1.
System of measurement
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A system of measurement is a collection of units of measurement and rules relating them to each other. Systems of measurement have historically been important, regulated and defined for the purposes of science and commerce, systems of measurement in modern use include the metric system, the imperial system, and United States customary units. The French Revolution gave rise to the system, and this has spread around the world. In most systems, length, mass, and time are base quantities, later science developments showed that either electric charge or electric current could be added to extend the set of base quantities by which many other metrological units could be easily defined. Other quantities, such as power and speed, are derived from the set, for example. Such arrangements were satisfactory in their own contexts, the preference for a more universal and consistent system only gradually spread with the growth of science. Changing a measurement system has substantial financial and cultural costs which must be offset against the advantages to be obtained using a more rational system. However pressure built up, including scientists and engineers for conversion to a more rational. The unifying characteristic is that there was some definition based on some standard, eventually cubits and strides gave way to customary units to met the needs of merchants and scientists. In the metric system and other recent systems, a basic unit is used for each base quantity. Often secondary units are derived from the units by multiplying by powers of ten. Thus the basic unit of length is the metre, a distance of 1.234 m is 1,234 millimetres. Metrication is complete or nearly complete in almost all countries, US customary units are heavily used in the United States and to some degree in Liberia. Traditional Burmese units of measurement are used in Burma, U. S. units are used in limited contexts in Canada due to the large volume of trade, there is also considerable use of Imperial weights and measures, despite de jure Canadian conversion to metric. In the United States, metric units are used almost universally in science, widely in the military, and partially in industry, but customary units predominate in household use. At retail stores, the liter is a used unit for volume, especially on bottles of beverages. Some other standard non-SI units are still in use, such as nautical miles and knots in aviation. Metric systems of units have evolved since the adoption of the first well-defined system in France in 1795, during this evolution the use of these systems has spread throughout the world, first to non-English-speaking countries, and then to English speaking countries
2.
Imperial units
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The system of imperial units or the imperial system is the system of units first defined in the British Weights and Measures Act of 1824, which was later refined and reduced. The Imperial units replaced the Winchester Standards, which were in effect from 1588 to 1825, the system came into official use across the British Empire. The imperial system developed from what were first known as English units, the Weights and Measures Act of 1824 was initially scheduled to go into effect on 1 May 1825. However, the Weights and Measures Act of 1825 pushed back the date to 1 January 1826, the 1824 Act allowed the continued use of pre-imperial units provided that they were customary, widely known, and clearly marked with imperial equivalents. Apothecaries units are mentioned neither in the act of 1824 nor 1825, at the time, apothecaries weights and measures were regulated in England, Wales, and Berwick-upon-Tweed by the London College of Physicians, and in Ireland by the Dublin College of Physicians. In Scotland, apothecaries units were unofficially regulated by the Edinburgh College of Physicians, the three colleges published, at infrequent intervals, pharmacopoeiae, the London and Dublin editions having the force of law. The Medical Act of 1858 transferred to The Crown the right to publish the official pharmacopoeia and to regulate apothecaries weights, Metric equivalents in this article usually assume the latest official definition. Before this date, the most precise measurement of the imperial Standard Yard was 0.914398416 metres, in 1824, the various different gallons in use in the British Empire were replaced by the imperial gallon, a unit close in volume to the ale gallon. It was originally defined as the volume of 10 pounds of distilled water weighed in air with brass weights with the standing at 30 inches of mercury at a temperature of 62 °F. The Weights and Measures Act of 1985 switched to a gallon of exactly 4.54609 l and these measurements were in use from 1826, when the new imperial gallon was defined, but were officially abolished in the United Kingdom on 1 January 1971. In the USA, though no longer recommended, the system is still used occasionally in medicine. The troy pound was made the unit of mass by the 1824 Act, however, its use was abolished in the UK on 1 January 1879, with only the troy ounce. The Weights and Measures Act 1855 made the pound the primary unit of mass. In all the systems, the unit is the pound. For the yard, the length of a pendulum beating seconds at the latitude of Greenwich at Mean Sea Level in vacuo was defined as 39.01393 inches, the imperial system is one of many systems of English units. Although most of the units are defined in more than one system, some units were used to a much greater extent, or for different purposes. The distinctions between these systems are not drawn precisely. One such distinction is that between these systems and older British/English units/systems or newer additions, the US customary system is historically derived from the English units that were in use at the time of settlement
3.
