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Imperial Units
The imperial system of units, imperial system or imperial units (also known as British Imperial 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. The imperial system developed from earlier English units as did the related but differing system of customary units of the United States. The imperial units replaced the Winchester Standards, which were in effect from 1588 to 1825. The system came into official use across the British Empire in 1826. By the late 20th century, most nations of the former empire had officially adopted the metric system as their main system of measurement, but imperial units are still used alongside metric units in the United Kingdom and in some other parts of the former empire, notably Canada. The modern UK legislation defining the imperial system of units is given in the Weights and Measures Act ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weights And Measures Office
Weight is a measurement of the gravitational force acting on an object. Weight or The Weight may also refer to: Mathematics * Weight (graph theory) a number associated to an edge or to a vertex of a graph * Weight (representation theory), a type of function * Weight (strings), the number of times a letter occurs in a string * Weight, an integer associated to each variable of a quasi-homogeneous polynomial * Weight of a topological space; see Base (topology), base * Weighting, making some data contribute to a result more than others ** Weight function ** Weighted mean and weighted average, the importance can vary on each piece of data ** Weighting filter Science and technology * Weight (unit), a former English unit * Weight, a connection strength, or coefficient in a linear combination, as in an artificial neural network * Weight, a measure of paper density * Body weight, a commonly used term for the mass of an organism's body * Font weight * Line weight in Contour line#Graphical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pharmacopoeia
A pharmacopoeia, pharmacopeia, or pharmacopoea (from the obsolete typography ''pharmacopœia'', meaning "drug-making"), in its modern technical sense, is a book containing directions for the identification of compound medicines, and published by the authority of a government or a medical or pharmaceutical society. Descriptions of preparations are called monographs. In a broader sense it is a reference work for pharmaceutical drug specifications. Etymology The term derives from grc, φαρμακοποιία ''pharmakopoiia'' "making of (healing) medicine, drug-making", a compound of φάρμακον ''pharmakon'' "healing medicine, drug, poison", the verb ποιεῖν ''poiein'' "to make" and the abstract noun suffix -ία ''-ia''. In early modern editions of Latin texts, the Greek diphthong οι (''oi'') is latinized to its Latin equivalent ''oe'' which is in turn written with the ligature ''œ'', giving the spelling ''pharmacopœia''; in modern UK English, ''œ'' is wri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wicket
In cricket, the term wicket has several meanings: * It is one of the two sets of three stumps and two bails at either end of the pitch. The fielding team's players can hit the wicket with the ball in a number of ways to get a batsman out. ** The wicket is guarded by a batsman who, with his bat (and sometimes with his pads, but see the laws on LBW, leg before wicket), attempts to prevent the ball from hitting the wicket (if it does, he is bowled out) and to score runs where possible. * Through metonymic usage, the dismissal of a batsman is known as the ''taking of a wicket'', * The cricket pitch itself is sometimes referred to as ''the wicket''. History The origin of the word is from wicket gate, a small gate. Originally, cricket wickets had only two stumps and one bail and looked like a gate, much like the wicket used in the North American game of wicket. The third (middle) stump was introduced in 1775, after Lumpy Stevens bowled three successive deliveries to John ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chain (unit)
The chain is a unit of length equal to 66 feet (22 yards). It is subdivided into 100 links (PDF) or 4 rods. There are 10 chains in a furlong, and 80 chains in one statute mile. In metric terms, it is 20.1168 m long. By extension, chainage (running distance) is the distance along a curved or straight survey line from a fixed commencing point, as given by an odometer. The chain has been used for several centuries in England and in some other countries influenced by English practice. In the United Kingdom, there were 80 chains to the mile, but until the early nineteenth century the Scottish and Irish customary miles were longer than the statute mile; consequently a Scots chain was about 74 (imperial) feet, an Irish chain 84 feet. These longer chains became obsolete following the adoption of the imperial system of units in 1824. Definition The UK statute chain is 22 yards, which is . This unit is a statute measure in the United Kingdom, defined in the Weights and Measures Act 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Yard And Pound
The international yard and pound are two units of measurement that were the subject of an agreement among representatives of six nations signed on 1 July 1959: the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The agreement defined the yard as exactly and the avoirdupois pound as exactly . History In October 1834, the United Kingdom Houses of Parliament were destroyed in a fire. Among the items lost were the objects that defined the imperial standards of length and mass. New prototypes were subsequently created to replace the items lost in the fire, among them a new "yardstick" ruler in 1855, and with it a new formal definition of the yard. Two copies of the ruler were subsequently presented to the United States, which in turn adopted the measure for the United States national standard yard. In 1866, the U.S. Congress passed a law that allowed, but did not require, the use of the metric system in trade and commerce. Included in the law was a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yard
