Fish at the Birmingham Market
Birmingham's seafood, ever since the railways brought fresh catch to the centre of the country, is rich in fish, crab, lobster and shellfish, including mussels and oysters. I bought two herrings for lunch yesterday, rolled them in oats and fried them in butter. I also bought soft herring roes which I rolled in flour and cooked the same way, served on toast for tea. Note that weighs and prices are given for traditional avoirdupois as well as the more recent metric.
The idea of a metric system has been attributed to John Wilkins, first secretary of the Royal Society of London in 1668. It did not catch on. England continued with its existing system of various weights and measures. In 1670 Gabriel Mouton, a French abbot and scientist, proposed a decimal system of measurement based on the circumference of the Earth. His suggestion was a unit, milliare, that was defined as a minute of arc along a meridian. He then suggested a system of sub-units, dividing successively by factors of ten into the centuria, decuria, virga, virgula, decima, centesima, and millesima.
His ideas attracted interest and were supported by Jean Picard as well as Huygens in 1673, and also studied at the Royal Society in London. In 1673, Gottfried Leibniz independently made proposals similar to those of Mouton.
The proliferation of disparate measurement systems was one of the most frequent causes of disputes amongst merchants and between citizens and tax collectors. A unified country with a single currency and a countrywide market, as most European countries were becoming by the end of the 18th century, had a very strong economic incentive and was in a position to break with this situation and standardise on a measuring system. Within a very short time - a mere two centuries - the UK formally adopted such a system, though we do speak of 'metric martys'
- people recently jailed for persistently refusing to quote metric prices for their wares. [For all but this last sentence, thanks to Wikipedia's entry on Metric Systems]
Fish at the Birmingham Market
Birmingham's seafood, ever since the railways brought fresh catch to the centre of the country, is rich in fish, crab, lobster and shellfish, including mussels and oysters. I bought two herrings for lunch yesterday, rolled them in oats and fried them in butter. I also bought soft herring roes which I rolled in flour and cooked the same way, served on toast for tea. Note that weighs and prices are given for traditional avoirdupois as well as the more recent metric.
The idea of a metric system has been attributed to John Wilkins, first secretary of the Royal Society of London in 1668. It did not catch on. England continued with its existing system of various weights and measures. In 1670 Gabriel Mouton, a French abbot and scientist, proposed a decimal system of measurement based on the circumference of the Earth. His suggestion was a unit, milliare, that was defined as a minute of arc along a meridian. He then suggested a system of sub-units, dividing successively by factors of ten into the centuria, decuria, virga, virgula, decima, centesima, and millesima.
His ideas attracted interest and were supported by Jean Picard as well as Huygens in 1673, and also studied at the Royal Society in London. In 1673, Gottfried Leibniz independently made proposals similar to those of Mouton.
The proliferation of disparate measurement systems was one of the most frequent causes of disputes amongst merchants and between citizens and tax collectors. A unified country with a single currency and a countrywide market, as most European countries were becoming by the end of the 18th century, had a very strong economic incentive and was in a position to break with this situation and standardise on a measuring system. Within a very short time - a mere two centuries - the UK formally adopted such a system, though we do speak of 'metric martys'
- people recently jailed for persistently refusing to quote metric prices for their wares. [For all but this last sentence, thanks to Wikipedia's entry on Metric Systems]