From Holigent Solution’s tandem arrangement (Delta Plan) of money and direct human resources, a hybrid system emerges in which value is exchanged by means other than money exclusively and wealth is measured to a significant degree by a Quality of Life Index (QLX). As we move forward developing a new and sustainable value and wealth system for the 21 century it is helpful to look back on the history of weights and measures.

A Brief History of Weights and Measures:

Understanding the need to Develop a New Value and Wealth System

The earliest humans lived hand-to-mouth, no different from most animals. Instincts, such as hunger and thirst, took care of the fundamental measuring of life's basic needs. That, however, changed, and the change was revolutionary, when humans began to consciously weigh and measure aspects of their environment, their physical possessions, and what they exchanged with others. The earliest evidence we have of such a conscious practice of weighing and measuring coincides with the end of the hunting and gathering way of life and the beginning of planting crops and domesticating animals for food. The need to weigh grain and count sheep became necessary to measure one's possessions. When surplus was produced, trading was the next stage, which required more accurate weighing and measuring. For example, in trade, both barterers had to agree on the measures of how much grain for how many sheep.

Simple counting was the first measure to develop. Beads, pebbles, or marks carved in wood or stone helped keep the count. As commerce developed, measuring things like the length of pelts and the height of horses became necessary. The first instruments of measuring length were the body parts: Fingers, hands, arms, and feet. Weighing was slower to develop. The Hebrew word for weight, in the Biblical reference, is even (stone) and the early Babylonian, Egyptian, and Roman weights were also made of stone. Weighing was more difficult because it needed not only weights but also an instrument of comparison – scales. There is evidence that the manual comparison of the weights of two items, one in each hand, was used up to the 18th century. The hand was also the instrument used to measure volumes to fill early medicinal prescriptions: A handful, a pinch.

However, it eventually became obvious that one man had longer or larger fingers, hands, arms, or feet than another. The marketplace became the scene of many arguments. To avoid lengthy and disruptive arguments, city governments of major markets established standard weights and measures. Such standards became law, and government agents sealed scales and marked weights with exclusive symbols. Anyone caught using double standards was severely punished. When trading goods for goods was replaced by trading for money, commerce was much facilitated. The early monies carried their value in weights of gold and silver. The mints were careful not to put more precious metal into a coin than it was worth. This demanded the development of more accurate weights and more precise scales.

Trade became quite orderly within each city that had standard weights and measures, but trading between cities presented a problem. Not only did various trades have their separate measures, but also each city had its own standard. As commerce expanded between cities, kingdoms, and nations, merchants must have had nightmares. It is easy for us to make comparisons now, since we can express each weight in standard metric grams and kilograms, but below is an almost humorous sampler of what merchants had to deal with before the metric-decimal system was introduced.

  Abas - Weight unit of pearls in Persia = 0.175 gm

  Akey - Gold and silver weight in Sudan = 1.3 gm

  Arroba - Weight in Spain = 11.522 kg

  Baquila - Egyptian (bean) = 4 samuna = 12 girat = 2.34 gm

  Calfa - Gold and silver weight in Mocca = 3.167 gm

  Carat - Gold and silver weight in Bologna = 0.108 gm; in Florence = 14.15 gm;

          in Genoa = 13.22 gm; in Milan = 9.8 gm; in Venice = 0.2 gm

  Cargo - Spanish market weight = 2.5 quintal = 10 arrobas = 240 libras majores = 360 libras

          menores = 124.52 kg

  Deusquin - Dutch =1/2 troisquin = 1/2560 troy marc = 0.097 gm

  Drachme - Polish = 1/4 lutow = 1/8 ounce = 1/128 funt = 3 skrupulow = 24 granow =

          132 granikow = 3.15 gm

  Funda - Russian gold and silver weight = 96 solotniks = 409.16 gm

  Grain - England = 1/24 pennyweight = 1/480 ounce = 1/5700 troy pound = 0.065 gm

  Gros - French = 3 deniers = 72 grains = 3.9 gm

  Himl - Islamic (a camel load) = 300 mann = 600 ratl = 250 kg

  Mozetta - Salt weight Corfu = 1/2 sacco = 1/60 centinajo = 995.1 gm

  Parah - Rice weight East India = 1/8 candy = 16 adowlies = 64 seers = 128 tiprees = 20.322 kg

  Stein/stone - Market weight, Amsterdam = 3.952 kg; Berlin = 10.285 kg; Sweden = 13.556 kg;

           Vienna = 11.202 kg

  Wage/vague - Weight for iron or lead, in France = 85.665 kg; Bruges = 79.980 kg;

           Sweden = 69.85 kg

(From Bruno Kisch, Scales and Weights, Yale University Press, 1965.)

