History of Measurements

GROUP 3
DEL VAL, CHANTAL MARIE
HONG, DENZEL WILSON
IDIO, IVAN JITAN
BULATAO, YESHA CLARISSE
RABANG, JAERISH
LAZO, ATHENA
ASTODILLO, JUSTINE LEIGH
Brief Explanation of What is a
“Measurement”

 Measurement is the assignment of a number to a characteristic of an

object or event, which can be compared with other objects or events. The
scope and application of a measurement is dependent on the context
and discipline.
 Values made meaningful by quantifying into specific units.
CONVERSION TABLE

 Imperial - relating to or denoting the system of nonmetric weights and

measures (the ounce, pound, stone, inch, foot, yard, mile, acre, pint,
gallon, etc.) formerly used for all measures in the UK, and still used for
some.
 Metric - of or based on the meter as a unit of length; relating to the metric
system.
The conversion
table
The Table was invented by Richard Salter
The Origin of the Measurement

 Sundial and water clock: from the 2nd millennium BC

 The movement of the sun through the sky makes possible a simple estimate of time, from the
length and position of a shadow cast by a vertical stick. (It also makes possible more elaborate
calculations, as in the attempt of Erathosthenes to measure the world - see Erathosthenes and
the camels). If marks are made where the sun's shadow falls, the time of day can be recorded in
a consistent manner.
The result is the sundial. An Egyptian example survives from about 800 BC, but the principle is
certainly familiar to astronomers very much earlier. However it is difficult to measure time
precisely on a sundial, because the sun's path throug the sky changes with the seasons. Early
attempts at precision in time-keeping rely on a different principle.

 The water clock, known from a Greek word as the clepsydra, attempts to measure time by the
amount of water which drips from a tank. This would be a reliable form of clock if the flow of
water could be perfectly controlled. In practice it cannot. The clepsydra has an honourable
history from perhaps 1400 BC in Egypt, through Greece and Rome and the Arab civlizations and
China, and even up to the 16th century in Europe. But it is more of a toy than a timepiece.
 The hour: 14th century
 Until the arrival of clockwork, in the 14th century AD, an hour is a variable concept. It is a
practical division of the day into 12 segments (12 being the most convenient number for
dividing into fractions, since it is divisible by 2, 3 and 4). For the same reason 60, divisble by
2, 3, 4 and 5, has been a larger framework of measurement ever since Babylonian times.
 The trouble with the traditional hour is that it differs in length from day to day. And a
daytime hour is different from one in the night (also divided into twelve equal hours). A
clock cannot reflect this variation, but it can offer something more useful. It can provide
every day something which occurs naturally only twice a year, at the spring and autumn
equinox, when the 12 hours of day and the 12 hours of night are the same length.
In the 14th century, coinciding with the first practical clocks, the meaning of an hour
gradually changes. It becomes a specific amount of time, one twenty-fourth of a full solar
cycle from dawn to dawn. And the day is now thought of as 24 hours, though it still
features on clock faces as two twelves.
 Minutes and seconds: 14th - 16th century
 Even the first clocks can measure periods less than an hour, but soon striking
the quarter-hours seems insufficient. With the arrival of dials for the faces of
clocks, in the 14th century, something like a minute is required. The Middle
Ages, by a tortuous route from Babylon, inherit a scale of scientific
measurement based on 60. In medieval Latin the unit of one sixtieth is pars
minuta prima ('first very small part'), and a sixtieth of that is pars minute
secunda ('second very small part'). Thus, on a principle 3000 years old, minutes
and seconds find their way into time.

Minutes are mentioned from the 14th century, but clocks are not precise
enough for anyone to bother about seconds until two centuries later.
Example INSTRUMENTS USED FOR
MEASURING

 ANEMOMETER – used to determine wind speed

 Barometer – used to measure atmospheric pressure
 TRIVIAS

SPONSORED BY CHA
The first unit of mass

 The grain was the earliest unit of mass and is the smallest unit in
the apothecary, avoirdupois, Tower, and troy systems. The early unit was a
grain of wheat or barleycorn used to weigh the precious metals silver and gold.
Larger units preserved in stone standards were developed that were used as
both units of mass and of monetary currency. The pound was derived from the
mina used by ancient civilizations. A smaller unit was the shekel, and a larger
unit was the talent. The magnitude of these units varied from place to place.
The Babylonians and Sumerians had a system in which there were 60 shekels in
a mina and 60 minas in a talent. The Roman talent consisted of 100 libra
(pound) which were smaller in magnitude than the mina. The troy pound
(~373.2 g) used in England and the United States for monetary purposes, like
the Roman pound, was divided into 12 ounces, but the Roman uncia (ounce)
was smaller. The carat is a unit for measuring gemstones that had its origin in
the carob seed, which later was standardized at 1/144 ounce and then
0.2 gram.