Technikatörténeti szemle 10. (1978)

A MÉRÉS ÉS A MÉRTÉKEK AZ EMBER MŰVELŐDÉSÉBEN című konferencián Budapesten, 1976. április 27–30-án elhangzott előadások II. - Zupko, R. E.: Angol súlyok és mértékek

circumstances. They preferred conducting their business transactions at markets employing non-standard or excessive measures since they could purchase supplies and pay taxes in larger units and later resell in smaller ones. In other words, they made greater profits in these markets than in those using the king's standards. Such practices also stifled programs of standardization and encouraged the multiplication of local weights and measures. 15 Among linear measures, for instance, only the inch, foot, yard, and ell had standards, while for capacity measures there were several gills, pints, quarts, pottles, gallons, and bushels. For apothecary, troy, and avoirdupois weights there were several standards each for the dram, scruple, ounce, pound, clove, stone, quarter-hundredweight, half-hundredweight, and hundredweight. 16 As a Parliamentary Committee Report of 1758 stated: Few people were... able to make proper Measures or Weights. Standards were made and destroyed as defective, that others no less so might supply their Places; and the Unskilfulness of the Artificers, joined to the Ignorance of those who were to size and check the Weights and Measures... occasioned a great Number which were all deemed legal, and yet disagreed ("Report from the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Original Standards of Weights and Measures in this Kingdom, and to Consider the Laws Relating Thereto," in Reports from Committees of the House of Commons (London, 1803), II (June 10, 1737 to May 21, 1765), p. 421). 17 For instance, it was maintained that any yard measure, of whatever material it might be constructed, automatically became a legal standard after it was stamped at the Exchequer. It apparently did not matter that it differed from others of a similar designation and bearing the same mark of authenticity. 18 The eleven statutes dealing with cloth measurements drafted during the reigns of Edward III, Richard II, and Henry IV are examples of this. Seven of these laws established minimum lengths and breadths for certain kinds of cloth sold in England; the other four, scattered among them, repealed their provisions.