A day at the National Museum of Measurement

The summer holidays are in full swing, so John Frewen-Lord provides us with some light reading for a lazy day, plus a reminder that it is back to school in a month. Now where are my sun glasses?

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Changing standards and definitions, including several best forgotten

After the controversy of recent weeks with bashed bridges, furlongs and novel signs, we turn to something deadly dull – the definitions of length, mass (or weight) and capacity (or volume) and their relationships.

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Novel signs around the UK

Following on from our article last week about those curious signs in Southend, Ronnie Cohen, one of our regular readers, now reports on a few others that have attracted his attention.

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Signs of the past in Southend-on-Sea

There has been an exchange of views on Facebook recently about alterations to signs in Southend-on-Sea carried out by “activists” over a decade ago. This has provided an opportunity for Metric Views to restate the legal position and to discuss other related issues.

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Another bridge bashed

John Frewen-Lord posted this comment on Metric Views but was unable to add the pictures that he took at the scene. We can, and accordingly we have made it the subject of a short article.

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Metric Malta

Malta is one of four EU countries which, within living memory, did not have metric as their primary system of measures. A recent holiday in Malta prompted a look at its transition to the metric system from traditional measures.

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Una mensura sit per totum regnum nostrum

On Monday 15 June, the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta was celebrated in much of the English-speaking world. In this article we look at one of its less well-known clauses – that relating to weights and measures.

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Dying embers and a few flying sparks

The concluding article of this series looks at the ignominious end of the UK’s attempt, began fifty years ago, to make the transition to a single, simple and universal measurement system.

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