The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1872-06-21
The Metric System.

A movement now slowly but surely
gaining ground among statisticians
and men Of science, is that..which tends
to the unification of weights and mea-
sures all over the civilized world, aud
-presumably-the adoption Of the
French metric system. what" the
gentle reader naay ask, "is the metric
systemic Briefly this. The circum-
ference of our earth, measured on q
meridian of longitude, is, i'm very rough
figures, about "a, 600 miles-a quadrant,
therefore, or distance from pole to
equator 5000. These 5000 milee con.
tain, evidently, some 80, OO0, Goo feet, of
which one ten-millionth part would
be three feet-one yard. Accurately,
calculated, this quantity is 80. 90 irche-
and has been adopted since the begin.
several other European governments
IS the basis of their system of measures
under the name of metre. Let us, for
convenience sake, call this metre for
~ inches, and see what further comes
If it. A hundredth part of it, the Gen.
timetre, is just about fOur-tenths of an
inch. and is used i'm France for all
smaller calculations in the fine arts and
manufactures; while scientific men,
with their minute computations, are
familiar with a tenth of this-the mill
metre and its decimal subdivisions
Railroad men and surveyors use thou
sand such metres under the Freek title
If kilometre, a little over 5000 feet, or
six-teuths of one mile. These are the
familiar units of length; now for meas
ure. Let the reader be good enough to
take-or imagine little cubical box,
one centimetrc inch) in cube, filled
with distilled water at the temperature
at which it reaches its maximum dem
sity. The weight of such water gives
the unit of weight, the gramme-about
15} of our grains. BY the same consist
eDt system of Greek and Latin nomen-
alature, hundreth part of ore of these
CANNES gives the centigramme, for
chemical analysis druggists work, ETC.;
and a thousand grammes give the kilO.
pramme-Or rather more than two of
our pounds-fOr the grOcers' sugar and
butter, and the manufacturers heavy
materials. Next for liquid measures.
Take, as just now, n thOusand of these
little gramme boxes, piled solid, or,
what IS better, the space would occupy,
and we have new cube-One decima-
tire in length, breadth, etc., whose con-
tents in distilled water evidently weigh
the kilogramme aforesaid. The capa-
city oftbis box, hOwever-as nearly as
possible sixty-fOur cubic inches-makes
the French litre, or unit of fluid meas
ure, liberal English quart. If we are
doing wholesale business in fluids, we
may need the hectOlire, or hundred
quart measure For dry measure we
take cubical box just one metre each
way, and have the store, roughly stated
at thIrty-five cubic feet. Marketing,
evidently, would be best done by de-
cistere, or 80 feet cubic. HOusekeepers
who know better than we how much
space peck Ofpeas or tomatoes takes
up, will please make their own calcula-
tons. And finally, when the farmer
wishes to buy land he takes ten-metre
pole, and the square of which this
forms the side is his arc-about 40
square yards. One hundred of these
arcs give him his ordinary unit of mea-
sure, the hectare, two and half acres.
All this is little complicated, and
heed some figuring, but, apparently,
we will have to come to it some day,
and might as well begin now. Our
young friends-and some older ones
will find it worth while to cipher it out
themselves bit, over the parlor fire.
1t will be noticed that the Greek terms
run up, in multip,ies, and the Latin
ones down, in fractions, and that we
make no mention of intermediate!terms
decagrammes, hectometres, ETC., not
actually much used, if at all.-Scrib-
nGr' for June.