The birth of the idea for the metric-decimal system can be traced back to the French Revolution. Out of the turmoil of the revolution came the desire for greater equality and order. In peacetime, the greatest source of disorder was the chaos in trade and commerce. Everyone had much to gain if uniform standards of weights and measures were introduced. Such a uniform system was first suggested in France by M. de Talleyrand to the Assemblée Nationale in 1790.

The fathers of the metric-decimal system realized that if they were not to offend the pride and sensitivities of other nations they must not choose as standard anything arbitrary or found only in France. They had to choose something global. So a daring team of surveyors undertook the arduous task of measuring and calculating the length of a meridian of Earth. One forty-millionth part of that length was designated as one meter. That length was finely engraved into a platinum bar and safeguarded in a vault at Sevres, France. The standard for weight/mass was derived from the meter. One kilogram is the weight of one cubic decimeter of distilled water at freezing temperature in vacuum.

Old habits, no matter how cumbersome, die hard. Decades of persuasion followed, but complete change to the metric-decimal system came only when King Louis Philippe decreed it to be the law on January 1, 1840. The government of France sponsored an international metric convention and invited all countries to send delegates to the meeting. After much delay, the first meeting of the convention took place in 1872 in Paris. By the beginning of the 20th century, nearly all but the Anglo-Saxon world had adopted the metric-decimal system for commerce. Science adopted it completely, and all scientists of the world use the metric-decimal system as the international standard of measurement.

The Industrial Revolution required more and more accurate standards. The discovery and application of electricity, chemistry, heat, pressure, and radiation all created a need for new standards of measurement. To meet the mounting need to develop and safeguard new and uniform measurements in science, industry, and trade, the United States Congress established the National Bureau of Standards in 1901.

By 1925, the Bureau of Standards had nine sections: Weights and measures, electricity, heat and power, optics, chemistry, mechanics and sound, structural engineering, metallurgy, and ceramics. The nine sections had a total of 62 divisions. For example, the section of weights and measures had nine divisions: Length, mass, time, capacity and density, gas-measuring instruments, thermal expansivity, weights and measures law administration, investigating and testing of scales, and gauges. The section of electricity had 10 divisions: Resistance measurements, inductance and capacitance, electrical measuring instruments, magnetic measurements, photometry, radio communication, electrolysis prevention, safety engineering, electro-chemistry, and telephone standards.

It makes you pause and think that until 300 years ago, the best way to tell which of two objects was heavier was to hold one in each hand and subjectively weigh it (the word weigh comes from Anglo-Saxon, wegan, to carry or bear). Most industrial and trading nations adopted the metric-decimal system only about 100 years ago. We are now in the nuclear, back-from-the-Moon, microelectronic, high-technology, information age. The fine old platinum bar at Sevres, France, is too crude for our taste. The meter is currently defined as the distance that light travels in 1/299,792,458th of a second. In order to have confidence in that meter, we must be able to measure time with much higher accuracy. Mechanical clocks can no longer do such a job so we look to atomic clocks. The standard second is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation emitted in a transition between two specified energy levels of the cesium-133 atom.

Many of the new standards are incomprehensible to the nonscientist. It is enough to say that science has measured the largest, smallest, fastest, coldest, and hottest aspects of the physical universe – in many cases, to the absolute quantum accuracy. We know the mass of the electron (9.1095 x 10-31 kg) and the mass of the proton (1.67265 x 10-27 kg) inside the atom. To a lesser degree of accuracy, we also know the size of our Universe or Cosmos (13.7 billion light years).

But what do we know about the most significant force and factor on our planet? What are the weights and measures of human consciousness? Tests of education and intelligence are measures of specialized knowledge and of memory-recall; they are not a direct and absolute measure of consciousness. The substance of consciousness is not physical. It has not been identified by science; therefore, no weights and measures could have been developed for it. The chaos of consciousness among ideas, customs, laws, beliefs, and religions is the major source of human conflict today. The raging arguments and wars across streets, towns, and nations are reminiscent of the arguments and conflicts in the marketplaces before the metric standards of weights and measures were introduced.  

In retrospect, it is inconceivable that socioeconomic evolution would have taken place without a progressive development of the weights and measures of all the significant physical factors of human life and society. Without weights and measures, humans would most likely still live in clans and tribes, hunting and gathering. Anything beyond that requires organizing, constructing, manufacturing, trading, administering, transporting – all of which need counting, weighing, and measuring.

Why am I rambling on about weights and measures?

Because it is evident that any advance in social evolution needs a commensurate advance in the standards of weights and measures as well as value and wealth. I strongly suspect that continued human evolution, indeed our very existence on this planet, is contingent on developing weights and measures not only for our physical possessions and activities but also for the intangibles of human consciousness and quality of life. The Holigent Solution intends to facilitate such a grand and necessary development.