Weight and Measure – Origins of Trade

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Weights and Measures are an important accepted part of our culture. We measure everything from bananas at the supermarket to barrels of oil for trade. So how did we come up with these accepted modern standard measurements? The answer lies in the past, as well as in science. In the far past, items would have been placed on a scale with grain as the accepted measure of opposite weight. Originally trading was done by the item and not by weight, but the seeds of our current system comes as early as the Babylonians and Sumerians.

With the introduction of weight, people began to develop different systems of measure based on grains or volume of water.   We use this measure for trade, and it has both international and national organizations that monitor and enforce standards of weight for trade and tax.  Canada started with the Imperial System, but has since adopted the Metric System.   In the United States they currently measure everything based on the weight of the Prototype Kilogram 20.

Trade in the past was one physical item for another but most currencies today are not fixed.  In most currencies, the value of currency used to be pegged to the “gold standard” – a value of dollar per weight of gold as set by each country.  In the modern economy, very few countries have a gold backed economy, simply because the modern economy is so large it could never redeem dollars in gold.

Do you use weights and measure in your own life? How important are these “tools of trade” to the average person? Let me know on Facebook or in the comments.