page_title: Steelyard balance
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Steelyard balance / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Grade II Listed Steelyard, Fountain Lane
context_page_description: A steelyard balance, steelyard, or stilyard is a straight-beam balance with arms of unequal length. It incorporates a counterweight which slides along the longer arm to counterbalance the load and indicate its weight. A steelyard is also known as a Roman steelyard or Roman balance.
context_section_description: According to Thomas G. Chondros of Patras University, a simple steelyard balance with a lever mechanism first appeared in the ancient Near East over 5,000 years ago. According to Mark Sky of Harvard University, the steelyard was in use among Greek craftsmen of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, even before Archimedes demonstrated the law of the lever theoretically. The Latin name statera comes from the Ancient Greek στατήρ (statḗr). Roman and Chinese steelyards were independently invented around 200 BC. Steelyards dating from AD 100 to 400 have been unearthed in Great Britain.  Steelyards and their components have also been excavated from shipwrecks of the Byzantine period in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, such as the 7th-century wreck at Yassi Ada, Turkey, and the mid-first millennium shipwreck at Black Assarca Island, Eritrea. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that the name "steelyard" is derived from steel combined with yard, influenced by a "misunderstood" allusion to the Steelyard, the main trading base of the Hanseatic League in London in the 14th century.
  Large steelyard balances (known as cart balances), both public and private, were a common feature in agricultural areas in England from the eighteenth century forward. An example of a public cart steelyard remains at Soham, Cambridgeshire and another is to be seen at Woodbridge, Suffolk.
caption: Eighteenth century cart balance at Fountains Lane, Soham
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