An apologetic for Standard Measures

When I went through elementary school in the eighties, I had to learn standard forms of measurement: inches, feet, miles, ounces, pounds, gallons and so forth. I also had to learn later on how to convert those into their metric equivalents. I have to say, that at first glance, those base 10 units of the metric system sound really easy to use, but I have to agree with the sentiment of Mr. Hitchen’s article. Metric is arbitrary and neat, which does not align with the human experience. I don’t remember in school ever having been presented with the history of standard measures and how they came to be over the course of time based on a man’s ability to measure that which lied within his environment using things readily available to him. After I learned why an inch is an inch, I have gained a new appreciation for all of the antiquated and “useless” measurements we use in the “Non-Metric” world today.

Lets take a look at a few measures and appreciate their overt simplicity.

• Inch: According to Wikipedia, the inch traces its origin to being a twelfth of a foot. Reference is also made there to an inch being the width of an average thumb at the base of the fingernail, and the word inch several languages translates to thumb.  Hmm… an 8½ x 11 inch piece of writing paper measures about 9½ thumbs for me, but close enough for mediæval farming.
• Foot: Back to Wikipedia, a foot was measured with just that, a foot. That works for me.
• Pound: A commenter on Mr. Hitchens blog stated that a pound was about the weight of a handful of apples, I’ll just have to take him at his word on that. Going back to Wikipedia, a pound has for some time been a number of so many grains, grains being how much a single grain of cereal weighed.
• Mile: Using my favorite vilified source again, a mile represented a thousand paces (a Roman pace being two steps). Looking at the Latin origin of the word, that’s a pretty simple way to measure distance.