Have you ever thought about the importance of taking measurements? Taking measurements is one of the important, common, and daily activities of our day-to-day life. We can’t imagine spending a day without measuring anything. Without measurements, the world would have been complete chaos.
It is an integral part of our daily routine. Starting from Cooking, where a measured amount of ingredients are added to cook food properly; purchasing items so that fixed amounts can be allocated to certain objects medicines, in which a fixed dosage is required to treat a particular disease, to decide the winner among the participants, etc.
Today, we follow a standard unit of measurements for length, mass, volume, and time. But have ever wondered how these measurements were taken when such units did not come into existence.
Length
In early days, the human body was used to provide the basis for units of length
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Inch: It was used to measure the length of items small in size, for example, the seam of a cloth, length of the paper, etc. Inch is the measure of the human thumb.
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Foot: Foot is defined as the measure of length 15.3 % of the height of a human body with an average height of 160 cm. This unit differed from place to place and trade to trade. This unit was preferred by Roman and Greeks and was mainly used to calculate the size of a piece of cloth, the height of human beings and cattle, the size of a building, etc.
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Cubit: Cubit is the unit of measurement of length based on the length of the forearm, from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow bottom. It was preferred by Egyptians and Mesopotamians. Cubit rods have been discovered in the remains of the ancient Egyptian civilization. Usually, these rods are 20 inches in length, which are divided into seven palms; each palm is further divided into four fingers which are further subdivided.
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Yard: Yard is the unit of distance, which is based on human paces. A yard is equivalent to two cubits or three feet, which is approximately 36 inches. The early yard was divided by the binary method into 2, 4, 8, and 16 parts called the half-yard, span, finger, and nail Miles.
A foot comprises 12 inches and three feet comprise a yard. Such measurements as these, it was easy to explain how far the next village was and to find out whether an object will get through a doorway.
Weight
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In early times, to measure weight the grains of wheat or barleycorn were used because of their approximate standard size. The barleycorn was used to weigh the precious metals silver and gold. Large units preserved in stone standards were developed that were used as both units of mass and monetary currency. The standard unit was taken to the number of grains of wheat. This is even now being used by some jewellers. 64.79891 milligrams sums up to make one grain.
Time
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Sundial: The movement of the sun in the sky was used to estimate time, which was done based on the length and position of the shadow cast by a vertical stick. Then the marks were made where the sun’s shadow fell, which gave an approximate measure of time of the day consistently. The device came to be called a sundial.
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Hourglass: To estimate the time, this device is used. The hourglass works on the same principle followed by a water clock. It uses sand instead of water. It is still found in some places, in a reduced form, and also in use. It has two vertically connected glass bulbs that allow a regulated flow of a substance from the upper bulb to the lower one.
The upper and lower bulbs are kept symmetric so that the hourglass will measure the same duration regardless of orientation. There are various factors that contribute for the calculation of the specific duration of time. These include the quantity and coarseness of the particulate matter, the bulb size, etc.