Talk:Obsolete Scottish units of measurement
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
Obsolete Scottish units of measurement is within the scope of WikiProject Scotland, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Scotland and Scotland-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page. | ||
| Stub | This article has been rated as stub-Class on the quality scale. | ||
| ??? | This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale. | ||
|
Article Grading: |
|||
|
WikiProject Scotland To-do:
|
|||
[edit] Stone
Was a Scottish "stone" equal to 14 pounds like elsewhere? --McKay 02:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
- Since the Scottish stone has not been used for a long time, this is a historical question. E.g. in the 1426 Assize of weights the stone was defined as 15 troy pounds. But since these were Scottish troy pounds of 16 ounces, that's equivalent to 20 English troy pounds. Many other definitions existed at various times and for various purposes. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:43, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] This article may be mostly obsolete
Recent research has shown that the connections between old Scottish units, old English units and even continental units were much simpler and more rational than what one would believe after reading this article. E.g. there was no difference between the Scottish and English inches and feet. The ell of 37 inches was also used in England for some time. It is also known that the Rhineland foot was in use in England: 1 rod = 16½ feet = 16 Rhineland feet, and an ell was just 3 Rhineland feet. This appears to have been the unit used in cloth trade with the continent. The Scottish troy pound is not even mentioned. It consisted of 16 ounces of the English troy pound of 12 ounces. And so on.
There is a wealth of information in the book by Connor and Simpson (2004): "Weights and Measures in Scotland". E.g. here are a few sentences regarding the inch:
Thus all three of the early surviving ell beds (the 1500 Inverkeithing ell, the sixteenth-century and 1663 Edinburgh ells) share a length of about 37.05 inches, and we can appreciate from the 1663 ell that these have been made to incorporate a play of about 0.05 inches […]. The difficulty that arises if the legal ell is considered to be even fractionally longer than 37 inches is that it may be understood as comprising 37 slightly larger inches. This situation arose in the eighteenth century when a larger ell was designated for specific administrative reasons, and also in the nineteenth century when misplaced antiquarian zeal erected an apparently independent Scottish inch on a determination of the length of the old Edinburgh ell (bed) as 37.06 inches. The fact is that the Scottish and English inches are identical.
I would like to correct these things while I have the book, but I realise that this topic is related to things like national identity. Any thoughts? --Hans Adler (talk) 12:26, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
- Sorry, I'm well aware that some people think that Scotland is a part of England (or wish it to be), but there is absolutely no reason to merge this article. Besides which, there are many units which do not have the same names as English ones. Even those which do, such as the acre and the mile are of different sizes. --MacRusgail (talk) 16:04, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
-
- Sorry I wasn't clear. Of course this article is needed. I see now how my post can be understood as questioning its existence, although I intended the opposite. It's just that it seems to be based on the state of historic knowledge from around 1900, and it can't be updated without some radical changes. Currently there isn't much more than a list of units, but there is potential here for a real article of at least 5 times the current size.
- Since you mention the miles: There is an interesting story here. In both systems the mile consisted of 8 furlongs. But the Scottish furlong was 40 falls of 6 ells each, while the English furlong was 40 rods. So the Scottish system had more internal consistency, because the English rod seems to have been based on the Rhineland foot and had the strange length of 16½ English feet. We should explain this kind of thing in the article, not just list the units.
- But it really gets interesting with the weights. Scotland had its own versions of the Tower pound, troy pound and avoirdupois pound, and they had interesting connections with weight units in England, France and Flanders. You might want to have a look at this article: Connor, R.D. (1995). "The evolution of weighing". Canadian Chemical News. (It mentions Scotland only in passing, but the book applies these things to the Scottish burghs.)
- The history of the Scottish standards (i.e. the physical objects) is also remarkable. It seems that over several centuries these were centrally distributed to the burghs.
- I do think, however, that perhaps inch (Scots) could be merged into inch because they seem to have been the same unit after all. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:07, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
