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 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 dry and " 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 long as depending on the cu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Grain (unit)
A grain is a unit of measurement of mass, and in the troy weight, avoirdupois, and apothecaries' systems, equal to exactly . It is nominally based upon the mass of a single ideal seed of a cereal. From the Bronze Age into the Renaissance, the average masses of wheat and barley grains were part of the legal definitions of units of mass. Expressions such as "thirty-two grains of wheat, taken from the middle of the ear" appear to have been ritualistic formulas. Another source states that it was defined such that 252.458 units would balance of distilled water at an ambient air-water pressure and temperature of and respectively. Another book states that Captain Henry Kater, of the British Standards Commission, arrived at this value experimentally. The grain was the legal foundation of traditional English weight systems, and is the only unit that is equal throughout the troy, avoirdupois, and apothecaries' systems of mass. The unit was based on the weight of a single grain of ba ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Yard
The yard (symbol: yd) is an English units, English unit of length in both the British imperial units, imperial and US United States customary units, customary systems of measurement equalling 3 foot (unit), feet or 36 inches. Since 1959 it has been by international yard and pound, international agreement standardized as exactly 0.9144 Metre, meter. A distance of 1,760 yards is equal to 1 mile. The theoretical survey foot, 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 Ine of Wessex#Laws, laws of Ine of Wessex, wherein the "yard of land" mentioned is the virgate, yardland, an old English unit of tax assessment equal to hide (unit), 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. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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List Of Unusual Units Of Measurement
An unusual unit of measurement is a unit of measurement that does not form part of a coherent system of measurement, especially because its exact quantity may not be well known or because it may be an inconvenient multiple or fraction of a base unit. Many of the unusual units of measurements listed here are colloquial measurements, units devised to compare a measurement to common and familiar objects. Length Horizontal pitch Horizontal pitch (HP) is a unit of length defined by the Eurocard printed circuit board standard used to measure the horizontal width of rack-mounted electronic equipment, similar to the rack unit (U) used to measure vertical heights of rack-mounted equipment. One HP is 0.2 inches (″) or wide. Hammer unit Valve's Source game engine uses the ''Hammer unit'' as its base unit of length. This unit refers to Source's official map creation software, Hammer. The exact definition varies from game to game, but a Hammer unit is usually defined as a sixteen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Line (unit)
The line (abbreviated L or l or ‴ or lin.) was a small English unit of length, variously reckoned as , , , or of an inch. It was not included among the units authorized as the British Imperial system in 1824. Size The line was not recognized by any statute of the English Parliament but was usually understood as of a barleycorn, (which itself was recognized by statute as of an inch) making it of an inch, and of a foot. The line was eventually decimalized as of an inch, without recourse to barleycorns. The US button trade uses the same or a similar term but defined as one-fortieth of the US-customary inch (making a button-maker's line equal to ). In use Botanists formerly used the units (usually as inch) to measure the size of plant parts. Linnaeus's ''Philosophia botanica'' (1751) includes the Linea in its summary of units of measurements, defining it as []; Stearns gives its length as . Even after metrication, British botanists continued to employ tools with ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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University Of Wisconsin Press
The University of Wisconsin Press (sometimes abbreviated as UW Press) is a Non-profit organization, non-profit university press publishing Peer review, peer-reviewed books and journals. It publishes work by scholars from the global academic community; works of fiction, memoir and poetry under its imprint, Terrace Books; and serves the citizens of Wisconsin by publishing important books about Wisconsin, the Upper Midwest, and the Great Lakes region (North America), Great Lakes region. UW Press annually awards the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, and The Four Lakes Prize in Poetry. The press was founded in 1936 in Madison, Wisconsin, Madison and is one of more than 120 member presses in the Association of University Presses. The Journals Division was established in 1965. The press employs approximately 25 full and part-time staff, produces 40 to 60 new books a year, and publishes 13 journals. It also distributes books and some annual journals for sele ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Royal Exchequer
