MPH or KMH?

[Cudzoziemiec]

Seems that historically, the stone was a varying number of pounds according to what was being weighed.

The English stone under law varied by commodity and in practice varied according to local standards. The Assize of Weights and Measures, a statute of uncertain date from c. 1300, describes stones of 5 merchants' pounds used for glass; stones of 8 lb. used for beeswax, sugar, pepper, alum, cumin, almonds,[12] cinnamon, and nutmegs;[13] stones of 12 lb. used for lead; and the London stone of ​12 1⁄2 lb. used for wool.[12][13] In 1350 Edward III issued a new statute defining the stone weight, to be used for wool and "other Merchandizes", at 14 pounds,[nb 2] reaffirmed by Henry VII in 1495.[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit)
So a stone of lead really might weigh more than a stone of feathers! But then it also might have weighed less...

I think you've explained this inadvertently. In the early days of quantifying by weight, the quantities of commodities being weighed had to be practical to lift and contain, so weighing 'feathers' (to use your example) would have required a smaller measuring stone than weighing gold, for example, as it would have been impractical to use the same weight for both.

So it was determined not only by the need to know how much of something was there, but by practical considerations of handling in a marketplace, warehouse or farmyard. That seems highly sensible.

[Davef]

Seems that historically, the stone was a varying number of pounds according to what was being weighed.

Same with the Bushel. This is what makes so many imperial units so fucking batshit.

The barrel as a unit also changes depending on what it's designed to hold.

see previous statement re drunken lobster.

J

Bat guano is always measured in standard imperial bushels.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I don't know about the bushel and barrel but the stone was standardized by Edward III in 1350, so really quite a long time ago. Although, as is the way of standards, this seems to have got a bit messed up later (perhaps following unification with Scotland, where the stone was 16 lbs) and there were further attempts at standardization in 1824 and 1835.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, they adopted the metric system in 1817 which resulted in... a stone of 6 (local) pounds where previously it had been 8!

Metric stone
In the Netherlands, where the metric system was adopted in 1817, the pond (pound) was set equal to a kilogram, and the steen (stone), which had previously been 8 Amsterdam pond (3.953 kg), was redefined as being 3 kg.[43] In modern colloquial Dutch, a pond is used as an alternative for 500 grams or half a kilogram, while the ons is used for a weight of 100 grams, being 1/5 pond.

The Ons thing caused an issue when baking a cake with my then Dutch partner, we were using my gran's recipe, which is of course in ounces, I said we needed 12 ounces. Said partner weighs out 1.2kg. Not the 340g I was expecting...

The pond == 500g thing kinda makes sense. 454g is close enough to 500g for most things. You'd think the ons would be 25g, not 100g, 25g being close enough to 28.3g for most things. But no...

J

Sounds like the Dutch preserved the terms they were used to but with new definitions that fitted convenient slots in the new system rather than the previous definitions. And doubtless a lot of people would have carried on using the old definitions, while, with Amsterdam  being a big international trading centre, some would have been using similar terms but in their (English, Scottish, German, etc) usages. Metrication of Babel!

[TimC]

Seems that historically, the stone was a varying number of pounds according to what was being weighed.

The English stone under law varied by commodity and in practice varied according to local standards. The Assize of Weights and Measures, a statute of uncertain date from c. 1300, describes stones of 5 merchants' pounds used for glass; stones of 8 lb. used for beeswax, sugar, pepper, alum, cumin, almonds,[12] cinnamon, and nutmegs;[13] stones of 12 lb. used for lead; and the London stone of ​12 1⁄2 lb. used for wool.[12][13] In 1350 Edward III issued a new statute defining the stone weight, to be used for wool and "other Merchandizes", at 14 pounds,[nb 2] reaffirmed by Henry VII in 1495.[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit)
So a stone of lead really might weigh more than a stone of feathers! But then it also might have weighed less...

I think you've explained this inadvertently. In the early days of quantifying by weight, the quantities of commodities being weighed had to be practical to lift and contain, so weighing 'feathers' (to use your example) would have required a smaller measuring stone than weighing gold, for example, as it would have been impractical to use the same weight for both.

So it was determined not only by the need to know how much of something was there, but by practical considerations of handling in a marketplace, warehouse or farmyard. That seems highly sensible.

