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>It wasn't until empires and mass manufacturing that the need for "standardized" measurements. You have the cause and effect backwards. Mass manufacturing didn

by 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)
fhars 2y ago
That is also why now country became industrialized before they gave up their ancient foot/inch/ounce measurement systems and became fully metric. Or something like this.
- jzxy 2y ago
  "metric vs imperial" has very little to do with the idea of "standardizing measurements". A foot is just as well defined of a unit as a meter and is not the historical, ancient meaning of "just use your foot". In fact, the Imperial units system was standardized and enshrined in British law before the metric system got adopted in France.
saalweachter 2y ago
It's a shame that we entered the era of precision a century or so before we got some good science. We could have chosen so many different, cooler distance units than "one ten-millionth the distance between the North Pole and the equator, on a line passing through Paris". We could have chosen 1 nano-lightsecond! We could have chosen the wavelength of the hydrogen line! We had options, but we didn't even know them in 1800. Avogadro's number is about 3% off from 24!. Instead of defining our mole as the number of carbon-12 atoms equal in weight to 12 cubes of water each one-billionth the distance between the North Pole and the equator, on a line passing through Paris, on a side, we could have defined it as 4!!! Imagine telling that to aliens when explaining our standard units, they'd be so jealous they'd convert on the spot.
- legitster 2y ago
  More importantly, we missed a real opportunity to switch to a base-12 number system.
  - BitwiseFool 2y ago
    Now we have to wait for the French to have another revolution.
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      Liberté, égalité, duodecimilité!
    - arlort 2y ago
      And for people to start growing 6 fingers per hand instead of 5
      - saalweachter 2y ago
        Duodecimal also has a connection to counting on your fingers. You've got twelve finger bones/joints. Move your thumb from one to the next as you increment your count. Bampf, base twelve, no extra fingers needed.

by jzxy 2y ago

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)

fhars 2y ago

That is also why now country became industrialized before they gave up their ancient foot/inch/ounce measurement systems and became fully metric. Or something like this.

jzxy 2y ago
"metric vs imperial" has very little to do with the idea of "standardizing measurements". A foot is just as well defined of a unit as a meter and is not the historical, ancient meaning of "just use your foot". In fact, the Imperial units system was standardized and enshrined in British law before the metric system got adopted in France.

saalweachter 2y ago

It's a shame that we entered the era of precision a century or so before we got some good science. We could have chosen so many different, cooler distance units than "one ten-millionth the distance between the North Pole and the equator, on a line passing through Paris". We could have chosen 1 nano-lightsecond! We could have chosen the wavelength of the hydrogen line! We had options, but we didn't even know them in 1800. Avogadro's number is about 3% off from 24!. Instead of defining our mole as the number of carbon-12 atoms equal in weight to 12 cubes of water each one-billionth the distance between the North Pole and the equator, on a line passing through Paris, on a side, we could have defined it as 4!!! Imagine telling that to aliens when explaining our standard units, they'd be so jealous they'd convert on the spot.

legitster 2y ago
More importantly, we missed a real opportunity to switch to a base-12 number system.
- BitwiseFool 2y ago
  Now we have to wait for the French to have another revolution.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    Liberté, égalité, duodecimilité!
  - arlort 2y ago
    And for people to start growing 6 fingers per hand instead of 5
    - saalweachter 2y ago
      Duodecimal also has a connection to counting on your fingers. You've got twelve finger bones/joints. Move your thumb from one to the next as you increment your count. Bampf, base twelve, no extra fingers needed.