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In Sweden, a common system for weights and measures was introduced by law in 1665. Before that, there were a number of local variants. The system was slightly revised in 1735. In 1855, a decimal reform was instituted that defined a new Swedish inch as 1 ⁄ 10 foot. It did not last long, because the metric system was subsequently introduced in ...
In antiquity, systems of measurement were defined locally: the different units might be defined independently according to the length of a king's thumb or the size of his foot, the length of stride, the length of arm, or maybe the weight of water in a keg of specific size, perhaps itself defined in hands and knuckles. The unifying ...
This is a list of obsolete units of measurement, organized by type. These units of measurement are typically no longer used, though some may be in limited use in various regions. For units of measurement that are unusual but not necessarily obsolete, see List of unusual units of measurement .
English units were the units of measurement used in England up to 1826 (when they were replaced by Imperial units), which evolved as a combination of the Anglo-Saxon and Roman systems of units. Various standards have applied to English units at different times, in different places, and for different applications.
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. ( January 2024 ) The following is a topical outline of the English language Wikipedia articles on the topic of metrology and measurement .
A treatise written by Robertus Anglicus in 1271 shows that medieval craftsmen were attempting to design a purely mechanical clock (i.e. only driven by gravity) during this period. [80] Such clocks were a synthesis of earlier ideas derived from European and Islamic science, such as gearing systems, weight drives, and striking mechanisms. [81]
In the Venedotian Code used in Gwynedd, the basic field unit was the Welsh acre or erw, whose legal description—its breadth as far as a man can reach in either direction with an ox-goad as long as the long yoke (16 Welsh feet) and its length "thirty times that measure" [10] [5] —is noted by Owen as ambiguous. [10]
The Viking ell was the measure from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, about 18 inches (460 mm). The Viking or primitive ell was used in Iceland up to the 13th century. By the 13th century, a law set the "stika" as equal to two ells, which was the English ell of the time.