Animals measure distances and weight for their survival. On the other hand, stemming from their need to communicate to live in society, humans created languages and, later, established the standards of measuring. Whether for moving around, portioning food, making tools, or calculating the weight of objects and animals, measurement standards arise from this need that was already present in human activities in the age of chipped stone and has been with us ever since. Nowadays, most of the world's population uses meters and centimeters to measure distances. These standards come from the need to establish comparisons that allow trade between peoples and also from political and social disputes.
All civilizations of antiquity have some kind of measurement system. In the Egyptian civilization, the measurement system was fundamental for the maintenance of its Bureaucratic State, which guided the collection of taxes on agriculture. It was the scribes who controlled the measurements, which were based on human body proportions. For weight, the Egyptians, responsible for the invention of scales in 5,000 BC, used animal-shaped standards, which were highly regarded by society to the point of being buried with the pharaohs.
The Roman Empire also created its measurement system, based on the Greek system. There were houses that concentrated the standard models in Roman cities, so that people could take their rulers and check the measurements, which were also based on human body proportions, like feet and inches. Despite some attempts to standardize measurement systems, such as Charlemagne's in the 8th century, during the Middle Ages, each manor maintained its own system, which was based on the Feudal Lord's measurements. When the Egyptians were in power, the ratio depended upon taxes and who held the measures.
And so it continued to be, during European absolutist regimes, with empires and kingdoms establishing a form of control based on measurement. Precision was almost impossible. Either because of the interest in extorting the population or because the standards vary from place to place. With the French Revolution and the break with feudal traditions, the proposal to standardize the measurement system is raised, seeking to improve commercial conditions. In this sense, with the capitalist system and the valorization of profit, the standardization of measurement systems becomes important.
Based on Enlightenment ideas, scientists at the time understood that for there to be a standard system it could not derive from the human proportions of royalty since there were political disputes between empires. It should be based on something immutable in nature. The clash between the French and English empires led the countries under the former to adopt the system, and those under the latter maintained the British imperial system until the 20th century when academia universally recognized the International System of Units.
Even with the change in ideals that encourages the standardization of measures, measurement continues to prevail as a bureaucratic and control tool. The meter, a constant and universal standard with multiples and submultiples, allows precision, standardization and checking, becoming a fundamental tool for the capitalist system, considering the control of the entire industry that would develop from there. Architecture, meanwhile, adopted meters as standard measures, instead of human proportions.
If, on the one hand, it allowed construction to develop and standardize techniques and materials almost universally, on the other hand, it erased the autonomy of the builder and free creation by forcing him or her to learn techniques that are not organic and instinctive. Nowadays, there is an effort to rescue vernacular architecture, which often uses techniques and measurements that are not arithmetic, seeking knowledge that may have been lost with the universal standardization of systems.
Editor's Note: This article was originally published on December 13, 2022.
