Aspects of Change

In all systems of tabulation devised for the regulating of commerce, especially in those with a long history, it is inevitable that adjustments to unit values and terminology should have been made from time to time in response to changing circumstances. This was usually achieved without violating the fundamental principles on which the systems were based. Examples of such adaptations are Henry VIII's many adjustments to the coinage, still at that time at least nominally associated with weights; his abandoning of the outmoded and increasingly unpopular Tower pound with the transferring of its role to the Troy system; and Elizabeth's slight alteration to Avoirdupois in 1588 by the addition of a 1⁄2 grain to the ounce, thereby making the pound a more convenient 7,000 grains instead of the former 6,992 grains. These shifts and changes, often instigated by merchants, did not revolutionize the standards but merely ironed out anomalies and in general improved the systems to which they applied. Such a developmental process may be likened to biological evolution — descent with modification — for in it there is continuity

Genealogy · Historical Economic and Legal Thought · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Philosophy and Science · History

• Weights and Measures in Regional Studies

  J Geoffrey Dent, Julian Dent•Folk Life•1981

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• A History of Lead Mining in the Pennines

  R H Campbell, Arthur Raistrick et al.•The Economic History Review•1966

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