146 FISCHER: LENGTH STANDARDS AND MEASUREMENTS 



Later writers attempt to prove by the measurement made of 

 squared slabs of stone used in the buildings of Babylon that 

 the cubit of 20.7 inches was used in their construction, but a 

 little reflection will serve to show the improbability of our being 

 able to derive the length of any standard to a tenth of an inch 

 from such crude data. 



Even when we come to our own yard, which is the earliest 

 standard of length now in use, we are in doubt. King Eadgar 

 is recorded to have decreed with the consent of his Wites or 

 council that ''the gird or yard kept at Winchester shall be the 

 standard" but all that can really be said as to the origin of the 

 yard is that it was probably brought over to England by the 

 Saxons. 



When we consider the crude means which existed for the con- 

 struction and preservation of standards and the lack of facili- 

 ties for constructing accurate copies of them, there is little wonder 

 that their original values should be in doubt. There can be no 

 question but that the unavoidable diversity which must have 

 existed in the standards for the measurement of exchangeable 

 commodities in the early organization of civilized society was a 

 serious embarrassment to commerce. The necessity for standards 

 of reference for purposes of barter was no 'doubt very soon 

 felt by primitive man; and later on when the commercial idea 

 became developed, the need of such standards was greatly in- 

 creased. As social and political institutions became more fully 

 developed, the values of the units of these primitive systems not 

 only changed but also the relations of the units, until, at the 

 present time, there is no reason to believe that there survives 

 in any existing system of weights and measures a single value 

 of any unit identical with one in use two thousand years ago. 

 As a matter of fact, it is impossible to trace back with any degree 

 of certainty any of the standards, which are now in use, for even 

 a few hundred years. 



In England the first attempts at scientific accuracy in matters 

 of measurement date from the beginning of the seventeenth 

 century when John Greaves, one of the earliest scientific metrol- 

 ogists, called attention to the dif'erence between the Roman and 