US customary units
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United States customary units are a system of measurements commonly used in the United States. The United States customary system developed from English units which were in use in the British Empire before the US declared its independence, however, the British system of measures was overhauled in 1824 to create the imperial system, changing the definitions of some units. Therefore, while many U. S. units are similar to their Imperial counterparts. The majority of U. S. customary units were redefined in terms of the meter and these definitions were refined by the international yard and pound agreement of 1959. Americans primarily use customary units in commercial activities, as well as for personal and social use, in science, medicine, many sectors of industry and some of government, metric units are used. The International System of Units, the form of the metric system, is preferred for many uses by the U. S. National Institute of Standards. The United States system of units is similar to the British imperial system, both systems are derived from English units, a system which had evolved over the millennia before American independence, and which had its roots in Roman and Anglo-Saxon units. The customary system was championed by the U. S. -based International Institute for Preserving and Perfecting Weights, advocates of the customary system saw the French Revolutionary, or metric, system as atheistic. An auxiliary of the Institute in Ohio published a poem with wording such as down with every metric scheme and A perfect inch, one adherent of the customary system called it a just weight and a just measure, which alone are acceptable to the Lord. The U. S. government passed the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, the legislation states that the federal government has a responsibility to assist industry as it voluntarily converts to the metric system, i. e. metrification. This is most evident in U. S. labeling requirements on food products, according to the CIA Factbook, the United States is one of three nations that have not adopted the metric system as their official system of weights and measures. U. S. customary units are used on consumer products. Metric units are standard in science, medicine, as well as many sectors of industry and government, the metric system also lacks a parallel to the foot. Frequently, however, these units designate quite different sizes, for example, the mile ranged by country from one-half to five U. S. miles, foot and pound also had varying definitions. Historically, a range of non-SI units were used in the U. S. and in Britain. This article deals only with the commonly used or officially defined in the U. S. For measuring length, the U. S. customary system uses the inch, foot, yard, and mile, since July 1,1959, these have been defined on the basis of 1 yard =0.9144 meters except for some applications in surveying. The U. S. the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries agreed on this definition, the NAD27 was replaced in the 1980s by the North American Datum of 1983, which is defined in meters
4.
Length
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In geometric measurements, length is the most extended dimension of an object. In the International System of Quantities, length is any quantity with dimension distance, in other contexts length is the measured dimension of an object. For example, it is possible to cut a length of a wire which is shorter than wire thickness. Length may be distinguished from height, which is vertical extent, and width or breadth, length is a measure of one dimension, whereas area is a measure of two dimensions and volume is a measure of three dimensions. In most systems of measurement, the unit of length is a base unit, measurement has been important ever since humans settled from nomadic lifestyles and started using building materials, occupying land and trading with neighbours. As society has become more technologically oriented, much higher accuracies of measurement are required in a diverse set of fields. One of the oldest units of measurement used in the ancient world was the cubit which was the length of the arm from the tip of the finger to the elbow. This could then be subdivided into shorter units like the foot, hand or finger, the cubit could vary considerably due to the different sizes of people. After Albert Einsteins special relativity, length can no longer be thought of being constant in all reference frames. Thus a ruler that is one meter long in one frame of reference will not be one meter long in a frame that is travelling at a velocity relative to the first frame. This means length of an object is variable depending on the observer, in the physical sciences and engineering, when one speaks of units of length, the word length is synonymous with distance. There are several units that are used to measure length, in the International System of Units, the basic unit of length is the metre and is now defined in terms of the speed of light. The centimetre and the kilometre, derived from the metre, are commonly used units. In U. S. customary units, English or Imperial system of units, commonly used units of length are the inch, the foot, the yard, and the mile. Units used to denote distances in the vastness of space, as in astronomy, are longer than those typically used on Earth and include the astronomical unit, the light-year. Dimension Distance Orders of magnitude Reciprocal length Smoot Unit of length
5.
Yard
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The yard is an English unit of length, in both the British imperial and US customary systems of measurement, that comprises 3 feet or 36 inches. It is by international agreement in 1959 standardized as exactly 0.9144 meters, a metal yardstick originally formed the physical standard from which all other units of length were officially derived in both English systems. In the 19th and 20th centuries, increasingly powerful microscopes and scientific measurement detected variation in these prototype yards which became significant as technology improved. In 1959, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, the name derives from the Old English gerd, gyrd, &c. which was used for branches, staves, and measuring rods. It is first attested in the late-7th century laws of Ine of Wessex, where the yard of land mentioned is the yardland, an old English unit of tax assessment equal to 1⁄4 hide. Around the same time, the Lindisfarne Gospels account of the messengers from John the Baptist in the Book of Matthew used it for a branch swayed by the wind. In addition to the yardland, Old and Middle English both used their forms of yard to denote the lengths of 15 or 16 1⁄2 ft used in computing acres. A unit of three English feet is attested in a statute of c. 1300 but there it is called an ell, the use of the word yard to describe this length is first attested in Langlands poem on Piers Plowman. The usage seems to derive from the prototype standard rods held by the king, the word yard is a homonym of yard in the sense of an enclosed area of land. This second meaning of yard has a related to the verb to gird and is probably not related. The origin of the measure is uncertain, both the Romans and the Welsh used multiples of a shorter foot, but 2 1⁄2 Roman feet was a step and 3 Welsh feet was a pace. The Proto-Germanic cubit or arms-length has been reconstructed as *alinâ, which developed into the Old English ęln, Middle English elne and this has led some to derive the yard of three English feet from pacing, others from the ell or cubit, others from Henry Is arm standard. Based on the etymology of the yard, others suggest it originally derived from the girth of a persons waist. But the yard was the standard adopted by the early English soverigns. The yard continued till the reign of Henry VII. when the ell was introduced, that being a yard, the ell was borrowed from the Paris drapers. Subsequently, however, Queen Elizabeth re-introduced the yard as the English standard of measure, the earliest record of a prototype measure is the statute II Edgar Cap. 8, which survives in several variant manuscripts, in it, Edgar the Peaceful directed the Witenagemot at Andover that the measure held at Winchester should be observed throughout his realm. The statutes of William I similarly refer to and uphold the measures of his predecessors without naming them
6.
