{135}WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.9
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“Una fides, pondus, mensura, moneta sit una,Etstatus illæsus totius orbis erit.”—BUDEUS.“One faith, one weight, one measure and one coin,Wouldsoon the jarring world in friendship join.”
“Una fides, pondus, mensura, moneta sit una,Etstatus illæsus totius orbis erit.”—BUDEUS.
“One faith, one weight, one measure and one coin,Wouldsoon the jarring world in friendship join.”
The confusion of Babel is felt most severely in the matter of weights and measures. Whether we consider thenumber of namesof weights and measures, thesimilarityof names, thediscrepancy in amountbetween those of the same name, or theirregular relationsof those of the same denomination, we find a maze, the intricacies of which we cannot retain in our memory an hour after we have committed them to it. Sometimes, too, we find a farther discrepancy of a surprising nature; as if the authorised pint should not be the exact eighth of the authorised gallon, and so there should be two different quarts, one of two exact pints, and one of a fourth of a gallon, as well as a false gallon of eight exact pints, and a false pint of an eighth of an exact gallon.
9Universal Dictionary of Weights and Measures. By J. H.ALEXANDER.Baltimore. W. Menefie & Co. 158 pp. 8vo.
9Universal Dictionary of Weights and Measures. By J. H.ALEXANDER.Baltimore. W. Menefie & Co. 158 pp. 8vo.
We cannot here trace the genealogy of this multitude; Chaos and old night are the ancestors of them all, except those now prevailing in France. A large number of them are of vegetable origin, from grains of wheat, carob beans, carat seeds, &c. The Accino, the Akey, and innumerable others seem to have had a similar origin. Most measures of length have been derived from the human form, as foot, span, fathom, nail, &c. To originate a new measure or weight has proved much easier than to preserve their uniformity when established. Here legislation has been resorted to. The arm of Henry I. was measured, and ayardof the same length was deposited in the exchequer as a standard. “Thirty-two (afterwards twenty-four) grains of well dried wheat from the middle of a good ear” were to weigh a penny, twenty pence one ounce, and twelve ounces a pound. Science finally carried the matter one step further, and a yard is now36⁄39.13929part of the length of “a pendulum that{136}in a vacuum and at the level of mid-tide, under the latitude of London, shall vibrate seconds of mean time.” The metre, a measure established by science, is1⁄10,000,000part of the distance from the equator to the north pole. Measures of capacity have been still more difficult to verify, and weights, when depending upon these last, have been involved in further difficulties.—William the Conquerer, enacted that 8 pounds good wheat, 61,440 grains, make a gallon. In England now, 10 pounds of water, 70,000 grains, at 60° Fahr., make a gallon. In France a cubic decimetre of water, at maximum density, 39.2° Fahr., weighs a kilogramme.
But the impotency of law is nowhere shown more strikingly than in its attempts to destroy spurious and useless weights and measures. Thirty of these are said to be prevalent in Scotland at this day; and although Magna Charta required that there should be but one weight in all England, the assize of bread is still regulated by a pound, 16 of which =17℔6 oz.avoirdupois. Still further, it may not always occur to us that English measures, dry and liquid, need translating when their works are reprinted in the United States, as much as the French measures; for the imperial gallon, used for both dry and liquid measures, differs from both our gallons. It contains 1.2006 of our liquid gallons; our dry gallon contains 1.1631 of our liquid gallons.
But it is in theweights of the United Statesthat we are more particularly interested. We will, therefore, take our leave of the rest of 5,400 and more weights and measures which Mr. Alexander has ranged in alphabetical order, from
Name.Locality.Character.Value.“Aam;for wine,Amsterdam,Liquid capacity,41.00041 gall.” to“Zuojapiccola,Udino,Superficial,0.8553 acres.”
Let us enquire what are the weights of the United States.—We find but one unambiguous term to measure the rest by, the grain. We have then:
grains1. The long ton,15,680,0002. The ton,14,000,0003. The quintal,784,0004. The hundred weight,700,0005. Quarter,196,0006. Pound avoirdupois,7,0007. Pound Troy,5,7608. Pound Apothecaries’,5,7609. Ounce Troy,48010. Ounce Apothecaries’,48011. Ounce Avoirdupois,437.512. Drachm Apothecaries’,6013. Drachm Avoirdupois,54.687514. Dram of the arithmetic,27.3437515. Pennyweight,2416. Scruple,2017. Grain,1
A formidable array truly! From this we see that while an ounce of cork is lighter than an ounce of gold, a pound of cork is heavier than a pound of gold! Nay, further, let the apothecary go to the druggist for a drachm of opium, and he will receive and pay for adrachmavoirdupois, a weight unknown even to Mr. Alexander, although in constant use in this city. But the moment he puts it into his mortar there is not a drachm of it! If he wishes to use a drachm in pills or tincture, he must add more than five grains to it. Could anything be more inconvenient or more prolific in mistakes? To prevent butter from becoming rancid, we are told to mix with it the bark of slippery elm, in the “proportion of a drachm (or dram) to the pound.” Who can tell what it means? Six different proportions might accord with this Delphic response; the most probable is60:7000.But the grievance to which the apothecary is subject does not all consist in his buying by lighter ounces, and selling by heavier. The subdivisions by which he compounds have no reference to his convenience. Long habit alone can save him from either laborious calculation or risk of error. But still another chance of error comes into the account. Two characters,ʒand℥, are joined to numerals, to indicate{138}quantities; a mistake of these, by either prescriber or apothecary, may prove fatal. A case in point occurred a few years since, well known to many of our readers. A physician, prescribed cyanide of potassium, by a formula in which℥had been printed, by mistake, forʒ.The apothecary, instead of sending him the prescription for correction,as he ought to have done, put it up and sent it with the fearful monition that the dose would prove fatal—and so it did—to the prescriber himself, who took the dose his patient dared not touch. He died in five minutes, a victim to a printer’s error, to his own self confidence, to want of etiquette in the apothecary, and last, not least, to an ill-contrived system of weights.
