Talk:English units

Moved from mediæval page

I'm moving the bulk of the content in the English units section of the Medieval weights and measures page. Jimp 13Jul05

Score

Why was a score listed in the units list I've just moved? There was no mention of a dozen and well there should not have been for these are not units of measurements but words for numbers. Jimp 13Jul05

"Imperial" Compared with "U.S. Customary"

This section needs a rewrite.

Through an accident of history, there is a reason that U.S. definition of the units of gallon and bushel are different from the U.K. "Imperial" definitions. Note that author picks up 1824 definitions of Imperial gallon and bushel. U.S. declared its independence in 1776. Units in use in U.S. were the ones in use in U.K. at that time.

The metric system (now S.I. units) were originally introduced during the Napoleonic era. The English liked the base 10 concept, but not enough to adopt the metric system, so they redefined their gallon from approx 8.6 pounds of water to define the volume of a gallon to 10 pounds of water defining the "Imperial" gallon. This occured after the American Revolution, so the U.S. did not adopt this change. Thus, it is better to call the U.S. system as "U.S. Customary". There are a lot of references at www.nist.gov under "weights and measures" to help here.

--69.140.130.29 20:29, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Today's US units are not the ones used in pre-1824 UK, but a selection of them. There were also efforts after 1776 in the US to harmonize and drop some measures or even create a whole new system of units (based upon the second pendulum), lead by Thomas Jefferson[1], but with the mere result that there are only two gallons (one wet, one dry) left. After all, they had already decimalised their currency, unlike the Britains. But yes, maybe there's need for a rewrite. Perhaps this article and U.S. customary units should be merged and grouped chronologically. Christoph Päper 21:50, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Long & short hundredweights & tons

I'd written that the terms "long" and "short" were used in the U.S. This is what the long ton & short ton pages seem to suggest. Before reading those pages I'd thought that these were just general names not U.S.-only ones but being a metric lad I wasn't 100% sure (not even 50%) so I edited the page to reflect this. If this is not the case, we've got to chang those pages as well. Jimp 15Jul05

They aren't U.S.-only names, though some editors hold that mistaken belief. They are common names used by anyone when they need to distinguish between them. Gene Nygaard 00:19, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

That's exactly what I'd thought before. So, let's fix those pages up. Jimp 15Jul05

Maybe useful links

Haven't got time now to wade through it but here's something I've just stumbled on whilst looking on the web for "tower pound measurement".

http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/history/measure.html http://www.24carat.co.uk/weightsframe.html

Jimp 15Jul05

Scottish Units

Should the section on Scottish Units be moved from the mediæval page? Scotland is not part of England, of course, but that's not the point. Are the Scottish units a subset of the English ones (the U.S. ones are & the U.S. isn't part of England either)? Jimp 19Jul05

No, the Scottish units are more a parallel system. The English units are the ones used in the U.S., and in Scotland for several centuries as well, not the Scottish units. Gene Nygaard 02:05, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Then what do we do with them? Should we make a new article, Scottish unit, and put them there? There's hardly enough there to warrant a whole article ... is there? There's no question of putting them back on the mediæval page because I've split it up by culture & then remerged it with the ancient page. Jimp 7Sep05

Typo

Sad, now someone fixed that typo (“Untied States”). I love it. Christoph Päper 12:36, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Rktect's additions

I'd like Rktect to explain what the relevance of his references are. Some books he added:

• The Ancient Near East
• The Epic of Gilgamesh
• Bahrain throught the ages
• Prehistory and Protohistory of the Arabian Peninsula
• Mesopotamia 10 The Sumerian Language
• Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East
• The Archaeology of Ancient China
• The Arabic Alphabet

among many others. It seems that he's again just pasting down his ancient civilizations references everywhere he can. Those books are not relevant to English unit. -- (☺drini♫|☎) 19:23, 6 October 2005 (UTC)