NK - Free Time

Marc Carlson marc-carlson at utulsa.edu
Fri Aug 6 09:33:40 PDT 1999


>For period, wasn't it more a matter of the size of the merchants body parts?
>*this could easily be taken out of context*  :)

Don't worry, it probably will be.

I think it was whoever was doing the measuring, for the most part (i.e., my
keyboard
is about 2 palms tall, by 5 wide, more or less).  There *were* standard
measurements
(usually based on the old Roman measures), but these were often governed by
local
practice (in England, the Crown determined the standards, while in France
and Germany
and Italy every region determined their own.  That's why an English inch is
one thing,
and a Paris inch is something else.

OTOH, let's say that your order enough fabric from a draper to make a new
dress (in modern 
terms - let me see 3.5 yards of 60 inch wide = 17,280 sq inches of
cloth/24" wide loom = 
16 ells (English)) and the only place he can order this fabric from is from
over in Calontir
he knows the fabric width is about the same, but they use Flemish ells
which are a bit over
half as long, so he's going to need to order at least 28 ells (actually
26.67) from them. 

So, does that make sense?

Marc/Diarmaid



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