I have recently been forwarded a letter from the FCO (European Union Department).......from a supporter who wrote a letter to Peter Hain, a Minister with real conviction, and I am sure that you will have fun with some of the respondents statements.
I am sure many will recognise the same rhetoric from other MP's etc. statements from the past two years.

"Magna Carta said that one system of measurement should be used throughout the land to avoid confusion and give protection against short measure."

If that is any basis for their argument today there are a number of questions to be addressed:-
(i)why politicians allowed the metric system to be legal for trade in 1897 as well as imperial ?
(ii)how did the authorities validate the two systems of measurement for that period?
(iii) why did the 1985 Weights and Measures Act permit the use of both systems ?
(iv)why after Jan 1st 2000 did we suddenly have to revert back to something which was decreed in Magna Carta, which hadn't been relevant since 1897 ?

Sorry. I did not wish to be anonymous. I got too excited and suffered from Premature Posting.

This is what Magna Carta said (translated from the Latin by Xavier Hildegarde):

"There shall be one measure of wine, of ale and of corn (namely, “the London quarter”) throughout our whole realm. There shall also be one width of cloth (whether dyed, russet, or halberget): that is, two ells within the selvages. Let weights also be standardised similarly".

I understand from another post on this
board that a "quarter" (in recent times at least)
was stabilized at 28 pounds or two stone.

Is there any information handy about what
a "London quarter" was circa 1300?

Am I the only one here who is amused by the
coincidence that Magna Charta apparently
called for corn to be weighed in a unit which is
E-42 of the natural unit of force?

the London quarter must be not a weight but
a "measure" that is to say a volume.

What volume is it, does anybody know?

Rowlett's dictionary says quarter (as a volume)
is traditionally 8 bushel or in metric terms
about 0.291 cubic meter.
It was an amount of grain expected to weigh a
quarter ton.
Makes sense since I would expect a cubic meter
of grain to weigh something on the order of a ton.

Any notion as to what the width of cloth M.C.
calls "2 ells" would have been. Ell varies. I
suppose something like 5 feet.

quarter (qtr or Q) [5]
a traditional unit of volume used for measuring grain. A quarter of grain is 8 bushels (about 281 liters, based on the U.S. bushel, or 291 liters, based on the British imperial bushel), presumably because this quantity of grain weighs roughly 1/4 ton. This unit also known traditionally as the seam.

This whole discussion thread shows just how backward looking the pro-imperialist side of the argument is!

^ Does it indeed? What, pray tell, is so backwards about it all?

Bryan thanks for standing up for my (our?) interest
in historical units. I'm sorry if being interested
in history tarnishes us in whatchamacallit's eyes
as "backward". I thought your checking into Japanese
traditional units was great--gave us a new window into
that interesting culture.

BTW I just found an odd SPANISH unit which Rowlett
says has ever since 16th century had the standard
abbreviation of the "AT" sign @. So when you and I
write an email address we use a symbol which is
still understood in Spain as meaning a unit of weight.

Here's what Rowlett's dictionary says:

[[arroba (@)
a traditional unit of weight in Spain and Portugal, equal to 1/4 quintal. However, the Spanish and Portuguese quintals are of different sizes. In Spain, the arroba equals 25.36 pounds (11.50 kilograms); arrobas of very similar sizes were established in the Spanish speaking countries of Latin America. In Portugal and Brazil, the arroba equals 32.38 pounds (14.69 kilograms). The arroba has also been used as a metric unit equal to exactly 15 kilograms. The name of the unit comes from ar rub', Arabic for "the quarter." The @ sign has been used in Spanish as a symbol for the arroba since the sixteenth century at least.]]

I gather that the name and abbreviation are still
recognized to some extent since when I did a Google
search I found among other things a modern Spanish
"business solutions" company called Arroba with the
logo @, or sometimes "@RROBA".

The unit also comes up in Arabic contexts of course
and roughly coincides with the British "quarter" of
28 pound.

Anyway I continue wanting to look back as well as
forward

I was just winding you up!

I am relieved to hear it.

re the length of an ell. Looking through a free copy of the SAGA magazine, one of the reader's letters mentioned that she had seen ell as a measurement in germany and wondered about the length. From memory I think it was under four foot. Unfortunately, I haven't got the copy to confirm. This measurement is of course illegal under EU legislation.

I think an ell is 37 inches. We did this experiment, and my "personal" ell is 39 inches.

^The English ell was a yard and a quarter, or 45 inches.

^ Ah, there was a thirty seven inch ell, however, so it must have been Prussian or something.

Hi all, I once read a scholarly article about
the forcible imposition of metric units in france
and was fascinated by it but lost track of
the reference.

Maybe someone knows a book about history of units
or a webpage with such information.

Appalling stories. Around 1815-1825 I think. Soldiers
going around to cloth merchants. If they had information that the merchant was using ells
instead of meters (in selling cloth) they would
jail the guy and confiscate his stock.

Read this some 15 or 20 years ago before I was
much interested in issues of government imposing
units on people. Left strong impression but I had
no special use for the article and did not save
a xerox. Would like to find it now, or some
comparable study.

Not much different from modern England.