Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1885-06-03
The Inch and the Ounce.


As the Jews had q mystical rever-
and Celts for three, and the Greeks n
perfect philosophy constructed out OF
the harmonies of all sorts OF numbers,
so the Romans fell back upon scale
of twelve, or more properly, upon a
scale with base of six. Accordingly
as they divided the pound into twelve
uncie, so they also divided the foot,
which was thestandard of linear meas
ure, into twelve sections, and called
these twelve uncie, too. But how did
they get at theinch originally? Rath-
er, how did they get at the pound?
for that, and not the inch, is the unit.
There seems to be no precise informa-
ton. They would divide any units
into twelfths, and a prevailing notion
was at one time that the linear uncia
was really the original, and was then
transferred as name to the weights.
This, though plausible, is hardly the
case. Sometimes, especially in old
fashioned books, written at q time
when philology was not what it isnow.
it was the fashion to derive the unc'"
from the same word in the
Greek, because after the re-
vival OF letters in Europe the
admiration of the Greek became so
great that whenever similar words
were found in it and some other Ian
guage it was always said that the
Greek was the older and the original,
and that the other languages borrowed
them from the Greek. This is very far
from being always so, and in the pres
ent instance the very reverse appears
to have occurred. The ounce is liter
ally "the twelfth" and thus we see at
once the sense of speaking OF an ounce
of time, an ounce of land and an inch
of milk, just as of an inch of a mans
will or an inch of interest for money
on loan. 1t was always the twelfth
of the unit-twelfth of an hour; twelfth
of a jugerum, that half acre which the
two oxen plowed in day; twelfth of q
sextarius or equivalent to our pint;
twelfth of the entire hereditas twelfth
of the principal lent on hire
when it was money at usury-i. e., over
per cent. 1t is accordingly as much
g. mistake to say that the primary
meaning of the word is a linear, which
is to say that it comes straight from
the Greek into the Latin, and thence
on to us. The whole riddle is plain
enough when we get to the true origin
of the word-a twelfth. Once, indeed,
it used to be said that the true origin
was that the word meant q thumb
breadth, because it's equivalent pollex
in linear measure was often used in it's
place. But this is not theLase. Some
of the old Latins themselves. more
over, thought it meant literally "the
unit" but even this will not hold be-
side the proper Specification OF q
twelfth. The pound weight was really
never divided by inches or ounces. 1t
was divided by twelfths, by halves, by
thirds, by fourths, and by sixths. And
here, again, we see what convenient
base a system OF twelfths is for divis-
ion compared with system of tenths,
which could only be divided evenly in
two ways-by two and five. For seven
ounces they used the literal seven
twelfths; for eight ounces they said
"two parts" vi. e., two-thirds, for nine,
"wanting q fourth" which with us
reads like roundabout way of ex-
pressing three-quarters; tor ten, "want-
ing q sixth; for eleven, "wanting a
fualfth -