This brings us to the practical question, What is to be done? All agree that there ought to be a reform. On this point we can do no better than quote the close of Mr. Alexander’s preface.—“Finally,” says he (page vii.) “if I may be allowed, in connection with this work and its appropriate applications, to allude to certain dreams of my own, (as they may be; although I consider them capable, without undue effort, of a more prompt and thorough realisation than seems to be ordinarily anticipated,) as to the prevalence, some day, of an universal conformity of weights and measures, I must acknowledge that such a result was one of the ends I had in view in the original collection of materials. Not that such a work was going to show more emphatically than business men feel, and reflecting men know, the importance of such an universal conformity; or that a book whose pages deal in discords, could, of itself, produce unison; but the first step to any harmonious settlement is, to see clearly, and at a glance, where the differences lie, and what they are.—If a millennial period for this world is ever to come, as many wise have deemed, and pious prayed, it must be preceded by one common language, and one common system of weights and measures, as the basis of intercourse. And the way to that is to be built, not by the violent absorption of other and diverse systems into one, but rather by a compromise into which all may blend. When the Earth, in her historical orbit, shall{139}have reached that point, (as it stood ere mankind were scattered from the plain of Shinar) and not till then, may we begin to hope that her revolutions will be stilled, and that before long the weights and measures of fleeting Time will be merged and lost in the infinite scales and illimitable quantities of Eternity.” We are not sure that we precisely understand the last sentence, and we are sure we dissent entirely from the one that precedes it. No compromise can be of service in bringing about a uniformity in weights and measures. We must either make a better system than the best extant, and ask all men to adopt it, or if the best that human ingenuity and science can devise is already in use, so much the better; let us adopt it with all our heart. Is the French system this best one? We believe it is, nor have we ever heard it called in question.—Why then speak of a new one as desirable? We fear the suggestion is the offspring of a national vanity, which ought to be beneath us. We would not oppose such a motive even to the introduction of the centigrade thermometer, which is much more inconvenient than Fahrenheit’s, and hasno oneadvantage over it in any respect; still less should it bar the progress of a system against which no fault can be alleged, but that it isforeign.
We agree with our author that the introduction of a new system is much easier than is generally supposed. It will not be like the change of a monetary system, where the old coins remain, mingled with the new, to perpetuate the old names.—The change could be, by law, effected next New Year’s day, and all inconvenience from it would be over in a month, save some awkwardness from habit, and two more serious difficulties. One is from the human propensity tobisection. Thus the old hundredweight of 112 pounds is bisected down to 7 pounds, and the grocer will sell half this quantity,31⁄2pounds, at a cheaper rate than he will sell 3 pounds or 4. Unfortunately in bisecting 100 we run down too soon to the fractions121⁄2and 61⁄4. The French have been obliged to give way to this propensity, and divide the kilogramme in a binary manner,{140}with an unavoidable irregularity, reckoning311⁄4grains as 32. Would that 32 × 32 = 1000! Our only remedy is to change the radix of numeration from 10 to 16, a thing impossible but to a universal dictator. The other difficulty is in our measure for land. This must remain in all surveyed tracts in such a shape that 40 acres, and also 5 acres, shall be some multiple of unity.
But shall the apothecary wait the action of government?—This is neither necessary nor desirable. Some relief he ought to have speedily. If he dare not make so great an advance as to adopt the French system, (his truest and most honorable policy,) let all subdivisions of the avoirdupois pound be discarded, except the grain. Introduce the chemists’ weights of 1000, 500, 300, 100, 50, &c. grains, and let all prescriptions be written in grains alone. This, perhaps, is the only feasible course.
We must return once more to our author before taking leave of our readers. The motive for making the collection was one that strikes us as new. It was for ethnological and historical purposes. As the carat points to India as the origin of the diamond trade, so we find in the names, mode of subdivision, and amount of weights and measures evidences of the migrations of races, and of the ancient and obsolete channels in which trade once flowed. The care with which Mr. Alexander seems to have corrected these tables, and adjusted the discordant elements of which they are composed, and corrected the discrepancies between them, makes them more worthy of reliance than anything that has preceded them, and leaves little to be desired that is within the reach of human attainment. After the alphabetical arrangement, are given the weight and measure systems of the “principal countries of the world,” beginning with Abyssinia and ending with Würtemberg. And we have only to add that the mechanical execution of the volume is worthy of the care and labor the author has spent upon it, unsurpassed, in fact, by any book made for use we have ever seen.