5 ms·

These are beautiful - but the project kind of misrepresents how ancient measurements worked. Outside of building sites in Medieval Europe it would be common fo

These are beautiful - but the project kind of misrepresents how ancient measurements worked. Outside of building sites in Medieval Europe it would be common for the head architect to have the outline of his hand on a sign. The idea being that even "crude" measurements like hand-widths and thumb lengths would be universally agreed upon for the project. You can see some of this at work watching documentaries of the Guédelon Castle project - you see just how little precise measurements were actually needed. A lot of tasks we are used to accomplishing through high precision measurement, they instead use clever tricks of geometry. And jigs - lots of jigs. In this way, ancient craftsmen were genius - often understanding some pretty profound principles of geometry through experience and intuition alone. Measurements, such as they existed, were always a very "local" affair. It wasn't until empires and mass manufacturing that the need for "standardized" measurements. The intelligence of the individual craftsman became less important - the ability to follow instructions became more. In a way modern measurements are a form of artificial intelligence - an automation tool.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
JoeAltmaier 2y ago
In fact in the US it wasn't until Herbert Hoover, in his capacity as Secretary of Commerce in the 1920's, standardized everything from pipe gauges and thread counts to bedpans and light sockets. He published a government schedule which soon got adopted nationwide. It enabled a farmer in Wyoming to order parts from a manufacturer in Massachusetts and they would fit when they arrived.
- legitster 2y ago
  Although, it should be noted that the standardization of measurements themselves was mostly done by the founding of the country. Authority of the government to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures" is in the constitution. From its founding, the US had one of the largest contiguously agreed upon measurement system in the world, sidestepping the problems of European measurement systems which changed border to border - even predating the official adoption of the Metric system in France. And it's largely why it's stuck around until today.
  - darby_nine 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - inglor_cz 2y ago
      While I am frustrated by freedom units sometimes, the truth is that the US simply started too late and the transition costs are too high. It is a different story to change measuring units in a still-mostly-rural society with relatively few engineers and engineering projects - which describes Europe in the late 19th century.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
jzxy 2y ago
>It wasn't until empires and mass manufacturing that the need for "standardized" measurements. You have the cause and effect backwards. Mass manufacturing didn't create a need for standardized measurements. Standardized measurements allowed the existence of mass manufacturing. Mass manufacturing wasn't even close to a possibility before that. Measurements weren't created for a need that didn't even exist yet. You can read on the history of the various systems of measurements and their motivations that they weren't exactly concerned with ideas of "mass production". >In 1669, Jean Picard, a French astronomer, was the first person to measure the Earth accurately. In a survey spanning one degree of latitude, he erred by only 0.44% 1669! that's long before any attempt at building mechanization of labor. It's like how a lot of math was seemingly useless and existed just for its own sake until people found real applications for certain algorithms. The obsession of a handful of people towards precision measurement is what allowed the industrial civilization to truly emerge.
- legitster 2y ago
  Chicken and egg maybe? It depends on where you define the start of industrialization. If you did not have cheap, available steel no one would have wasted it on pressure vessels and saws and instruments of precision. The innovations of Darby and Bessemer were done largely by hand-measured built machines. Jean Picard's tools of measurement themselves would have been custom built by hand for him, and his results were measured in a very regional French measurement of feet. Standardization != precision.
- kragen 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy says aristotle: off by a factor of almost 2 eratosthenes: off by -2.4–+0.8%, or maybe up to 15%, because we aren't sure how big his stadia were ptolemy: at first accepting eratosthenes' figure, he later switched to a figure that was about 30% low aryabhata: probably off by about 0.8%, though again it's unclear how big his yojana were caliph al-ma'amun: probably off by about 0.45%, and in this case the source of error is not the unit of measurement but the different accounts of how many of them they measured in a degree the fact that 1500 years ago aryabhata bothered to give the earth's diameter as 1581 1⁄24 yojanas strongly suggests that he believed the size of a yojana to be defined to within less than 26 parts per million; remember that he had to do all his calculations mentally or by hand, so extra significant figures were extra significant labor however, all of these measurements postdate the monuments of rameses from 3200 years ago, which contain multiple precisely measured statues constructed all over egypt (though i don't have references on what the tolerances were on the statues)
btbuildem 2y ago
That's a great observation! Measuring with ruler / tape / string isn't the most reliable way to do it -- using a full length of something like a stick, is. This is the basis of the simplest of jigs: cut a piece, then cut all the other pieces you want to be like that piece, by using that piece as a guide. The need for specific measurements seems to have arisen alongside industrialization of building processes - in the times before that, measurements were relative (eg, piece A is 3x piece B, etc). It's telling that a lot of the "traditional" measurements we have (looking at you, metric system) refer to body parts. We used to measure things in relation to the human body.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- legitster 2y ago
  Another fascinating tidbit I learned from the curator at an air museum - the transition from wooden airplanes to metal airplanes was not a material constraint! In many ways, wood continued to be a superior building material for airplanes even by the advent of WWII. The transition from wood to metal was driven primarily as a manufacturing improvement. Wood changed and warped as you built the airplane, and it required a lot of expertise and knowledge of the properties of wood to properly tie together the structure. Metal weighted more and cost more - but you could step away from a production line and the piece would not have changed shape on you.
  - throw0101c 2y ago
    > In many ways, wood continued to be a superior building material for airplanes even by the advent of WWII. A mostly-wood WW2 airplane: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito
    - UncleSlacky 2y ago
      Also notably stealthy as a result of its wooden construction: From https://militaryhistorynow.com/2014/11/28/flying-under-the-radar-the-top-secret-history-of-stealth-warplanes/ https://militaryhistorynow.com/2014/11/28/flying-under-the-r... "British aircraft designers got out to an early lead with the De Havilland DH. 98 Mosquito. Introduced in 1941, the twin-engine, fighter/bomber’s airframe was constructed of radar absorbing plywood. While not specifically designed to be stealthy from the outset, the plane’s low signature as well as its top speed of nearly 600 km/h (375 mph) made it a tough target to track for Axis radar operators."
cjohnson318 2y ago
My dad, a sign painter, would always splay his hand out and measure things from his pinky to his thumb, which was about 10 inches.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

