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"Outdated measurement systems" Topic


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811 hits since 13 Sep 2016
©1994-2024 Bill Armintrout
Comments or corrections?

Last Hussar13 Sep 2016 2:44 p.m. PST

Can people list some outdated measurements – Is there a 'barleycorn'

Cheers

PaddySinclair13 Sep 2016 5:18 p.m. PST

Barleycorns aren't outdated, they form the basis of UK/Irish shoe sizes :) link

Martin From Canada13 Sep 2016 6:35 p.m. PST

Foot/yard/mile for distance
Grains, ounces, Pound for weight
Ounces and gallon for liquid

evil grin

Volstagg Vanir13 Sep 2016 9:54 p.m. PST

Oh….
The Barrel,
Half-barrel,
Gallon,
Half-gallon,
Quart pot
Pint pot,
Half a pint,
Gill pot
Half a gill,
Quarter gill,
Nipperkin,
and the brown bowl.


Here's good luck, Good Luck!
Good luck to the Barley Mow.

YouTube link


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipperkin

tkdguy13 Sep 2016 11:58 p.m. PST

Don't forget that old furlong in a fortnight problem.

GarrisonMiniatures14 Sep 2016 2:07 a.m. PST

Horses are still measured in hands.

Lots of specialist areas use 'outdated' systems – jewels measured in carats, depth of water in fathoms, etc.

GarrisonMiniatures14 Sep 2016 2:13 a.m. PST

Googled obsolete systems of measurement – there's a Wiki article devoted to them.

link

Andrew Walters14 Sep 2016 9:48 a.m. PST

Using a measurement system with lots of 12s and 16s and 5,280s keeps the brain fit. Doing all your math with 10s dulls the brain. That's why the US keeps leaving its stuff all over the moon and Mars, inventing new drugs, and producing the world's most popular and useless celebrities.

Constantly converting between the two systems, since we do use both, also keeps our grey matter hoping'. No one has ever mentioned this, but a lot of miniatures rules use *both* systems without making a big deal of it. You measure in inches, but the bases are 20mm and 40mm.

There are 190,080 barleycorns in a mile. Did that in my head. 108,000 barleycorns in a Km. A cubic barleycorn is 2/97 fluid ounces. In my head. So about 48 cubic barleycorns to the ounce.

If the US could just get away from this brain deadening "one hundred pennies in a dollar" system we could really make some progress!

Last Hussar14 Sep 2016 1:16 p.m. PST

That's why the US keeps leaving its stuff all over the moon and Mars

You know they use SI units for that.

I'm going to check out the wiki article. Shes a science teacher and is annoyed when I give my height in feet/inches, and weight in pounds and ounces. We both agree that Yanks are silly to use fluid ounces, when there are actual measurements of volume. And they use little pints.
#RealMenDrinkPintsErgoAmericansArentRealMen grin

Charlie 1214 Sep 2016 2:50 p.m. PST

#RealMenDrinkPintsErgoAmericansArentRealMen

Now that's just cold!

To add to the list:

Knots (measuring ship speed by an archaic system of knots tied in a rope?!?!)

Ed Mohrmann Supporting Member of TMP14 Sep 2016 3:49 p.m. PST

and another one – lustrum

(it's a half-decade…:-) )

Bunkermeister Supporting Member of TMP14 Sep 2016 3:50 p.m. PST

Stone for weight.

Firkins for liquids.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

Ghecko14 Sep 2016 4:11 p.m. PST

What about the American habit of "football fields" for distance…?

goragrad14 Sep 2016 11:47 p.m. PST

Tun.
Dram.
Nautical mile.
Mil.
Chain.
Link.
Rod.
Cubit.
Pennyweight.
Hundredweight/centum weight/quintal.
Long ton/short ton.
Troy ounce & pound.
Avoirdupois ounce & pound.

Personal logo etotheipi Sponsoring Member of TMP15 Sep 2016 5:16 a.m. PST

You know they use SI units for that.

I've actually participated in that, and we use a lot of different measurement systems in combination for that. What ever is most convenient at the time.

Also, SI is a system, not just a list of arbitrary measurement referents (just like every other system). Practically nobody uses the system except 2.8cm wargamers. :)

coryfromMissoula15 Sep 2016 9:42 a.m. PST

I routinely have to deal with water rights measured in "miners inches" which is defined by differently by each state definition and can be superseded by local 19th century documents.

Wilf1235815 Sep 2016 10:01 a.m. PST

Using SI units with base 10 leaves more room in my head for wargames rules…. ;-)

Bowman15 Sep 2016 10:31 a.m. PST

Knots (measuring ship speed by an archaic system of knots tied in a rope?!?!)

The term "Knot" is a shortened derivation from the word "nautical" and represents a velocity of nautical miles/hour. Unlike the land mile, the nautical mile actually is based upon a geographical measurement.

It's the distance when you move 1 second of arc. Therefore it has some use.

JSchutt15 Sep 2016 12:40 p.m. PST

"Big enough to choke a goat"

Charlie 1215 Sep 2016 4:00 p.m. PST

The term "Knot" is a shortened derivation from the word "nautical" and represents a velocity of nautical miles/hour. Unlike the land mile, the nautical mile actually is based upon a geographical measurement.

Actually, no. The 'knots' is actually derived from the knots tied into a line that is paid out on a float over a set period of time. The knots are tied at set intervals and based on the number of knots observed to pass over the side in a given time period, the ship's speed can be determined.

The current nautical mile is based on one minute of latitude (but it wasn't always so).

link

Easy to get mixed up (and things nautical tend to be weird…).

Personal logo etotheipi Sponsoring Member of TMP15 Sep 2016 6:19 p.m. PST

Easy to get mixed up (and things nautical tend to be weird…).