Metric system
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The metric system is an internationally agreed decimal system of measurement. Many sources also cite Liberia and Myanmar as the other countries not to have done so. Although the originators intended to devise a system that was accessible to all. Control of the units of measure was maintained by the French government until 1875, when it was passed to an intergovernmental organisation. From its beginning, the features of the metric system were the standard set of interrelated base units. These base units are used to larger and smaller units that could replace a huge number of other units of measure in existence. Although the system was first developed for use, the development of coherent units of measure made it particularly suitable for science. Although the metric system has changed and developed since its inception, designed for transnational use, it consisted of a basic set of units of measurement, now known as base units. At the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, most countries, the metric system was designed to be universal—in the words of the French philosopher Marquis de Condorcet it was to be for all people for all time. However, these overtures failed and the custody of the metric system remained in the hands of the French government until 1875. In languages where the distinction is made, unit names are common nouns, the concept of using consistent classical names for the prefixes was first proposed in a report by the Commission on Weights and Measures in May 1793. The prefix kilo, for example, is used to multiply the unit by 1000, thus the kilogram and kilometre are a thousand grams and metres respectively, and a milligram and millimetre are one thousandth of a gram and metre respectively. These relations can be written symbolically as,1 mg =0, however,1935 extensions to the prefix system did not follow this convention, the prefixes nano- and micro-, for example have Greek roots. During the 19th century the prefix myria-, derived from the Greek word μύριοι, was used as a multiplier for 10000, prefixes are not usually used to indicate multiples of a second greater than 1, the non-SI units of minute, hour and day are used instead. On the other hand, prefixes are used for multiples of the unit of volume. The base units used in the system must be realisable. Each of the units in SI is accompanied by a mise en pratique published by the BIPM that describes in detail at least one way in which the base unit can be measured. In practice, such realisation is done under the auspices of a mutual acceptance arrangement, in the original version of the metric system the base units could be derived from a specified length and the weight of a specified volume of pure water
7.
International System of Units
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The International System of Units is the modern form of the metric system, and is the most widely used system of measurement. It comprises a coherent system of units of measurement built on seven base units, the system also establishes a set of twenty prefixes to the unit names and unit symbols that may be used when specifying multiples and fractions of the units. The system was published in 1960 as the result of an initiative began in 1948. It is based on the system of units rather than any variant of the centimetre-gram-second system. The motivation for the development of the SI was the diversity of units that had sprung up within the CGS systems, the International System of Units has been adopted by most developed countries, however, the adoption has not been universal in all English-speaking countries. The metric system was first implemented during the French Revolution with just the metre and kilogram as standards of length, in the 1830s Carl Friedrich Gauss laid the foundations for a coherent system based on length, mass, and time. In the 1860s a group working under the auspices of the British Association for the Advancement of Science formulated the requirement for a coherent system of units with base units and derived units. Meanwhile, in 1875, the Treaty of the Metre passed responsibility for verification of the kilogram, in 1921, the Treaty was extended to include all physical quantities including electrical units originally defined in 1893. The units associated with these quantities were the metre, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, in 1971, a seventh base quantity, amount of substance represented by the mole, was added to the definition of SI. On 11 July 1792, the proposed the names metre, are, litre and grave for the units of length, area, capacity. The committee also proposed that multiples and submultiples of these units were to be denoted by decimal-based prefixes such as centi for a hundredth, on 10 December 1799, the law by which the metric system was to be definitively adopted in France was passed. Prior to this, the strength of the magnetic field had only been described in relative terms. The technique used by Gauss was to equate the torque induced on a magnet of known mass by the earth’s magnetic field with the torque induced on an equivalent system under gravity. The resultant calculations enabled him to assign dimensions based on mass, length, a French-inspired initiative for international cooperation in metrology led to the signing in 1875 of the Metre Convention. Initially the convention only covered standards for the metre and the kilogram, one of each was selected at random to become the International prototype metre and International prototype kilogram that replaced the mètre des Archives and kilogramme des Archives respectively. Each member state was entitled to one of each of the prototypes to serve as the national prototype for that country. Initially its prime purpose was a periodic recalibration of national prototype metres. The official language of the Metre Convention is French and the version of all official documents published by or on behalf of the CGPM is the French-language version
8.
