Such a pendulum, then, becomes itself a measure of determinate length, to which all others may be referred to as a standard.’
Jefferson could not have known it, but here he was describing a process that had been used by humankind for more than 5,000 years. He next identified the characteristics of the pendulum technique:
‘Both theory and experience prove that, to preserve its isochronism [uniformity in time], it must be shorter towards the equator, and longer towards the poles. The height of the situation above the common level, as being an increment to the radius of the earth, diminishes the length of the pendulum.’
Belonging to a mechanical age, Jefferson identified the potential for the engine that swings the pendulum to interfere in the process. However, if swung by hand there would be no such problem and we doubt that an engine would affect the pendulum length unless it was clumsily applied:
‘To continue small and equal vibrations, through a sufficient length of time, and to count these vibrations, machinery and a power are necessary, which may exert a small but constant effort to renew the waste of motion; and the difficulty is so to apply these, as that they shall neither retard nor accelerate the vibrations.’
Jefferson’s rod
He next put forward a suggestion for an improvement to the method using the latest technology available at the time:
‘In order to avoid the uncertainties which respect the centre of oscillation, it has been proposed by Mr Leslie, an ingenious artist of Philadelphia, to substitute, for the pendulum, a uniform cylindrical rod, without a bob.
Could the diameter of such a rod be infinitely small, the centre of oscillation would be exactly at two-thirds of the whole length, measured from the point of suspension. Giving it a diameter which shall render it sufficiently inflexible, the centre will be displaced, indeed; but, in a second rod not the six hundred thousandth part of its length, and not the hundredth part as much as in a second pendulum with a spherical bob of proper diameter. This displacement is so infinitely minute, then, that we may consider the centre of oscillation, for all practical purposes, as residing at two-thirds of the length from the centre of suspension. The distance between these two centres might be easily and accurately ascertained in practice. But the whole rod is better for a standard than any portion of it, because sensibly defined at both its extremities.’
The ‘rod’ described by Mr Leslie is a ridged strip of metal without a weight on the end. This means that the weight of the rod itself responds to the Earth’s gravity rather than the stone at the end of a piece of twine. It is more accurate than a pendulum but Jefferson pointed out that such a rod will always be 50 per cent longer than a pendulum to produce the same time interval. As the seconds pendulum is a tiny fraction less than a metre, the rod described here is a fraction under 1.5 metres, at 149.158 centimetres. It is also almost exactly three Sumerian kush.
Next, Jefferson considered the effect of using the rod at different latitudes, which will result in small variations. He discussed using 45 degrees north because it is mid-way between the equator and the North Pole, but curiously he also chose 31 degrees north, which is a latitude than runs through the land that was ancient Sumer:
‘The difference between the second rod for 45° of latitude, and that for 31°, our other extreme, is to be examined.
The second pendulum for 45° of latitude, according to Sir Isaac Newton’s computation, must be of 39.14912 inches English measure; and a rod, to vibrate in the same time, must be of the same length between the centres of suspension and oscillation; and, consequently, its whole length 58.7 (or, more exactly, 58.72368) inches. This is longer than the rod which shall vibrate seconds in the 31° of latitude, by about part of its whole length; a difference so minute, that it might be neglected, as insensible, for the common purposes of life, but, in cases requiring perfect exactness, the second rod, found by trial of its vibrations in any part of the United States, may be corrected by computation for the latitude of the place, and so brought exactly to the standard of 45°.
By making the experiment in the level of the ocean, the difference will be avoided, which a higher position might occasion.’
Jefferson then makes his recommendation that the standard of measure of length should be derived from a uniform cylindrical rod of iron:
‘…of such length as, in latitude 45°, in the level of the ocean, and in a cellar, or other place, the temperature of which does not vary throughout the year, shall perform its vibrations in small and equal arcs, in one second of mean time.’
The solution to all measurements
Having innocently adopted the Sumerian second as the unit of time, Jefferson’s new unit had to be related to the Mesopotamian kush – and the Megalithic Yard. This he saw as the solution to all measurements including coinage, where each coin was simply a known weight of precious metal. He continued by saying:
‘A standard of invariable length being thus obtained, we may proceed to identify, by that, the measures, weights and coins of the United States.’
At this point in his report, Jefferson referred to the origin of the weights and measures then currently in use in the United States. He wanted to better understand their origin:
‘The first settlers of these States, having come chiefly from England, brought with them the measures and weights of that country. These alone are generally established among us, either by law or usage; and these, therefore, are alone to be retained and fixed. We must resort to that country for information of what they are, or ought to be.
This rests, principally, on the evidence of certain standard measures and weights, which have been preserved, of long time, in different deposits. But differences among these having been known to exist, the House of Commons, in the years 1757 and 1758, appointed committees to inquire into the original standards of their weights and measures. These committees, assisted by able mathematicians and artists, examined and compared with each other the several standard measures and weights, and made reports on them in the years 1758 and 1759. The circumstances under which these reports were made entitle them to be considered, as far as they go, as the best written testimony existing of the standard measures and weights of England; and as such, they will be relied on in the progress of this report.’
