Historical units
From 1ste Gimnechiske Wiki
This is a collection of historically used terms of measurement, with explaination of their usage and their definitions, both the historical and towards ISO standard units. Before using historical units, or even inventing your own units, read Measuring Units in Fantasy. For more reading, Systems of Measurement on Wikipedia.
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Time
In historical times, the measurement of time for most people was not of interest, except for those of the trades. Though there where some situations when a good measurement of time was important. For most people, the date on the calender helped them plan and predict for when to saw the grain, harvest the apples, hunt for the deer or fish for the salmon. Religious celebrations was also marked in the calender, and in most societies, the calendar was some sort of fixed organizer, such as the Primstav (Runic Staff Calendar) used by the norse, and almost up to modern times. The runic calendar have been translated into the modern calendar, but have some slight differences. I will look more into time units used for other purposes.
Glass
This is the time the sand needs to fall in a standard hour glas. The length of a glass is aproximately half an hour. For each time the glass is turned, a time signal is given on larger ships and on army outposts, or other places where the shifts are governed by time.
Shift
This is the time one group of guards or sailors are on duty. The shift is usually 8 glasses long, though local variations might occure. From old time off on sailships, the expression 7th glass became known as the last leg of the watch, also the time when your releaver is to be waken, and the handover meal to be prepared.
Month
This is the time the moon uses for a whole pass of phases, from new moon, waxing, full moon, waning and back to new moon. This is aproximately 27 days, and many of the biological measurements of time are connected to this.
Length
In historical times, the length units where often linked to what you where measuring. You wouldn't go to a ropewright and ask for 18 feet of rope, but rather use the apropriate term of fathoms (3 in this case).
Inch
The length of the kings thumb finger, from the last joint to the nail.
Foot
The length of the kings foot.
Yard
The length from the chest to the finger tips of an out reached arm on the king. This measure is often used by merchants when measuring cloth or other similar trade goods.
Pace
The length you move when walking, from when you put your right foot down and to next time you step on the right foot.
Mile
1000 paces. The word comes from mil, the latin word for 1000. Along the roman roads, a pilar or large rock where put for every mile, and often numbered, so that the traveller could know how far he was from his destination. The milestones was marked with distance to "the golden milestone" which where erected in Rome, and thus you could see how far from Rome you where. This system was not maintained throughout the empire though, but Milestones was put up on every mile of every Roman road, even if the distance to Rome was omitted.
In a fantasy setting, the distances marked on the Milestones can be the distance to the king's place, to the capitol main gate, the cradle of the civilization, or just the nearest town. It is really up to the GM.
Fathom
The length from finger tips to finger tips when stretching both arms out (measured on the king of corse, would you dream of anything else?). Should be the same as two yards. This length measure is more suitable to measure rope, and therefor also the water depth.
Link
A link is the length of chain between the master links, it is equal to or as close as practical to fiftheen fathoms.
Cable
Same as hundred fathoms.
Sea Mile
THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS NAUTICAL MILE! According to Skipssiden, a sea mile was the same as 3950 fathoms. For devision it was devided in quarter miles, which was the fourth of the distance. Later (around 1875) the sea mile was set to 1/15th of an equitorial arch degree, which is four times the definition of a nautical mile, but this is a later adjustment. (The quarter mile is aproximately one nautical mile, but not equal to).
Row shift
This is the expected distance a shift of rowers had on a rowing boat, the distance is about 1.5 sea mile, the time is about two hours (that is how long you would expect a conscript or hired rower to last before he needs a rest). That gives a speed of about 3 knots, which is expected speed for a rowing boat. It can be expected that a measurement for speed at sea is based on this distance.
The distance between important trade ports along the coast will be mentioned in shifts (short for row shift).
Days Travel
A days travel is the distance a large group are expected to travel by foot, or the distance a row boat is expected to sail in one day. This means that the term have two different values depending on land or marine use.
On land, the distance is equal to 4 mile, as you would expect the army (or group) to have a short rest for each mile, as well as an average speed of 4 km/h. If the group stops for a short rest after the first mile, refreshing on water and some light provisions, stops for a meal at the second mile, and than repeats the short rest after the third mile, the army need a night sleep before continuing after the fourth mile.
On sea, a row boat with only one shift of rowers will have to stop every second hour for a long rest of at least one hour, and at least once every day a longer rest. A rowing boat should be able to do 6 shifts in a day, that makes 12 hours of rowing or a distance of 18 sea mile, in between there are 5 stops of about 1 hour, so there is a 7 hour rest for the night. The boat can continue like this for about a week, than the rowers would need a longer rest. If the boat have two shifts of rowers, they only need to change men on the tills, so that it can row continous, but with only 2 hour rest between each shift, the rowers will be tired if not a full night sleep is included, there is therefor also normal for these boats to stop for each days travel, though they might continue for a few days like this (passing 2 days travel every day) to do crossings (for instance, crossing the North Sea)
When travelling with other means (for instance, a fit man walking alone, a company on horse back, or a sailboat) can travel longer distances in the same amount of time. The lone walker might be able to push to reach the 5th mile of the day, the horse back riders have a much higher pace, though if the journey to undertake is long, the horses will not be pushed, and the sailors might work in suitable shifts as soon as dificult waters are passed and the ship can sail continous for several days at end.
