Seen today at the magnificent Guildhall, Lavenham (Suffolk), in a display about the work of coopers in the area, actual examples of:

A 'Pin' of beer - 4 1/2 gallons
A 'Firkin' of beer - 9 gallons
A 'Kilderkin of beer - 18 gallons, and
A 'Barrel' of beer - 36 gallons (= 288 pints or 5760 fluid ounces, Leonard please note)

So, Inchworm, you can add 'Roll out the Barrel' to your list of song titles with British weights and measures in them.

Fascinating how the wood (it had to be oak) used for the casks of beer had to cut across the 'medullary rays' - lines of soft tissue emanating from the centre of the trunk out to the edge, across the grainy circles which are formed after each year's growth.
The medullary rays, being made of tightly packed soft tissue, were impervious. Only by cutting the oak in a certain way could you ensure there was no leakage o the beer.

Also hadn't realised the extent to which England's growing properity in the 13th and 14th centuries was founded on the export of wool. The whole world wanted it

Tony Bennett

Not relevent, but there is no thread for it: Is there any unit in the Imperial system that is smaller than a 10th of a thou?

A very interesting piece BTW Tony.

A grain (gr) in the apothecaries' troy weight system was 1/5760 of a troy pound (lb).

Note the comparison with a fluid ounce being 1/5760 of a barrel.

20 grains (gr) = 1 drug scruple (dS)
3 drug scruples (dS) = 1 drug dram (d3)
8 drug drams (d3) = 1 troy ounce (tZ)
12 troy ounces (tZ) = 1 troy pound (lb)

1 grain is 1/7000 of an avoirdupois pound

1 grain is also 1/14111998 of a troy ton

A second is 1/3600 of a degree, therefore 1/1296000 of a full 'compass', or circle.

Note, the diameter of the earth is around 1296000 feet. This is no coincidence.

A second is 1/31536000 of a 365-day year.

There are 35,840 ounces in a ton i.e. an ounce is 1/35840 of a ton

Tony Bennett

When you said 10th of a thou, were you refering to the engineering term for a ten thousandth of an inch?

Maybe I missed the significance of your post, but that doesn't really answer my question of whther there is a unit (length, obviously) that is smaller than the thou (or does it?)

Yes.

How about a hundred-thousandth of an inch, or a millionth of an inch?

A millionth of an inch= a minch?
I was thinking, for a billionth- Bill, will, wilf r fred.

In that case the answer to your question is that you can refer to a unit on that basis as small as you like, e.g. a hundreth of a thou, a millionth of an inch and so on. I'm pretty sure there are no imperial units independently named to express measurements as small as that. British (and probably US) engineeering industry adopted the convention of decimalising the inch for that reason. In fact they called the thou a 'mil' to borrow from the metric convention. (This is before most of industry went metric).

It is interesting to note that whenever non-metric measures are extended to express the very small or the very large there is a tendency to decimalise and/or use metric prefixes. The 'k' is quite common now in financial speak. Whenever imperial minded people describe approximate distances they talk in tens, hundreds or thousands of yards or miles. Astronomers often measure interstellar distances in parsecs rather than metres, but also use the kiloparsec or megaparsec.

When it comes down to it we are more inclined to think in powers of ten than any other number base.

Dozens, scores etc. People, when grouping large numbers or small, often work to a base of ten (colloquially or not) because we have a base ten counting system. The end.

Absolutely, that is a big advantage of metric. It fits perfectly with the general purpose system of numbers.

That is indeed an advantage of the metric system. However, the primary purpose of measuring units is to measure things; in this regard, metric is sorely lacking.

(BTW, most industry in the US continues to use traditional units. Only a minority have converted to metric.)

No, you didn't quite get the point. People will often round to the nearest hundred in numbers where relating it to human perception is a little less relevent, although, these numbers tend to be on a dozenal or binary basis still eg. 2000, 4000, 8000 or 600, 1200, 2400 etc.

Presumably you have never heard people reckon things in terms of scores or dozens.

The strength of our system is that it can be used decimally when that is required or desirable and used proportionately and to a 12/16 basis when that is required.

Above message to pip.

It is just as easy to measure things in metric as it is in any other units.

Yes of course I have heard of people using such phrases as "dozens of this or that", although scores is a bit less common these days. People rarely count in twelves though and I am sure people don't deliberately focus on so called binary or dozenal numbers like 2000, 4000, 2400 etc.

I grew up with the metric system and frankly, I think in decimals.
I suppose that people who have been educated in metric (and use it everyday) think in decimals, whereas people who use the imperial system tend to perceive quantities in binary or dozenal terms.

Actually, speaking of "dozens":
One thing that I'll probably never understand is when people refer to "half a dozen". What's wrong with the number 6 ?

Ralf

Ralf, the answer to your question is in the post above yours.

You! YOU are responsible for my failure!

I SHALL HAVE MY VENGEANCE! I SHALL MAKE YOU FEEL MY WRATH!

pip wrote: "people rarely count in twelves now".

'Two dozen eggs, please'

Post Office stamps of 100 1st or 2nd class are arranged in 24s

Wine bottles are in cases of 12

How many buttons on a typical touch telephone?

Twelve Days of Christmas & Twelfth Night

Twelve inches in a foot


Tony Bennett