A Frael of Figs
 - or -
A Handful of History


If history consisted only in lists of the dates when "important people" did earth-shattering things such as kicking the bucket from a surfeit of lampreys, then I would agree with Henry Ford that history is bunk.

However, history at large can run from the present day all the way back to the big bang - assuming there ever was a big bang.

Working from a simple principle, geologists figured out the geological processes which have made the face of our planet what it is today.  That simple principle states that the processes which we observe today must have operated the same way in the past and will certainly operate the same way in the future.

That is the essence of uniformitarianism, a principle of geology first formulated in a scientific manner by James Hutton.

Uniformitarianism admits a rule of uniformity of process operation throughout geological history.  By extension, it can be formulated as a law of universal and cosmic application: the laws of physics are the same for all observers under the same conditions across time and space.

Some of the historical evidence accumulated by geologists came from archives.  Processes operating today were seen to have operated in a similar way in the past according to eye-witness accounts.  But the planet itself is the most wonderful illustrated history book that one could wish for.  The language which is found in its ages-old pages is universal.

And so it was that history gave value to geology and geology gave value to physics.  

Without history, science is bunk.

I have no time for bunk, so I like to check up on what is presented as historical fact by checking up on the available evidence.

Scientific evidence can be found in the strangest places.  The strangest of all places, perhaps, is the archive of tax laws and payments where one can find evidence of  geological and climatic processes in historic times.  Bad times make bad markets.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine whether my delving into tax archives is to be taken as evidence of the past, or as evidence of my need to get a life.


Historic weights and measures

My recent articles on Ignaz Venetz show that he adopted the metric system some time after 1821.  His 1821 paper uses Swiss leagues and feet, while his posthumous paper uses those units together with meters.  The French word lieue (league) is often translated as mile, but that is imprecise.  A league is not necessarily the same measure in all lands.

I often wonder how scientists managed to communicate measurements with precision in an even more remote past.  If you think it's bad enough converting between British, U.S. and metric units, try going back to the times when not just every region, but every trade had its own preferred units of measure.

Here is a small sample of oddball archaic units compiled from old tax and toll-related documents and various web sources.

bag
 - 70,000 cochineal insects
 - of cocoa 1 cwt

bar
 - of bullion, 15 to 30 lb

barrel
 - of anchovies 30 lb
 - beef 25 stone
 - butter 224 lb
 - candles 120 lb
 - coffee 3 to 11 cwt
 - flour 196 lb
 - gunpowder 1 cwt
 - herrings 32 gall
 - Malaga figs 96 to 360 lb
 - pork 28 stone
 - potashes 120 lb
 - resin 2 cwt
 - soap 256 lb
 - tar 261 imp. gals
 - tapioca 1.1/4 cwt
 - turpentine 2 to 2.1/2 cwt
 - Valencia raisins 1 cwt

chaldron ( a kind of coal wagon)
 - of coal 25.1/2 cwt
 - Newcastle chaldron of coal 52 1/2 cwt or 3 wains (a kind of farm wagon)

cubic yard
 - of new hay 6 stone (84 lb)
 - of old hay  8 stone (1 cwt)

faggot - of steel 120 lb

firkin - of soap 64 lb

frael or frail (various other spellings: a basket made from rushes)
 - of Faro figs 32 lb
 - of Malaga figs 56 lb

jordan (a box)
 - of almonds 25 lb

load
 - of bricks 100 pieces

long hundred
 - of fish 132

pocket
  - of hops 1.1/2 to 2 cwt

seam
 - of  glass 120 lb

seron
 - of almonds 1.1/4cwt
 - of cochineal 140 lb

tother
 - of lead 2,400 lb

warp
 - of fish 4 pieces


And there are many hundreds of local and trade-special units which would take a whole book to list.  It would, of course, be the most 'remaindered' book in the history of publishing.  Boring wouldn't even begin to describe it!

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