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The former Weights and Measures office in Seven Sisters, London (590 Seven Sisters Road). The imperial system of units, imperial system or imperial units (also known as British Imperial [1] or Exchequer Standards of 1826) is the system of units first defined in the British Weights and Measures Act 1824 and continued to be developed through a series of Weights and Measures Acts and amendments.
Spat – a unit of length equal to 1,000,000,000 km ... one imperial and one U.S. Both equaled about 9 litres. ... Old Cornish units of measurement; Old Irish units ...
During the reform of weights and measures legislation in the United Kingdom in 1824, old gallons were replaced by the new imperial gallon, which was defined to be the volume of 10 pounds of water at 62 °F (17 °C), and was determined experimentally to be 277.42 cubic inches (4.54609 litres).
1878 41 & 42 Vict. c. 49 — Weights and Measures Act 1878 defined the Imperial standard yard and pound; enumerated the secondary standards of measure and weight derived from the Imperial standards; required all trade by weight or measure to be in terms of one of the Imperial weights or measures or some multiple part thereof; abolished the Troy ...
[a] Originally defined as the volume of 10 pounds (4.54 kg) of distilled water (under certain conditions), [b] then redefined by the Weights and Measures Act 1985 to be exactly 4.546 09 L (277.4 cu in), the imperial gallon is close in size to the old ale gallon.
Detail of a cubit rod in the Museo Egizio of Turin The earliest recorded systems of weights and measures originate in the 3rd or 4th millennium BC. Even the very earliest civilizations needed measurement for purposes of agriculture, construction and trade. Early standard units might only have applied to a single community or small region, with every area developing its own standards for ...
The informal public imperial measurement standards erected at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London, in the 19th century: 1 British yard, 2 feet, 1 foot, 6 inches, and 3 inches. The inexact monument was designed to permit rods of the correct measure to fit snugly into its pins at an ambient temperature of 62 °F (16.66 °C).
The basic unit of length in the imperial and U.S. customary systems is the yard, defined as exactly 0.9144 m by international treaty in 1959. [2] [5] Common imperial units and U.S. customary units of length include: [6] thou or mil (1 ⁄ 1000 of an inch) inch (25.4 mm) foot (12 inches, 0.3048 m) yard (3 feet, 0.9144 m)