This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||
|
Text and/or other creative content from this version of French_units_of_measurement was copied or moved into French_units_of_measurement_(to_1795) with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
I changed the first sentence under History to give the article on "English units" as the direct comparison to the French units being discussed in this article. The customary English units would be the direct comparison to the French royal units in both time period and comparable historical evolution. US customary units would also be of interest, but are based on and their article linked to, English units. So I didn't add that.
I left the previous comparison to the Imperial System of units in parentheses. This system was a later rationalization of English units, taking place a full generation after France had replaced royal units with the metric system, and so is less authentic as a direct comparison. But still useful second link. Random noter ( talk) 23:28, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
The article currently contains a weird claim, without a reference: "Traditionally, the French pound (livre) was defined as the mass of exactly 1⁄70 of a French cubic foot of water. When the kilogram was defined, the knowledge that a pied du roi cube filled with water has a mass of exactly 70 livres was apparently lost." The claim of this being the "traditional and exact definition" was introduced in 2007 ( diff). I didn't find a reference in support of it. Instead, sources say "From approximately the fifteenth century until the adoption of the metric system in August 1793, the official system of weights employed in France was called the "poids de marc" or mark weights, having for its primary standards the "pile de Charlemagne." Constructed some time between the middle of the fourteenth and the end of the fifteenth centuries, the principal weight - the "livre poids de marc" or pound by park weight of 0.4895 kilograms - was one of a series of 13 copper cup weights fitted one into another that totaled 50 marks or 25 pounds (12.235 kg)." ( Zupko) The claim seems to be nonsense that should be removed. Ceinturion ( talk) 12:25, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
{{
cite encyclopedia}}
: Invalid |ref=harv
(
help)This has been discussed elsewhere in Wikipedia, and several people are of the opinion that whilst it is good for SI units it is riddled with subtle errors when it comes to non-SI non-English stuff. I can add a data point to this opinion. Cardarelli has just two tables of old French weights, noted as specifically the Parisian ones, oversimplifying things as much as this very article used to. The first has a "Lot" column that is a purported unit not mentioned in any French-language source that I have just cited, including Saigey's fairly thorough Traité de métrologie. That's because it's not a Paris measure of weight at all, or even a French one; it is a subdivision of the marc d' Augsbourg, a German measure. This book might not be a good thing to be pointing readers to. Jonathan de Boyne Pollard ( talk) 02:29, 14 July 2019 (UTC)