to say that your definitions are the only
> ones.
>
> Mirror, mirror on the wall....
>
> Pastorio
>
>