CAREFULLY GUARDED TREASURES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3142, 6 November 1922, Page 2

CAREFULLY GUARDED TREASURES.

A curious scene was witnessed at the British House of Commons the other clay. The Speaker and a group of Government officials gathered round a table, and, opening a box. took from it a pound weight and a yard measure, which they examined with as much care as if they were the greatest treasurein the realm. Then they packed them away again. These objects were the Parliamentary copies ol' the Standard British Yard and British Pound, on which all our weights and measures arc ba-ed. The examination was a ceremony i hat bad not been |ierformed since INH2. and will imt he carried out again fin 20 years. It was in IX2-1 thai ibe standard« were legally fixed. From I.*>XS up to that year the utandards n Use were those made in th" reign o! Queen Elizabeth. Copies of the new standard.- were sent to different parts ol ibe kingdom, and (be .standardthemselves were banded over lo tic ( lerk of Ibe Hoiism of Commons. Ten years later the Houses of Parliament were burned down, and the standardlost, and a strange state of affairs came abonl. All weights and measures throughout the kingdom were based on ibe standards, hut the standards nolonger existed. No one could really say I bat a pound-weight was a |xiuiif' and there was no legal standard by which it could l>c tested. Fresh standards were prepared and banded over to tic Hoard of Trade. These are the only legal standards for British weights and measures; but accurate copies were made, known as Parliamentary copies, and these are kept in the Houses of Parliament and in one or two other places. It was the copies in the House of Commons (says (he Children's Newspaper) that were examined the other day for the time since 1H92. The avoirdupois pound i.s made of platinum, and is a cylinder 1 .Boill. high and 1.15 in. indiamoter. with a groove running round into which the points of an ivory fork can he inserted, this being the legal method of lifting the weight. 'Yno sVamV.m\ \an\ w* -,\ *v>\\\l vMottg, bar of bronze, on which is marked the length of a yard ol' 36in. at a 4cmperature of 62deg. Fahrenheit. The platinum pound is kept wrapped jr. Swedish filtering paper and placed in a silver-«j;ilt case, which is placed in a square bronze, case, and this is in a niahongany box. .screwed down and sealed. The yard is- laid on eight rollers in a sealed mahogany box. Both mahogany boxes are then put into a lead case, which is deposited in a cavity in the stone wall of the staircase leading to the committee* rooms. When examined the other day it was found that the imperial yard was shorter than it should be by a ten-thousandth of an inch, and thai the pound was heavier than it .should he by 2.56 thousandth of a grain. No doubt the more delicate tests of to-day enabled these discrepancies to be noted: or possibly chemical changes had taken place in the standards themselves. When the oak chest was in position masons closed up the stone wall, and an inscription was placed on the outside, saving:— "Within this wall are deposited standard- of the British yard measure and the British pound weight." An official declared that the variations discovered were causing concern. A copy of the standard yard, made of brass, is let into the lower wall of Trafalgar souare, near the National Gallery, where it can he seen bv anybody.

One woman to every ten men worked for wages 50 years ago, hut now the ratio is one to four.