Question

Conduct online research and write a short report on the origin and evolution of the meter as a measurement standard. Discuss how the meter formed a base for the development of other measuring standards.

Answer 1

Answer:

People have come up with all sorts of inventive ways of measuring length. The most intuitive are right at our fingertips. That is, they are based upon the human body: the foot, the hand, the fingers or the length of an arm or a stride.

In ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, one of the first standard measures of length used was the cubit. In Egypt, the royal cubit, which was used to build the most important structures, was based on the length of the pharaoh’s arm from elbow to the end of the middle finger plus the span of his hand. Because of its great importance, the royal cubit was standardized using rods made from granite. These granite cubits were further subdivided into shorter lengths reminiscent of centimeters and millimeters.

piece of black rock with white Egyptian markings

Fragment of a Cubit Measuring Rod

Credit: Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Thomas H. Foulds, 1925

Later length measurements used by the Romans (who had taken them from the Greeks, who had taken them from the Babylonians and Egyptians) and passed on into Europe generally were based on the length of the human foot or walking and multiples and subdivisions of that. For example, the pace—one left step plus one right step—is approximately a meter or yard. (On the other hand, the yard did not derive from a pace but from, among other things, the length of King Henry I of England’s outstretched arm.) Mille passus in Latin, or 1,000 paces, is where the English word “mile” comes from.

And thus, the meter has and likely will remain so elegantly defined in these terms for the foreseeable future.

Explanation:

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