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Line (unit)

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The line (abbreviated L or l or or lin.) was a small English unit of length, variously reckoned as 110, 112, 116, or 140 of an inch. It was not included among the units authorized as the British Imperial system in 1824.

Size

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The line was not recognized by any statute of the English Parliament but was usually understood as 14 of a barleycorn,[1] (which itself was recognized by statute as 13 of an inch[2]) making it 112 of an inch, and 1144 of a foot. The line was eventually decimalized as 110 of an inch, without recourse to barleycorns.[5]

The US button trade uses the same or a similar term but defined as one-fortieth of the US-customary inch (making a button-maker's line equal to 0.635 mm).[6][7]

In use

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Botanists formerly used the units (usually as 112 inch) to measure the size of plant parts. Linnaeus's Philosophia botanica (1751) includes the Linea in its summary of units of measurements, defining it as "Linea una Mensurae parisinae"; Stearns gives its length as 2.25 mm. Even after metrication, British botanists continued to employ tools with gradations marked as linea (lines); the British line is approximately 2.1 mm and the Paris line approximately 2.3 mm.[8]

Entomologists in the UK and other European countries in the 1800s used lines as a unit of measurement for insects, at least for the relatively large mantids and phasmids. Examples include Westwood,[9][10] in the UK, and de Haan[11] in the Netherlands.

Gunsmiths and armament companies also employed the 110-inch line (the "decimal line"), in part owing to the importance of the German and Russian arms industries.[12] These are now given in terms of millimeters, but the seemingly arbitrary 7.62 mm caliber was originally understood as a 3-line caliber (as with the 1891 Mosin–Nagant rifle). The 12.7 mm caliber used by the M2 Browning machine gun was similarly a 5-line caliber.[12]

Foreign units

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Other similar small units called lines include:

  • The Russian liniya (ли́ния), 110 of the diuym which had been set precisely equal to an English inch by Peter the Great[13]
  • The French ligne or "Paris line", 112 of the French inch (French: pouce), 2.256 mm and about 1.06 L.
  • The Portuguese linha, 112 of the Portuguese inch or 12 "points" (pontos) or 2.29 mm
  • The German linie was usually 112 of the German inch but sometimes also 110 German inch
  • The Vienna line, 112 of a Vienna inch.[14][15]

See also

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References

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Citations

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  1. ^ "Barleycorn". Oxford Dictionary of English (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. a former unit of measurement (about a third of an inch) based on the length of a grain of barley
  2. ^ Fowler, W. (1884). "On the ancient terms applicable to the measurement of land". Transactions. Vol. XVI. Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. p. 277.
  3. ^ Jefferson (1790).
  4. ^ Niles (1814), p. 22.
  5. ^ Jefferson,[3] republished by Niles.[4]
  6. ^ "An Easy Guide to Button Measurement and Sizing". Sun Mei Button Enterprise Co., Ltd. 19 June 2019.
  7. ^ The Metric System | Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Manufactures, United States Senate, Sixty-seventh Congress, First and Second Sessions on S. 2267 a Bill to Fix the Metric System of Weights and Measures as the Single Standard of Weights and Measures for Certain Uses. By United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Manufactures. 11 October 1921. p. 216.
  8. ^ Stearn, W.T. (1992). Botanical Latin: History, grammar, syntax, terminology, and vocabulary (Fourth ed.). David and Charles.
  9. ^ Westwood, J.O. (1859). Catalogue of the Orthopterous Insects in the Collection of British Museum. Part I: Phasmidae. British Museum, London.
  10. ^ Westwood, J.O. (1889). Revisio Insectorum Familiae Mantidarum, speciebus novis aut minus cognitis descriptis et delineatis. – Revisio Mantidarum. Gurney & Jackson, London.
  11. ^ Haan, W.de (1842). Bijdragen tot de Kennis Orthoptera. in C.J. Temminck, Verhandelingen over de natuurlijke Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche overzeesche Bezittingen. volume 2.
  12. ^ a b Hogg (1991).
  13. ^ Cardarelli (2004), pp. 121–124.
  14. ^ Albert Johannsen. "Manual of petrographic methods". p. 623.
  15. ^ Karl Wilhelm Naegeli; Simon Schwendener. "The Microscope in Theory and Practice". p. 294.

Bibliography

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