Jefferson then gave the current units as follows, referring to the pole or perch, which was also known in England as the rod:
‘The league of 3 miles,
The mile of 8 furlongs,
The furlong of 40 poles or perches,
The pole or perch of 5½ yards,
The fathom of 2 yards,
The ell of a yard and quarter,
The yard of 3 feet,
The foot of 12 inches, and
The inch of 10 lines.
On this branch of their subject, the committee of 1757–1758, says that the standard measures of length at the receipt of the exchequer, are a yard, supposed to be of the time of Henry VII, and a yard and ell supposed to have been made about the year 1601.’
It is interesting that Jefferson stated that the yard was ‘supposed’ to date from the time of Henry VII – which means the second half of the 15th century. He appeared to doubt this. Then he said that in 1743 members of the Royal Society had defined English measures from the ‘line’ (a tenth of an inch) through to the league, by expressing these units as a known part of a ‘seconds rod’ swung at the latitude of London. Interestingly, there were 10 lines to the inch, 12 inches to the foot and 3 feet to the yard, which meant that the yard contained 360 of the smallest units. This was a rather odd reflection of the Sumerian double-kush which was made up of 360 barley seeds.
Measures of capacity
When Jefferson turned to measures of capacity he defined the volumetric rules for arriving at the specific amount.
‘The measures to be made for use, being four sided, with rectangular sides and bottom.
• The pint will be 3 inches square, and 3¾ inches deep;
• The quart 3 inches square, and 7½
inches deep;
• The pottle 3 inches square, and 15 inches deep, or 4½,5, and 6 inches;
• The gallon 6 inches square, and 7½ inches deep, or 5, 6, and 9 inches;
• The peck 6, 9, and 10 inches;
• The half bushel 12 inches square, and 7½ inches deep; and
• The bushel 12 inches square, and 15 inches deep, or 9, 15, and 16 inches.
Cylindrical measures have the advantage of superior strength, but square ones have the greater advantage of enabling every one who has a rule in his pocket, to verify their contents by measuring them. Moreover, till the circle can be squared, the cylinder cannot be cubed, nor its contents exactly expressed in figures.
Let the measures of capacity, then, for the United States be:
A gallon of 270 cubic inches;
The gallon to contain 2 pottles;
The pottle 2 quarts;
The quart 2 pints;
The pint 4 gills;
Two gallons to make a peck;
Eight gallons a bushel or firkin;
Two strikes, or kilderkins, a coomb or barrel;
Two coombs, or barrels, a quarter or hogshead;
A hogshead and a third one tierce;
Two hogsheads a pipe, butt, or puncheon; and
Two pipes a ton.’
Harmony in the system
The document also records Jefferson’s surprise that when he studied the old English measures, that were always described as haphazard and unrelated, he found a curious underlying pattern. He found that the two systems of weights (the avoirdupois and the troy) are the same thing, apart from one being based on the weight of water and the other on the weight of the same volume of wheat grain. Troy weights were still used alongside avoirdupois weights in Jefferson’s time and like the avoirdupois weights it is thought that troy weights had originated in the Champagne Fairs, most probably named after ‘Troyes’, the capital of Champagne. Two differing systems had been very confusing and the English government has already tried unsuccessfully to get rid of one of them:
‘This seems to have been so combined as to render it indifferent whether a thing were dealt out by weight or measure; for the dry gallon of wheat, and the liquid one of wine, were of the same weight; and the avoirdupois pound of wheat, and the troy pound of wine, were of the same measure.’
The statesman realized something truly remarkable. He was a brilliant man and his document revealed how he had surmised that imperial (or avoirdupois) units were not medieval rough measures as was generally assumed. He was extremely puzzled:
‘Another remarkable correspondence is that between weights and measures. For 1000 ounces avoirdupois of pure water fill a cubic foot, with mathematical exactness.’
Jefferson could not dismiss this as an amusing coincidence. Everything he had discovered about old measures was revealing a pattern which showed that someone a very, very long time ago had designed this mathematical relationship.
The thoughts of this extraordinary man make for fascinating reading:
‘What circumstances of the times, or purposes of barter or commerce, called for this combination of weights and measures, with the subjects to be exchanged or purchased, are not now to be ascertained. But a triple set of exact proportionals representing weights, measures, and the things to be weighed and measured, and a relation so integral between weights and solid measures, must have been the result of design and scientific calculation, and not a mere coincidence of hazard.
It proves that the dry and wet measures, the heavy and light weights, must have been original parts of the system they compose contrary to the opinion of the committee of 1757, 1758, who thought that the avoirdupois weight was not an ancient weight of the kingdom, nor ever even a legal weight, but during a single year of the reign of Henry VIII; and, therefore, concluded, otherwise than will be here proposed, to suppress it altogether. Their opinion was founded chiefly on the silence of the laws as to this weight. But the harmony here developed in the system of weights and measures, of which the avoirdupois makes an essential member, corroborated by a general use, from very high antiquity, of that, or of a nearly similar weight under another name, seem stronger proofs that this is legal weight, than the mere silence of the written laws is to the contrary.’
