WEIGHT GAUGING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 227, 25 September 1935, Page 11

WEIGHT GAUGING.

ESSENTIAL TO TRADE.

OLD-TIME MEASUREMENTS. METHODS OF THE ANCIENTS. The necessity for weights and measures .must liavo arisen at a very early stage in the development of the human race. When man ceased to be a hunting animal, subsisting on flesh, roots and berries, he learned to till tlio soil. At first he cultivated only for himself, his family and his tribe, but the time arrived when certain men in favourable localities produced more than they required for themselves, and this lj the position to-day, when most primary producing and industrial countries are searching for new markets. In the early ages men with a surplus of grain would exchange their commodity for other articles of food with neighbouring families or tribes, and so it was that trade began, first in the form of barter. It is obvious that measures for capacity of grain would be necessary at a very early stage. One can only speculate as to what forms these would take, but pi'obably earthenware vessels, crudely shaped, constituted tlio first measures. Weights and. weighing appliances would only come into uso when a considerable degree of circulation had developed, but measures of length, based on tlio limbs of the human body, would bo used very early. The Old Testament books of the Bible contain many references to weights and measures. The earliest is in Genesis xxiii. 16, which records that Abraham weighed 400 shekels of silver in payment for certain lands. The historian Josephus, who wrote in the first century, A.D., mentions a Jewish tradition that Cain, after his wanderings, built a city called Nod, where he upset the tranquillity of the people by introducing the use of weights and measures. Pyramid Measurements.

Tho ancient Egyptians attributed tho origin of weights and measures to the god Toth, while the Greeks associated Mercury with the same subject. It is a remarkable fact that the measurement of the base of the great Pyramid ia exactly equal to one five-hundredth of the degree of a meridian, or 500 cubits. Whatever view is taken of the origin of linear measures in tho ancient civilisation it cannot be doubted that the human body supplied the earliest terms or units of measurement. The digit was a finger-breadth, tho inch a thumbbreadth, the cubit was the distance from tho elbow to the end of tho middle finger. It may be that the "ell" used to-day for cloth measurement derived its narno from elbow. Tho fathom was the distance covered by tho outstretched arms.

Coming to units of weight, there is considerable evidence to show that at a very early date the weight of a cubic foot of water was termed a "talent," a term frequently used in tho Old Testament. A sixtieth part of the talent was tho "mjna," from which can be traced through successive civilisations the descent of the modern pound. There is a very remarkable series of standards in the British Museum. They were discovered in the ruins of Nineveh. A set of bronze weights, made iu the form of a crouching lion, is notable for artistic workmanship; another series is in stone, oval in shape, with the representation of a duck. These are the oldest standard weights in existence, but there are others in the Louvre in Paris, which are nearly as ancient. The "Five Measures."

The Chinese can trace tho origin of their standards as far back as the year 2700, 8.C., when Huang-Ti, the founder of the Chinese Empire, fixed what are called the "Five Measures." The distance between two knots of a bamboo stick producing a certain sound was taken as the standard of length. _ _ A hollow bamboo, capable of containing 1200 grains of rice, was taken as the unit of capacity, and one hundred of these units formed the ancient litre. The weight of 1200 grains of rice was taken as the unit of mass, and 16 times this weight was the ancient pound. However, during the 40 centuries of Chinese history the standards of weights # and measures were changed about 30 times, the last change taking place at the beginning of the present century, when the standards of length capacity and weight, were defined and fixed in teims of the metric system. In the British Museum there is an Egyptian papyrus, 1350 8.C., on which is portrayed a balance. The scene set forth L that of the Judgment Hall, where, before Osiris, the actions wrought by mortals when in the fiesh are being weighed. As the good or bad predominated, the final destiny of the soul was determined. It may be tnat tlus Ilc }'r' lt practice suggests a possible explanation of the custom at one time geneial in England, and that still exists at Higl Wycombe, of periodically weighing the chief magistrate or ruler of a district.