Area
Barrel
One Barrel land is the size of a field where you can sow one barrel of grain (see Volume units), and roughly translates to 3937m². The measurement is very practical for calculating taxes and for planning the production of a field.
Mål
This was 1/4 Barrel, but was also defined as 10.000 square feet, that again would give an area of about 984m², depending on the definition of the foot.
Rode
This was 100 square feet, or 1/100th Mål, but was also used as devision of administrative areas. Such exemples could be the area under control of one tax collectior, the area that appoints one city councelor or the area of responsebility of one sherif. (In Norway used as one electorial area).
Volume
The units for volume was much dependent on what you where measuring, and the same unit name might have different definition depending on usage. I will sum them up as points for each unit.
Barrel
The volume of a barrel. Different types of barrels was used depending on what was put in them.
- Grain Barrel: For dry goods, such as flour, grain and seeds. Grain Barrel = 138.97 liters. A 1/4th of a grain barrel was called a farthing = 34.71 liters. One farthing was 2 sjepp. One sjepp was 2 setting. One setting was 4 skrull.
- Liquid Barrel: For liquids such as water and beer, but also for comodities such as fish and butter. Liquid Barrel = 115.8 liters. One Barrel was the same as 1/2 ox head or 3 anchors.
One Grain Barrel of Potatoes weighs aproxemately 100kg, one Liquid Barrel of Butter weighs aproximately 50kg, a stamped barrel of herring (Liquid Barrel) counted aproximately 520 fish, while unstamped was 367 fish.
Pott
Used for measuring smaller amounts of liquids. A (liquid) barrel could take 120 Pott, and an ox head could take 240 Pott. The Pott was devided into 4 Pel. One Pott is aproximately 0.965 liters.
Pint
Used for liquids, specially when served, such as beer. One Pint is 2 Cups, or 16 Ounces (NB! Imperial Pint is 20 Imperial Ounces). Usually calculated as 0.473 liters. A dry pint is 0.55 liters.
Gallon
This is easy, 8 pints. But than again, there are some special denotations for special comodities.
- Winchester Gallon (Corn Gallon): 4.405 liters
- Queen Anne's Gallon (Wine Gallon): 3.79 liters
- Ale Gallon: 4.62 liters
Mass/Weight
The word mass had no significance before Gravity was invented, so all the units here are for weight (The result of Mass * Gravity)
Ton
Devided in short ton and long ton, used for measuring cargo capacity of ships as well as larger quantities of comodities. A certain comodity might be denoted as number of barrels per short or long ton, meaning how many barrels of this comodity is equal to one long or short ton.
- Long ton was the same as 2240 pounds or aproximately 1016kg
- Used in metal industry
- Used to measure the dead weight of a ship
- Short ton was the same as 2000 pounds or aproximately 907kg
- Used in many ports because the easier calculation towards the pound
Hundredweight
The same as 112 pounds or 8 stones. There was 20 hundredweights in a longweight. A hundredweight is aproximately 50kg
Stone
One Stone is 14 pounds or aproximately 7kg. A Chinese stone is aproximately 72kg, more than 10 times the imperial stone.
Pound
The word pound comes from the latin word for weight, and have as many definitions as areas of use. To make it easy, in RPG the definition agreed between USA and Commonwelth is used, that is 453.59237 grams.
The pound is devided in ounces and grains, but again here there are more than one standard. Here also the definitions are many. The normal way is 1 pound = 12 ounces = 5400 grain.
Ships Pound
About 159 kg
Temperature
Historically temperature was not measured. To describe temperature, use the words that you see describe the temperature. You might say that the boiling water is boiling hot, while the tea that have been in the cup a little too long is meerly luke. The outside temperature on a winter day might be chilling, and so on. The definitions used in modern measurement of temperature comes from scientists during the age of enlightenment, and an accurate measurement came when they discovered that mercury expands and retracts evenly depending (almost) only on temperature.
Preasure
Historically preasure was not measured. It was first described as a measurable unit the age of enlightenment.
Gravity
Historically Gravity was not measured, so there was no units for it. Things just went faster or slower, or fell to the ground. No reason to measure it, it just happened. Sir Isaac Newton invented the first measuring unit for Gravity in 1665-1666.