In the civil service of the United Kingdom, His Majesty's Exchequer, or just the Exchequer, is the accounting process of central government and the government's '' current account'' (i.e., money held from taxation and other government revenues) in the Consolidated Fund. The term is used in various financial documents, including the latest departmental and agency annual accounts. Historically, it was the name of a British government department responsible for the collection and the management of taxes and revenues, making payments on behalf of the sovereign, and auditing official accounts. It also developed a judicial role along with its accountancy responsibilities and tried legal cases relating to revenue. Similar offices were later created in Normandy around 1180, in Scotland around 1200 and in Ireland in 1210. Etymology The Exchequer was named after a table used to perform calculations for taxes and goods in the medieval period. According to the ''Dialogus de Scaccario'' ( ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bronze
Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals (such as phosphorus) or metalloids (such as arsenic or silicon). These additions produce a range of alloys some of which are harder than copper alone or have other useful properties, such as strength, ductility, or machinability. The archaeological period during which bronze was the hardest metal in widespread use is known as the Bronze Age. The beginning of the Bronze Age in western Eurasia is conventionally dated to the mid-4th millennium BCE (~3500 BCE), and to the early 2nd millennium BCE in China; elsewhere it gradually spread across regions. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age, which started about 1300 BCE and reaching most of Eurasia by about 500 BCE, although bronze continued to be much more widely used than it is in modern times. Because historica ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Brass
Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, in proportions which can be varied to achieve different colours and mechanical, electrical, acoustic and chemical properties, but copper typically has the larger proportion, generally copper and zinc. In use since prehistoric times, it is a substitutional alloy: atoms of the two constituents may replace each other within the same crystal structure. Brass is similar to bronze, a copper alloy that contains tin instead of zinc. Both bronze and brass may include small proportions of a range of other Chemical element, elements including arsenic, lead, phosphorus, aluminium, manganese and silicon. Historically, the distinction between the two alloys has been less consistent and clear, and increasingly museums use the more general term "list of copper alloys, copper alloy". Brass has long been a popular material for its bright gold-like appearance and is still used for drawer pulls and door handle, doorknobs. It has also been widely used to ma ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Iron
Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most abundant element in the Earth's crust, being mainly deposited by meteorites in its metallic state. Extracting usable metal from iron ores requires kilns or furnaces capable of reaching , about 500 °C (900 °F) higher than that required to smelt copper. Humans started to master that process in Eurasia during the 2nd millennium BC and the use of iron tools and weapons began to displace copper alloys – in some regions, only around 1200 BC. That event is considered the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. In the modern world, iron alloys, such as steel, stainless steel, cast iron and special steels, are by far the most common industrial metals, due to their mechan ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Laws Of Hywel Dda
''Cyfraith Hywel'' (; ''Laws of Hywel''), also known as ''Welsh law'' (), was the system of law practised in medieval Wales before its conquest of Wales by Edward I, final conquest by England. Subsequently, the Welsh law's criminal codes were superseded by the Statute of Rhuddlan in AD 1284 and its civil codes by Henry VIII of England, Henry VIII's series of Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, Laws in Wales Acts between 1535 and 1542. Welsh law was a form of Celtic law with many similarities to the Early Irish law, Brehon law of Ireland and particularly the customs and terminology of the Britons of Kingdom of Strathclyde, Strathclyde. It was passed down orally by jurists and bards and, according to tradition, only first codified during the reign of Hywel Dda in the mid-10th century. The earliest surviving manuscripts, however, are in Latin, date from the early 13th century, and show marked regional differences.Wade-Evans, Arthur. ''s:Page:Welsh Medieval Law.djvu/13, Welsh Medieval L ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Deheubarth
Deheubarth (; , thus 'the South') was a regional name for the Welsh kingdoms, realms of south Wales, particularly as opposed to kingdom of Gwynedd, Gwynedd (Latin: ''Venedotia''). It is now used as a shorthand for the various realms united under the House of Dinefwr, but that Deheubarth itself was not considered a proper kingdom on the model of Gwynedd, Kingdom of Powys, Powys, or Kingdom of Dyfed, Dyfed is shown by its rendering in Medieval Latin, Latin as ''dextralis pars'' or as ''Britonnes dexterales'' ("the Southern Britons") and not as a named land. In the oldest British writers, ''Deheubarth'' was used for ''all'' of modern Wales to distinguish it from ''Hen Ogledd'' (''Y Gogledd''), the northern lands whence Cunedda originated. History Deheubarth was united around 920 by Hywel Dda out of the territories of Seisyllwg and Kingdom of Dyfed, Dyfed, which had come into his possession. Later on, the Kingdom of Brycheiniog was also added. Caerleon was previously the principal ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |