Daily Dose

From The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World, by Simon Winchester

NAMING

"The naming of units of measurement was of course one of the first orders of business in early civilization -- the cubits of the Babylonians were probably the first units of length; there were the unciae of the Romans, the grain, the carat, the toise, the catty -- and the yard and the half yard, the span, the finger, and the nail of early England."

From Afterword: The Measure of All Things