Early Measures

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Early Measures Early measurements were usually
based on parts of the body hand, palm etc.
An inch at different times in history was defined
as the length of a mans thumb, or its width, or
the length of a three grains of barleycorn. The
old British measurement of a foot could be
Anyones foot (big or small!) until the measure
was standardised in the 13th century. The
metre In 1791 the French chose the metre as
their unit of length. The metre was defined
as one ten-millionth of the length of a line
drawn on the Earths surface going directly
south from the North Pole (through Paris!) to
the Equator. The French calculated that the
Earths circumference from pole to pole would be
40 million metres thats 40,000km. The metre
is the official unit of length in many countries.
There is only one official metre stick in the
world. It was made in 1889, of platinum, and is
kept in France. To allow scientists to measure a
metre very accurately, the metre is now defined
as the length of that official stick measured by
the speed of light!
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