Sum Space

Measurement Systems

Used as we are to the SI (Systeme Internationale) methods of calculations, school exams in the late 1960s were taken in the fps system (foot-pound-second) and in the cgs (centimetre, gram, second). The SI system was then coming into use and was originally called the kms (kilogram, metre, second) system. We are  fortunate that no-one has redefined the second, minute, hour, day or year, although the exact duration has been recalculated, but the differences are small indeed. Although in this country schools teach in metric, when pupils come into everyday life they have to revert to imperial for the calculation of distances and speeds. (miles between locations and legal speeds in miles per hour). How a mile is made up is not overclear. If, however, you’re working in the oil and gas drilling industry in the North Sea then units current in the U.S.A. apply. In other words we’re back to feet and inches. But for the purposes of completeness, this is the equivalent table that we have found necessary (and a couple that we have discovered) in undertaking this research.

Linear measure

Area Measure

Cubic Measure

U.K. Volume Measure, liquids or solids

U.S. Volume Measure

Message from John Watts, BSc, a Lincolnshire farmer, on 18th January 2000

Only yesterday was discussing how we used to measure corn, in coombs and quarters. A coomb is four bushels, and a quarter eight. Commercially, the bags used were “Railway Bags”, i.e. hired from the railway companies at a penny (old) a week each; when you sold the corn the merchant took over the sack hire and gave you a dated chit to say so, and your bill was settled for the length of time the bags were in your possession, filled or not. By convention, these large sacks held one coomb volume, and the weights for various grains were:

• Beans (dense stuff), 22 stones weight
• Wheat (fairly heavy) 18 stones
• Barley (Not so heavy) 16 stones
• Oats (the lightest grain)12 stones.

So a quarter of wheat, i.e. two railway bags, weighed 4.5 cwt., of barley4cwt., and of oats 3cwt. Sounds complicated, but you got used to it.

Grain for our own use (before bulk storage) we put into old cattle-feedbags holding about ten stones of wheat or eight stones (1 cwt.) of barley. Easier to lift.

After B.R. (British Railways, formed after railway nationalisation on 1st January 1948 as a results of the Transport Act 1947) ceased to supply sacks such firms as Chisolm, Fox, and Garner began to set up in Sack Hire. My father-in-law, a threshing contractor, was agent for such a firm. My brother has an 8mm. film commissioned by the above firm when bulk combines and silos were just coming in, about 1960. It purports to show that hired sacks are the best and cheapest way of storing and transporting cereals, and features lorries and warehouses and ships bulging with thumping great sacks of corn, – it makes your hernia throb just to look at it.

Sacks are not heard of nowadays, and not much regretted, they did nothing for your spine and were prone to get rat-infested. When “bulk” took over,grain began to be traded by the ton and hundredweight, which was not hard to adapt to. But in recent years it has had to be kilos and tonnes, which are hard for us oldies to visualise, as are the hectares, metres, and litres.

O tempora, o mores. (Cicero)

John.

Weight (Avoirdupois)

** The heavier standard which here has been termed refining weight was used on Dartmoor to allow for losses in final refining and a tax levied onthat refining. In other words, it was a bit of a fiddle. The  thousandweight used in some records sometimes refers to the standard pound and sometimes to he heaver pound. Judgments have to be made which is in use in the document under consideration. Assumptions (guesses) often have to be made.

Troy Weight

Apothecaries’ Weight

Brewers and Vintners Measures

Degrees Proof