The yard (symbol: yd) is an English unit of length in both the British imperial and US customary systems of measurement equalling 3 feet or 36 inches. Since 1959 it has been by international agreement standardized as exactly 0.9144 meter. A distance of 1,760 yards is equal to 1 mile. The US survey yard is very slightly longer. Name The term, ''yard'' derives from the Old English , etc., which was used for branches, staves and measuring rods. It is first attested in the late 7th century laws of Ine of Wessex, where the "yard of land" mentioned is the yardland, an old English unit of tax assessment equal to hide. Around the same time the Lindisfarne Gospels account of the messengers from John the Baptist in the Gospel of Matthew used it for a branch swayed by the wind. In addition to the yardland, Old and Middle English both used their forms of "yard" to denote the surveying lengths of or , used in computing acres, a distance now usually known ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foot (unit)
The foot ( feet), standard symbol: ft, is a unit of length in the British imperial and United States customary systems of measurement. The prime symbol, , is a customarily used alternative symbol. Since the International Yard and Pound Agreement of 1959, one foot is defined as 0.3048 meters exactly. In both customary and imperial units, one foot comprises 12 inches and one yard comprises three feet. Historically the "foot" was a part of many local systems of units, including the Greek, Roman, Chinese, French, and English systems. It varied in length from country to country, from city to city, and sometimes from trade to trade. Its length was usually between 250 mm and 335 mm and was generally, but not always, subdivided into 12 inches or 16 digits. The United States is the only industrialized nation that uses the international foot and the survey foot (a customary unit of length) in preference to the meter in its commercial, engin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hand (unit)
The hand is a non- SI unit of measurement of length standardized to . It is used to measure the height of horses in many English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It was originally based on the breadth of a human hand. The adoption of the international inch in 1959 allowed for a standardized imperial form and a metric conversion. It may be abbreviated to "h" or "hh". Although measurements between whole hands are usually expressed in what appears to be decimal format, the subdivision of the hand is not decimal but is in base 4, so subdivisions after the radix point are in quarters of a hand, which are inches. Thus, 62 inches is fifteen and a half hands, or 15.2 hh (normally said as "fifteen-two", or occasionally in full as "fifteen hands two inches"). Terminology "Hands" may be abbreviated to "h", or "hh". The "hh" form is sometimes interpreted as standing for "hands high". When spoken a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prime (symbol)
The prime symbol , double prime symbol , triple prime symbol , and quadruple prime symbol are used to designate units and for other purposes in mathematics, science, linguistics and music. Although the characters differ little in appearance from those of the apostrophe and single and double quotation marks, the uses of the prime symbol are quite different. While an apostrophe is now often used in place of the prime, and a double quote in place of the double prime (due to the lack of prime symbols on everyday writing keyboards), such substitutions are not considered appropriate in formal materials or in typesetting. Designation of units The prime symbol is commonly used to represent feet (ft), and the double prime is used to represent inches (in). The triple prime as used in watchmaking represents a ( of a ''French'' inch or '' pouce'', about ). Primes are also used for angles. The prime symbol is used for arcminutes ( of a degree), and the double prime for arcsecond ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inch
Measuring tape with inches The inch (symbol: in or ″) is a unit of length in the British imperial and the United States customary systems of measurement. It is equal to yard or of a foot. Derived from the Roman uncia ("twelfth"), the word ''inch'' is also sometimes used to translate similar units in other measurement systems, usually understood as deriving from the width of the human thumb. Standards for the exact length of an inch have varied in the past, but since the adoption of the international yard during the 1950s and 1960s the inch has been based on the metric system and defined as exactly 25.4 mm. Name The English word "inch" ( ang, ynce) was an early borrowing from Latin ' ("one-twelfth; Roman inch; Roman ounce"). The vowel change from Latin to Old English (which became Modern English ) is known as umlaut. The consonant change from the Latin (spelled ''c'') to English is palatalisation. Both were features of Old English phonology; see and fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barleycorn (unit)
The barleycorn is an English unit of length equal to of an inch (i.e. about ). It is still used as the basis of shoe sizes in English-speaking countries. History Under the c. AD 1300 Composition of Yards and Perches, one of the statutes of uncertain date that was notionally in force until the 1824 Weights and Measures Act, "3 barly cornes dry and rounde" were to serve as the basis for the inch and thence the larger units of feet, yards, perches and thus of the acre, an important unit of area. The notion of three barleycorns composing an inch certainly predates this statute, however, appearing in the 10th-century Welsh Laws of Hywel Dda. In practice, various weights and measures acts of the English kings were standardized with reference to some particular yard-length iron, brass, or bronze bar held by the king or the Royal Exchequer. The formal barleycorn was of its length. As modern studies show, the actual length of a kernel of barley varies from as short as to as l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thou (length)
A thousandth of an inch is a derived unit of length in a system of units using inches. Equal to of an inch, a thousandth is commonly called a thou (used for both singular and plural) or particularly in North America a mil (plural mils). The words are shortened forms of the English and Latin words for "thousand" ( in Latin). In international engineering contexts, confusion can arise because ''mil'' is a formal unit name in North America but ''mil'' or ''mill'' is also a common colloquial clipped form of millimetre. The units are considerably different: a millimetre is approximately 39 mils. Contexts of use The thou, or mil, is most commonly used in engineering and manufacturing in non-metric countries. For example, in specifying: * The thickness of items such as paper, film, foil, wires, paint coatings, latex gloves, plastic sheeting, and fibers ** For example, most plastic ID cards are about in thickness. ** Card stock thickness in the United States, where mils are also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
