“WEIGHTS AND MEASURES – SOME FACTS THAT ARE NOT FACTS.

To the Editors:

There appeared in a recent number of the Pharmaceutical Era a reprint of an article by W. F. Quinby in which the statement was made that our avoirdupois weights are derived from the one-foot cube, and the troy and apothecaries’ weights and measures from the one-foot sphere; the grain being 0.004 cubic inch of water, and, therefore, 250 grains in a cubic inch of water.

Mr. Quinby continues: “The one-foot sphere is peculiar. It is 3 1416 feet in circumference. It has a surface of 3.1416 square feet. It will contain.the wine pint of 28.8 cubic inches 31.416 times. It will contain 31.416 apothecaries’ pounds of water and 31.416 troy parcels of wheat of 5760 grains to the parcel. As there are eight pints in a gallon, it is equal to 230 4 cubic inches, which has been rounded off by legislation to 231.”

This is enough. It is not necessary to give further quotations. If all the statements in the foregoing paragraph were true I fail to see their bearing, but it chances that those statements which are true are not peculiar to the one-foot sphere, and that the statements which are peculiar to the one-foot sphere are not exactly correct. Indeed, I confess to some astonishment that they should really come so near to having apparent connection to the one-foot sphere.

Let us analyze some of these remarkable statements:

The statement is made that the circumference of a one-foot sphere is 3.1416 feet and the surface 3.1416 square feet; this is true, but it is not at all peculiar to the one-foot sphere, for any sphere has a circumference of 3.1416 times its diameter and a surface of 3.1416 times the square of that diameter.

The statement that a grain weight of water is equal to 0.004 cubic inch, and conversely that 4 cubic inches of water weighs 1000 grains (or 1 cubic inch weighs 250 grains), is not quite correct, because one grain weight of water occupies but 0.00396 of a cubic inch, and, conversely, 3.96 cubic inches of water weighs 1000 grains (or 1 cubic inch weighs 252.458 grains).

The statement that the wine pint contains 28.8 cubic inches is nearly correct, but not quite, for it should read 28.875 cubic inches. This small difference spoils-the scientific accuracy of the statement that the one-foot sphere contains 31.416 wine pints of water, for the one-foot sphere contains 925.854 cubic inches, which is equal to 31-3345 wine pints.

At this point the matter gets a little too complicated for clear insight. The statement is made that the one-foot sphere ‘will contain 31.416 apothecaries’ pounds of water.’ But an apothecaries’ pound consists of 5760 grains, while our “sphere” weighs 226194.2 grains, or 39.270 apothecaries’ pounds. And, again, why have the wine pints of 7291.11 grains been crowded into the same space that 5760 grains will just fill? And the next statement, that a “troy” parcel of wheat (or parcel of troy wheat), a pound of water, and a wine pint are equal in bulk, is surprising.

The final statement that the gallon is 230.4 cubic inches, which has been “rounded off by legislation to 231,” is possibly correct, I suppose, for legislation explains many strange things, and we know in times past that legislation has altered the length of the foot rule in England (which fact, by the way, would throw some discredit upon this whole discovery even if everything else were correct). The wine gallon of 231 cubic inches is only one of three gallon measures which have been and are now in use in England and the United States, and just why it alone should have the one-foot sphere for a parent and the other two denied such parentage I cannot quite see. Perhaps these other gallons have some startling connection with the one-foot sphere. I await enlightenment.

Mr. Editor, this appears to me to be another attempt to supersede the decimal method of the metric system by finding “connections” among our measures of length and capacity which in truth do not exist and never have been considered as existing. It is a source of some surprise that such articles should be written and published at this time, when all educated people should be working in season and out of season for the complete adoption of the metric system into the commercial life of this country as it has been adopted in its scientific life. Nothing will do more to unify mankind than the use of one universal system of weights and measures; it makes little difference what the system is, but as it is generally agreed that a decimal system is the ideal, and as the world now possesses a decimal system which is complete and which has been accepted by most Christian countries, why not each one of us do all in his power to induce our country to fall in and keep step with the march of progress and peace.

Ezra J. Ware.

Detroit, Mich.”

Reference Data:

Bulletin of Pharmacy, Vol. 13, 1899, pages 519-20