Daily Archives: Friday, May 30, 2008

We were sitting around talking about units of measurement and converting kilometres to miles and so on. Then the conversation somehow digressed to how they used to use the length of body parts (usually a king’s) as a standard of length. For example, an inch was the length of a thumb, and so on, which was not altogether very accurate since no one’s thumb was the same length, and the king complained bitterly that he was getting terribly tired going from village to village and market to market holding his thumb out for lowly and often smelly peasants to measure. I then recounted a story about the pioneers, frontiersman, and explorers who first ventured forth into the wild west and how they had no rulers or measuring tapes back then so they had to use innovative ways to create maps. Since there were an awful lot of grizzly bears on … Continue reading →