Purely a guess on my part; even though I'm old, don't assume any historical knowledge!

[Davef]

I don't know about the bushel and barrel but the stone was standardized by Edward III in 1350, so really quite a long time ago. Although, as is the way of standards, this seems to have got a bit messed up later (perhaps following unification with Scotland, where the stone was 16 lbs) and there were further attempts at standardization in 1824 and 1835.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, they adopted the metric system in 1817 which resulted in... a stone of 6 (local) pounds where previously it had been 8!

Metric stone
In the Netherlands, where the metric system was adopted in 1817, the pond (pound) was set equal to a kilogram, and the steen (stone), which had previously been 8 Amsterdam pond (3.953 kg), was redefined as being 3 kg.[43] In modern colloquial Dutch, a pond is used as an alternative for 500 grams or half a kilogram, while the ons is used for a weight of 100 grams, being 1/5 pond.

The Ons thing caused an issue when baking a cake with my then Dutch partner, we were using my gran's recipe, which is of course in ounces, I said we needed 12 ounces. Said partner weighs out 1.2kg. Not the 340g I was expecting...

The pond == 500g thing kinda makes sense. 454g is close enough to 500g for most things. You'd think the ons would be 25g, not 100g, 25g being close enough to 28.3g for most things. But no...

J

In France they still use the word livre (old pound) to mean 500g.

[citoyen]

In France they still use the word livre (old pound) to mean 500g.

And if you order a 'demi' in a bar, it's half a pint (250ml) rather than half a litre.

[Davef]

In France they still use the word livre (old pound) to mean 500g.

And if you order a 'demi' in a bar, it's half a pint (250ml) rather than half a litre.

.. and a pint is 500ml not to be confused with the English pint 568ml or the old Parisian pinte of 930ml.

[bairn again]

I default to metric, as most of my need to measure distance relates to audax cycling.  Even in cosmopolitan Edinburgh Im viewed with suspicion by most non cycling people as a result.  Its seen as an unforgivable continental affectation, further evidenced by my insistence on "gilet" and not "body warmer". 

As an aside, in the late 1970s my local council where I grew up (Falkirk & District) decided that any new road signs would be in KMs rather than miles.  I think that they hardly did any, but I recall it being a local story at the time and I know for sure that there was definitely one on the outskirts of Grangemouth heading towards Old Polmont at that time (long since replaced by one in miles probably with some useless Gaelic added for good measure).     


 

[Salvatore]

An entirely practical unit I came across recently. (7.5 km is ¾ of a Swedish mile). Poron is genitive of poro (=reindeer), and kusema is from kusta (=to piss).

I'm going to use the poronkusema (pl poronkusemat) exclusively from now on.

[Kim]

Can you derive a whole system of measurements from that?

We've got length.
Time is presumably the time taken for a reindeer to empty its bladder, so around 21 seconds.
Quantity, just count out the water molecules in a bladder's worth of urine.
Temperature, based on the body temperature of a reindeer and the freezing point of urine.
Mass of a standard bladder's worth at body temperature.

Electric current and luminous intensity could be tricky...

[Cudzoziemiec]

I'm sure you could do something with the conductivity of reindeer urine. And some species' urine is luminescent under UV light. Probably not reindeer's, unless maybe you feed them something weird.

[Salvatore]

Can you derive a whole system of measurements from that?

We've got length.
Time is presumably the time taken for a reindeer to empty its bladder, so around 21 seconds.
Quantity, just count out the water molecules in a bladder's worth of urine.
Temperature, based on the body temperature of a reindeer and the freezing point of urine.
Mass of a standard bladder's worth at body temperature.

Electric current and luminous intensity could be tricky...

At Pokka, which is on the map but nothing on the ground (no shops, but a cafe which is the only place to spend money in 190 km 25 poronkusemat) there's an artist's impression of a reindeer (poro) at -51-5° C, but it's eating, not kusee (or strictly speaking ei kuse)

[Tim Hall]

I'm sure you could do something with the conductivity of reindeer urine. And some species' urine is luminescent under UV light. Probably not reindeer's, unless maybe you feed them something weird.

Mushrooms. Isn't drinking urine of reindeer that have eaten mushrooms the basis for flying reindeer (Rudolph et al) stories?

[Cudzoziemiec]

Sounds quite likely. I'd turn to our Finnish expert for further information...

