THE STANDARD YARD.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5540, 30 December 1878, Page 3

THE STANDARD YARD.

A bill consolidating the law relating to weights and measures has, says Financial Opinion , been introduced into the House of Commons. It re-enacts the enactments of Magna Charia requiring uniformity of weights and measures. By clause 4 the bronze bar and the platinum weight, now in the custody of the Warden of the Standards, are continued as the imperial standards of measures and weights. The ancient standards, as some of our readers may remember, were destroyed in the fire at the Houses of Parliament in 1834. Doubts having been thrown on the accuracy of the methods adopted for the restoration of the standards destroyed, an Act was passed in 1855 authorising new standards to bo made for determining the length of the imperial standard yard and the weight of the imperial standard pound. The standard of length consists of a solid square bar, thirtyeight inches long and one inch square in transverse section, the bar' being of bronze or gun metal. Near to each end of this bar a cylindrical hole is sunk (the distance betweeen the centres of the two holes being thirty-six inches) to the depth of half an inch; at the bottom of this hole is inserted in a smaller hole a gold, plug or pin, about one-tenth of an inch in diameter, and upon the centre of this pin there are cut three fine lines at intervals of about one-hundredth part of an inch transverse to the axis of, the liar, and two lines at nearly the same interval parallel to' the axis of,fche bar ; the measure of length of the imperial standard yard is given by the interval between the middle transversal lino at one end and the middle transversal line at the other end, the part of each line which is employed being the point midway between the longitudinal .lines.' By section 10 of this BUI it is declared that the straight line or distance between the centres or two gold plugs or pins measure,,, when • the bar is at the temperature of sixty4wo degrees.of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, shall be the legal standard measure of length, and shall be called the Imperial standard yard, and shall be the only unit or standard measure of extension from which all other measures of extension, whether linear, superficial, or solid, shall he ascertained.