Jefferson had no doubt that the official explanation for the chaotic origin of the old English weights and measures was completely wrong and based on ignorance of what was obviously once an integrated and precise system. He realized that someone highly advanced from the very distant past must have created a scientific system that had been fragmented, so that its elegance had been lost. We can only speculate on what Jefferson meant by the term ‘from high antiquity’ but it seems reasonable to assume that he was thinking about the earliest moments of recorded history – or perhaps even before that. He continued to muse over the findings that had surprised him so much.
‘Be that as it may, it is in such general use with us, that, on the principle of popular convenience, its higher denominations, at least, must be preserved. It is by the avoirdupois pound and ounce that our citizens have been used to buy and sell… But it will be necessary to refer these weights to a determinate mass of some substance, the specific gravity of which is invariable. Rain water is such a substance, and may be referred to everywhere, and through all time. It has been found by accurate experiments that a cubic foot of rain water weighs 1000 ounces avoirdupois, standard weights of the exchequer. It is true that among these standard weights the committee report small variations; but this experiment must decide in favor of those particular weights, between which, and an integral mass of water, so remarkable a coincidence has been found. To render this standard more exact, the water should be weighed always in the same temperature of air; as heat, by increasing its volume, lessens its specific gravity. The cellar of uniform temperature is best for this also.’
Jefferson’s recommendations
Having discovered this inexplicable underlying pattern behind old measures Thomas Jefferson continued with the business of creating new ones. He next defined the dollar:
‘Let it be declared, therefore, that the money unit, or dollar of the United States, shall contain 371.262 American grains of pure silver.’ [A grain is a minute subdivision of the pound.]
The units of decimal length that Jefferson recommended were based on his seconds rod but constructed so that they where close to familiar measurement units:
‘Let the second rod, then, as before described, be the standard of measure; and let it be divided into five equal parts, each of which shall be called a foot; for, perhaps, it may be better generally to retain the name of the nearest present measure, where there is one tolerably near. It will be about one quarter of an inch shorter than the present foot.
Let the foot be divided into 10 inches;
The inch into 10 lines;
The line into 10 points;
Let 10 feet make a decad;
10 decads one rood;
10 roods a furlong;
10 furlongs a mile.’
While Jefferson’s exercise is most impressive, it does show how easy it is for ‘improvers’ of old systems to lose the core idea. His units of lengths, weight and volume were all based on the Sumerian second of time – but without any understanding of the second’s role as a measure of the size and motion of the Earth. The units he proposed would have become total abstractions by moving away from the great, original idea. However, because he used the seconds rod as his basis, he could not avoid being tied into the ‘great underlying principle’.
Jefferson’s new foot based on one-fifth of the seconds rod was equal to 29.831629 centimetres. He said that there would be 1,000 feet to his furlong and 10,000 to his mile – which is 2,983.1629 metres. This creates the following correspondence:
1,000 Jefferson feet
= 360 Megalithic Yards
What would Thomas Jefferson have thought if he knew that the prehistoric standing stones scattered across the moors of the British Isles had
been built with units that were the original mirror image of his ‘new’ invention? He would have been even more amazed to learn the following:
366 Jefferson furlongs
= 1 Megalithic Degree of arc of the Earth
3662 Jefferson furlongs
= exact circumference of the Earth
The United States of America did not adopt Jefferson’s measures, and that country is now almost alone in using the ancient measurements that so puzzled the man who was to become its third president.
We consider that this work by Jefferson provides us with a winning piece of evidence because the Megalithic ‘DNA’ is completely present – without the inventor ever realizing it. The Megalithic Yard is real and it is the precursor to virtually all major units from history.
It was increasingly obvious to us that the second of time was of great and fundamental importance. It has been universally adopted yet no-one knows what it is, and few people realize where it came from. We decided to return to the land of Sumer to gain a clearer insight into the minds of the people who developed these units of timekeeping.
CONCLUSIONS
In the late 18th century Thomas Jefferson set out to create a new system of weights and measures for the new nation of the United States of America. He recorded how the only conceivable starting point for the measure of any dimension was the turning of the Earth – just as we had concluded. Then, just like the Megalithic people and the Sumerians before him he decided that a pendulum was the only way to monitor the spin of the planet.
Because Jefferson adopted a second as the time interval for his pendulum he, like the French, was automatically linking himself with the underlying structure of the Sumerian system. He then made a major improvement in the process by following the discovery of fellow countryman Mr Leslie (‘an ingenious artist of Philadelphia’), who identified that a fine, ridged rod used instead of a string on a pendulum would have much more accurate results. Such a rod would not need a weight on the end and it would have to be half as long again as a string pendulum to produce the same swing period.
Civilization One: The World is Not as You Thought it Was Page 10