[Mr Larrington]

Can you derive a whole system of measurements from that?

We've got length.
Time is presumably the time taken for a reindeer to empty its bladder, so around 21 seconds.
Quantity, just count out the water molecules in a bladder's worth of urine.
Temperature, based on the body temperature of a reindeer and the freezing point of urine.
Mass of a standard bladder's worth at body temperature.

Electric current and luminous intensity could be tricky...

The latter could be derived from the light emitted from a Sami Standard reindeer’s nose.

[Salvatore]

I'm sure you could do something with the conductivity of reindeer urine. And some species' urine is luminescent under UV light. Probably not reindeer's, unless maybe you feed them something weird.

Mushrooms. Isn't drinking urine of reindeer that have eaten mushrooms the basis for flying reindeer (Rudolph et al) stories?

According to https://www.livescience.com/25731-magic-mushrooms-santa-claus.html, it might be something like that, also coming down the chimney and bringing a fir tree into your house. Possibly.

"As the story goes, up until a few hundred years ago these practicing shamans or priests connected to the older traditions would collect Amanita muscaria (the Holy Mushroom), dry them, and then give them as gifts on the winter solstice," Rush told LiveScience. "Because snow is usually blocking doors, there was an opening in the roof through which people entered and exited, thus the chimney story."

[Cudzoziemiec]

Wow, it wouldn't have occurred to me the chimney could be connected with it in that way. But what's the thing about the fir tree? Perhaps people would hang the dried mushrooms from a fir branch? Also, wasn't the original St Nicholas from Turkey. They might have mushrooms but they don't have reindeer!

[Salvatore]

Wow, it wouldn't have occurred to me the chimney could be connected with it in that way. But what's the thing about the fir tree? Perhaps people would hang the dried mushrooms from a fir branch? Also, wasn't the original St Nicholas from Turkey. They might have mushrooms but they don't have reindeer!

According to the website, Amanita muscaria is to be found under such trees, which makes them special. And the shamen would dress up like the mushroom (in red).   and "Many of these traditions were merged or projected upon Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century saint who was known for his generosity, as the story goes."

[Davef]

Wow, it wouldn't have occurred to me the chimney could be connected with it in that way. But what's the thing about the fir tree? Perhaps people would hang the dried mushrooms from a fir branch? Also, wasn't the original St Nicholas from Turkey. They might have mushrooms but they don't have reindeer!

According to the website, Amanita muscaria is to be found under such trees, which makes them special. And the shamen would dress up like the mushroom (in red).   and "Many of these traditions were merged or projected upon Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century saint who was known for his generosity, as the story goes."

I thought Father Christmas wore green until Coca Cola got in on the act.

[Salvatore]

Wow, it wouldn't have occurred to me the chimney could be connected with it in that way. But what's the thing about the fir tree? Perhaps people would hang the dried mushrooms from a fir branch? Also, wasn't the original St Nicholas from Turkey. They might have mushrooms but they don't have reindeer!

According to the website, Amanita muscaria is to be found under such trees, which makes them special. And the shamen would dress up like the mushroom (in red).   and "Many of these traditions were merged or projected upon Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century saint who was known for his generosity, as the story goes."

I thought Father Christmas wore green until Coca Cola got in on the act.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-claus-that-refreshes/

The image of Santa Claus as a jolly large man in a red-and-white suit was the standard long before Coca-Cola co-opted it for their advertising.

[slugbait]

Of course the real fun starts when you take a beloved imperial unit and use it as basis for a decimal system. I can tell you that my body weight is almost exactly 3 kiloounces and I'm 1.174 millimiles tall. (And I cycled almost exactly one ninth megafurlong in 2020.)

[Davef]

Of course the real fun starts when you take a beloved imperial unit and use it as basis for a decimal system. I can tell you that my body weight is almost exactly 3 kiloounces and I'm 1.174 millimiles tall. (And I cycled almost exactly one ninth megafurlong in 2020.)

As I mentioned somewhere above the kilofurlong is the standard unit of audax.

[slugbait]

As I mentioned somewhere above the kilofurlong is the standard unit of audax.

Sorry, Dave. I should read more carefully. I didn't even realize that 1 kilofurlong is almost exactly 200km.

[De Sisti]

KPH when on an audax (so that I can follow directions on a routesheet). MPH all other times.