Metre
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The metre or meter, is the base unit of length in the International System of Units. The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299792458 seconds, the metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. In 1799, it was redefined in terms of a metre bar. In 1960, the metre was redefined in terms of a number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86. In 1983, the current definition was adopted, the imperial inch is defined as 0.0254 metres. One metre is about 3 3⁄8 inches longer than a yard, Metre is the standard spelling of the metric unit for length in nearly all English-speaking nations except the United States and the Philippines, which use meter. Measuring devices are spelled -meter in all variants of English, the suffix -meter has the same Greek origin as the unit of length. This range of uses is found in Latin, French, English. Thus calls for measurement and moderation. In 1668 the English cleric and philosopher John Wilkins proposed in an essay a decimal-based unit of length, as a result of the French Revolution, the French Academy of Sciences charged a commission with determining a single scale for all measures. In 1668, Wilkins proposed using Christopher Wrens suggestion of defining the metre using a pendulum with a length which produced a half-period of one second, christiaan Huygens had observed that length to be 38 Rijnland inches or 39.26 English inches. This is the equivalent of what is now known to be 997 mm, no official action was taken regarding this suggestion. In the 18th century, there were two approaches to the definition of the unit of length. One favoured Wilkins approach, to define the metre in terms of the length of a pendulum which produced a half-period of one second. The other approach was to define the metre as one ten-millionth of the length of a quadrant along the Earths meridian, that is, the distance from the Equator to the North Pole. This means that the quadrant would have defined as exactly 10000000 metres at that time. To establish a universally accepted foundation for the definition of the metre, more measurements of this meridian were needed. This portion of the meridian, assumed to be the length as the Paris meridian, was to serve as the basis for the length of the half meridian connecting the North Pole with the Equator
9.
Rod (unit)
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The rod or perch or pole is a surveyors tool and unit of length equal to 5 1⁄2 yards, 16 1⁄2 feet, 1⁄320 of a statute mile or one-fourth of a surveyors chain and 5.0292 meters. The rod is useful as a unit of length because whole number multiples of it can equal one acre of square measure. The perfect acre is an area of 43,560 square feet, bounded by sides 660 feet by 66 feet long, or 220 yards by 22 yards long. Thus, an acre is 160 square rods, since the adoption of the international yard on 1 July 1959, the rod has been equal to exactly 5.0292 meters. Its name derives from the Ancient Roman unit, the pertica, the measure also has a relationship to the military pike of about the same size and both measures date from the sixteenth century, when that weapon was still utilized in national armies. Surveyors rods and chains are still utilized in rough terrains with heavy overgrowth where laser or other measurements are difficult or impossible. In old English, the lug is also used. In England, the perch was officially discouraged in favour of the rod as early as the 15th century, however, local customs maintained its use. In Ireland, a perch was standardized at 21 feet, making an Irish chain, furlong, until English King Henry VIII seized the lands of the Roman Catholic Church in 1536, land measures as we now know them were essentially unknown. Instead a narrative system of landmarks and lists was used, a chain is a larger unit of length measuring 66 feet, or 22 yards, or 100 links, or 4 rods. There are 10 chains or 40 rods in a furlong, and so 80 chains or 320 rods in one statute mile, by the time of the industrial revolution and the quickening of land sales, canal and railway surveys, et al. The rod as a measure was standardized by Edmund Gunter in England in 1607 as one-fourth of a chain. The perch as a measure in Rome was 10 feet. To confuse matters further, by ancient Roman definition, an arpent equalled 120 Roman feet, the related unit of square measure was the scrupulum or decempeda quadrata, equivalent to about 8.76 m2. They were subdivided in different ways, and were of many different lengths. Based on data from the following, N - Niemann, in England, the rod is first defined in law by the Composition of Yards and Perches, one of the statutes of uncertain date from the late 13th to early 14th centuries. The length of the chain was standardized in 1620 by Edmund Gunter at exactly four rods, fields were measured in acres, which were one chain by one furlong. Bars of metal one rod long were used as standards of length when surveying land, the rod was still in use as a common unit of measurement in the mid-19th century, when Henry David Thoreau used it frequently when describing distances in his work, Walden
