Yup - at least in Europe this backtracks all the way into the Middle Ages. And it was actually a big deal because the units were similar, neither completely identical nor completely different. And that was actually a big deal because people could argue which of those units they meant, specially when buying/selling stuff. (For example, let’s say that some Portuguese merchant agrees to sell “five tons of fish” to a random Englishman. Now you get:
the merchant arguing “five Portuguese tons”, expecting to sell 793*5=3965kg of fish
the buyer arguing “five English tons”, expecting to buy 1088*5=5440kg of fish
even if both were in good faith they’d feel themselves cheated on the deal.
To make it worse sometimes the units changed inside the same realm, over time.
FYI the English name of that cask is “tun”.
Thanks for the info. (To be honest I couldn’t be bothered to look for it.)
What units did Portugal use before metric?
I’m from Brazil but I think that the units were the same anyway. The ones that I recall are (note: approximated values)
I don’t recall the volume units, but I don’t expect them to be too different from the anglo units.
Oh interesting. I didn’t know each country had its own slightly different version of imperial units
Oh, you are in for a surprise.
Just look at the imperial area measurement unities. Very few countries standardized them, and even on those, people don’t really use the standard.
Yup - at least in Europe this backtracks all the way into the Middle Ages. And it was actually a big deal because the units were similar, neither completely identical nor completely different. And that was actually a big deal because people could argue which of those units they meant, specially when buying/selling stuff. (For example, let’s say that some Portuguese merchant agrees to sell “five tons of fish” to a random Englishman. Now you get:
even if both were in good faith they’d feel themselves cheated on the deal.
To make it worse sometimes the units changed inside the same realm, over time.