As one of my favourite commanding officers used to say, "The US Navy, 239 years* of tradition, unhindered by progress!"

link

But, yes the derivation of the term is from the process of tying knots in a line and feeding it off the fantail and recording in a chip log. Good times, good times.

The traditional measurement for a nautical mile is 2000 yards.

Currently, a knot is one minute of arc along a standard meridian, covered in one hour. If we're going to quibble (by which I mean we're going to correct someone else), the standard meridian part is important since the Earth is neither round (it's actually, 3D, you know!), nor spherical.

As with other practical measurements, using a referent of a nominal great circle route has real world, practical utility.

-----
* Captain Smith has long since passed from MS, however, the date is updated as I knew him over a number of years and he always updated the year himself to keep the saying current.

And if we wait a month, the United States Navy will be older than the United States again.

Personal logo etotheipi Sponsoring Member of TMP15 Sep 2016 6:20 p.m. PST

"Big enough to choke a goat"

Not obsolete. Used daily to describe the size of lox on onion bagel I want with breakfast.

Personal logo etotheipi Sponsoring Member of TMP15 Sep 2016 6:36 p.m. PST

Using SI units with base 10 leaves more room in my head for wargames rules…. ;-)

What is it you actually convert in wargaming?

I don't think I have seen a set of rules that converts. The ones that use cm, just use cm and don't use dm or m when they get beyond 10cm. Does anyone game on a table that needs dam or hm?

Given the massive (and justified) aversion to doing (even simple) math in public, I have not seen a wargaming rule set that uses scientific notation.

The two things that most people convert most of the time in real life are time and money. The USA has never had a non-decimal money system (Though, I believe Russia was the first on the planet to do so and various states have used physical fractional proportion sytems in base two when it was convenient.). Nobody does decimal time.

Speaking of which … does anyone use decimal based turn accounting systems in their games?

Charlie 1215 Sep 2016 7:12 p.m. PST

The traditional measurement for a nautical mile is 2000 yards.

But a knot hasn't always equaled 2000yds….

The Royal Navy in the late 17th and early 18th centuries used a log-line with the 'knots' set at 7 fathoms apart (or 14yds) and a glass that was set at 28 seconds. Doing the math, if you take that 14 yds traveled in 28 seconds and extrapolate that to a full hour (to get your "knots per hour") what you get is [drum roll]…… 1,799.9 yards for a nautical mile (for movement purposes). NOT the modern 2,067 yards, nor the rounded 2,000 yards.

Why would they do that? Robert Gardinier goes into this in his book, 'Frigates of the Napoleonic Wars'. Much of navigation in those days was dead reckoning, with attendant uncertainty from measurement errors and unrecognized variances in wind and current coupled with maps of variable quality. For example, a ship that got ahead of her dead reckoning estimate risked making a landfall in the dark before expected and being wrecked. Thus, a conservative practice had developed and been standardized in earlier years of slightly shortening the distance between knots on the log-line, thus overstating the speed – and distance actually run – so a ship would be conservatively astern of her reckoned position, in spite of minor errors and unknowns. This practice, well established and well understood in the 1790s, was the salvation of many a Master during the long war years.

And so much for 'when is a knot not a knot'…..

Personal logo etotheipi Sponsoring Member of TMP16 Sep 2016 7:19 a.m. PST

That shortening bit is cool. I will have to find the book.

Bowman16 Sep 2016 1:00 p.m. PST

Actually, no. The 'knots' is actually derived from the knots tied into a line that is paid out on a float over a set period of time. The knots are tied at set intervals and based on the number of knots observed to pass over the side in a given time period, the ship's speed can be determined.

Thanks for the correction.

I always assumed (incorrectly)that "knot" derived from "nautical" the same way "klick" became short form for kilometer (or kilometers/hour being klicks)

And I even got seconds and minutes of arc mixed up. I'll blame the decaf coffee.

abelp0117 Sep 2016 6:12 a.m. PST

Vara
Hectare
Chains

Bowman17 Sep 2016 1:22 p.m. PST

Hectare is the current SI measurement for area, isn't it? 100m X 100m

Personal logo etotheipi Sponsoring Member of TMP17 Sep 2016 1:41 p.m. PST

The hectare is a SI accepted area unit. Not included as part of the SI baseline (it uses square meters for area), however it is accepted for use. There are many non-canonical SI units that are accepted for use in the system.

It is 100 ares; each are is 100 square meters. 1 hectare = 10,000 square meters. So 100m x 100m would be one hectare in area, but the hectare is a one-dimensional measure of area, so it doesn't dictate a shape.

Incidentally, I believe ares are no longer a SI accepted unit, thought hectares are. :) Lovely stuff, standards.

And, traditionally, ares (and thus hectares) are technically specified only a unit of area for land, so you shouldn't measure things like the world's largest pizza with it, I guess.

Bowman18 Sep 2016 4:56 p.m. PST

The hectare is a SI accepted area unit. Not included as part of the SI baseline (it uses square meters for area), however it is accepted for use.

It's in use in Canada. For instance, when the government reports how much land was consumed by forest fires, it reports it in hectares (2.5 million hectares per year, if anyone's interested).

Incidentally, I believe ares are no longer a SI accepted unit, thought hectares are.

They probably still are, but they just aren't as useful. Imagine there was a measurent for a tenth of an acre. I'd suppose it wouldn't be so useful as to come into common currency. I didn't even know about ares. I thought he was the God of War. It's somewhat akin to buying wine by the deciliter, split or jeroboam.

Of course, a jeroboam of vintage Cristal sounds better than a split.

Personal logo etotheipi Sponsoring Member of TMP19 Sep 2016 3:48 p.m. PST

Mope, no ares, anymore. Looked it up in my desk reference while I was doing something else at work today.

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