JoeAltmaier 2y ago

In fact in the US it wasn't until Herbert Hoover, in his capacity as Secretary of Commerce in the 1920's, standardized everything from pipe gauges and thread counts to bedpans and light sockets. He published a government schedule which soon got adopted nationwide. It enabled a farmer in Wyoming to order parts from a manufacturer in Massachusetts and they would fit when they arrived.

legitster 2y ago
Although, it should be noted that the standardization of measurements themselves was mostly done by the founding of the country. Authority of the government to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures" is in the constitution. From its founding, the US had one of the largest contiguously agreed upon measurement system in the world, sidestepping the problems of European measurement systems which changed border to border - even predating the official adoption of the Metric system in France. And it's largely why it's stuck around until today.
- darby_nine 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    While I am frustrated by freedom units sometimes, the truth is that the US simply started too late and the transition costs are too high. It is a different story to change measuring units in a still-mostly-rural society with relatively few engineers and engineering projects - which describes Europe in the late 19th century.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

jzxy 2y ago

>It wasn't until empires and mass manufacturing that the need for "standardized" measurements. You have the cause and effect backwards. Mass manufacturing didn't create a need for standardized measurements. Standardized measurements allowed the existence of mass manufacturing. Mass manufacturing wasn't even close to a possibility before that. Measurements weren't created for a need that didn't even exist yet. You can read on the history of the various systems of measurements and their motivations that they weren't exactly concerned with ideas of "mass production". >In 1669, Jean Picard, a French astronomer, was the first person to measure the Earth accurately. In a survey spanning one degree of latitude, he erred by only 0.44% 1669! that's long before any attempt at building mechanization of labor. It's like how a lot of math was seemingly useless and existed just for its own sake until people found real applications for certain algorithms. The obsession of a handful of people towards precision measurement is what allowed the industrial civilization to truly emerge.

legitster 2y ago
Chicken and egg maybe? It depends on where you define the start of industrialization. If you did not have cheap, available steel no one would have wasted it on pressure vessels and saws and instruments of precision. The innovations of Darby and Bessemer were done largely by hand-measured built machines. Jean Picard's tools of measurement themselves would have been custom built by hand for him, and his results were measured in a very regional French measurement of feet. Standardization != precision.
kragen 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy says aristotle: off by a factor of almost 2 eratosthenes: off by -2.4–+0.8%, or maybe up to 15%, because we aren't sure how big his stadia were ptolemy: at first accepting eratosthenes' figure, he later switched to a figure that was about 30% low aryabhata: probably off by about 0.8%, though again it's unclear how big his yojana were caliph al-ma'amun: probably off by about 0.45%, and in this case the source of error is not the unit of measurement but the different accounts of how many of them they measured in a degree the fact that 1500 years ago aryabhata bothered to give the earth's diameter as 1581 1⁄24 yojanas strongly suggests that he believed the size of a yojana to be defined to within less than 26 parts per million; remember that he had to do all his calculations mentally or by hand, so extra significant figures were extra significant labor however, all of these measurements postdate the monuments of rameses from 3200 years ago, which contain multiple precisely measured statues constructed all over egypt (though i don't have references on what the tolerances were on the statues)

btbuildem 2y ago

That's a great observation! Measuring with ruler / tape / string isn't the most reliable way to do it -- using a full length of something like a stick, is. This is the basis of the simplest of jigs: cut a piece, then cut all the other pieces you want to be like that piece, by using that piece as a guide. The need for specific measurements seems to have arisen alongside industrialization of building processes - in the times before that, measurements were relative (eg, piece A is 3x piece B, etc). It's telling that a lot of the "traditional" measurements we have (looking at you, metric system) refer to body parts. We used to measure things in relation to the human body.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
legitster 2y ago
Another fascinating tidbit I learned from the curator at an air museum - the transition from wooden airplanes to metal airplanes was not a material constraint! In many ways, wood continued to be a superior building material for airplanes even by the advent of WWII. The transition from wood to metal was driven primarily as a manufacturing improvement. Wood changed and warped as you built the airplane, and it required a lot of expertise and knowledge of the properties of wood to properly tie together the structure. Metal weighted more and cost more - but you could step away from a production line and the piece would not have changed shape on you.
- throw0101c 2y ago
  > In many ways, wood continued to be a superior building material for airplanes even by the advent of WWII. A mostly-wood WW2 airplane: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito
  - UncleSlacky 2y ago
    Also notably stealthy as a result of its wooden construction: From https://militaryhistorynow.com/2014/11/28/flying-under-the-radar-the-top-secret-history-of-stealth-warplanes/ https://militaryhistorynow.com/2014/11/28/flying-under-the-r... "British aircraft designers got out to an early lead with the De Havilland DH. 98 Mosquito. Introduced in 1941, the twin-engine, fighter/bomber’s airframe was constructed of radar absorbing plywood. While not specifically designed to be stealthy from the outset, the plane’s low signature as well as its top speed of nearly 600 km/h (375 mph) made it a tough target to track for Axis radar operators."

cjohnson318 2y ago

My dad, a sign painter, would always splay his hand out and measure things from his pinky to his thumb, which was about 10 inches.