The Imperial System of Measurement

A GUIDE TO THE OLD SYSTEM

My daughter asked me to help her with her homework recently, she had to convert a recipe from imperial into metric and for some reason was a tad confused. She wanted to know what an oz woz and what was a lb. (pronounced erlb). Having been born in the UK in the middle of the last century, this presented no problem.

I explained that there were 16 ozs to the erlb. 14 erlb. to the stun and 20 stuns to the cwit and quite a few stuns to the ton and approximately 2,240 erlb, or thereabouts, to the aforementioned ton. She thought this was a trifle confusing and what the hell did it have to do with grams and kilograms and tonnes.

We then went into volumes, with two gills to the quart, four quarts to the pint and eight pints to the gallon. I must confess to a certain amount of confusion on my part, when it came to metric equivalents of cups, tbsps, tsps, and pinches. To cover my ignorance (it never pays to admit to stupidity in front of the fruit of your loins, even if they can smell a lying rat 1,760 yards away), I launched into a dissertation on Imperial lengths.

I’ve never claimed to be a metrologist (or even a meteorologist, as this bloody computer keeps insisting that I’ve never claimed to be, which incidentally is also true). I did do one semester on the subject of metrology in 1967, in my first year at Uni, so I suppose that qualifies me more than most.

However, the imperial system, which must incidentally have been the Roman Empire, as opposed to the British Empire, is predominantly in Latin e.g. lbs. And the UK Pound Sterling (which has a dinky little capital L symbol, denied to me by this accursed computer) are both based on Libra, maybe? There again they had deca-whatsits and centurions and other such stuff, so maybe not!

As I was saying, the Imperial System hides very few secrets from yours truly. I know that an inch is the length of the average man’s top joint on his little finger. A foot is self-explanatory and three self-explanatories make a yard. The yard being a very handy little measure of a normal man's stride or alternatively the distance between the centre of a tailor's chest and the end of his fingers, when measuring out cloth. Which is why, over the centuries, evolution resulted in tailor’s having exceptionally short arms.

To proceed, a Chain was 22 yards long, which not coincidentally is the length of a cricket pitch (and possibly some baseball lengths, but don't quote me on that). Rods, Poles and Perches had nothing at all to do with anglers and were all exactly the same length, which was a bit less than a Chain (5 and ½ yards to be precise) , but a lot more than a Fathom (6ft to be equally as precise). All of these were designed to discourage ship-borne invaders and visiting cricket teams.

For greater distances the Mile was invented, this was equal to 1,760 yards, obviously, no explanation needed there! However, for seamen the Knot or Nautical Mile was invented, which is a bit further than a Tonk or Terrestrial Knot. This was mainly due to the fact that crows are notorious for not flying in straight lines over large bodies of water.


IMPERIAL CURRENCY


This brings us nicely to the British Currency, this was simply based on Pounds, Shillings and Pence (In Latin, Libra, Shillingiums and Dinari i.e. LSD, which has absolutely nothing to do with acid based, mind altering substances, thank you very much!

In the golden, olden days the serfs, villeins and servants were only given a few Pence (d.) every couple of months, if they were lucky. This caused the Bank of England and the Royal Mint to start issuing ¼d coins (farthings), ½d coins (ha’pennies) and 3d coins (threpenny bits).

Clear so far? There were 2 farthings to the ha’penny, 2 ha’pennies to the penny, three pence to the threpenny bit, (four pence to the groat, which was discontinued in mediaeval times, for some obscure reason), those were the coppers. With the silver coins there were 6d to the tanner, 12d to the shilling or bob, 24d to the florin or two bob bit, and two and six to the half crown. There were also crowns (5 bob) and sovereigns (21 bob), but I never saw any of them and they were probably fictitious and probably went down the gurgler along with groats.

Then of course, there was the folding stuff, as a kid I was never entrusted with this stuff, as it was far too valuable. I did get to handle the occasional ten bob note and Pound note (240d) but only under strict parental supervision. I can recall seeing a 5 Pound Note at a distance and think that I may have once glimpsed a 10 Pound Note, which was the size of a small newspaper, but it could have been a figment of my youthful imagination.

So there you have it, simple really! How can you wonder that people fought the introduction of metrics tooth and nail? They were used to working out whether it was cheaper to buy 3 & ¼ ozs. of butter at two and threpence ha’penny a lb. or 6ozs. of marg. at one and eleven a lb. When they only had two tanners to rub together and a family of eight to feed. “Bugger the butter, give the ungrateful brats dripping on two day old bread, that’ll keep ‘em goin’ for another week”.

Wonderful mathematicians those housewives, with nary a calculator, slide rule, log table or abacus in sight, they produced the men who claimed half of the world for King/Queen and Country. I could go on about area and temperatures and so on, but I think I’ll give it a big miss, partly because I’m bored shitless with metrology and mainly because I know sod all about it, which is where I first started.

Cheers for now,

SkyBlueSkull.

http://keith-skellern.blogspot.com