Civilization One: The World is Not as You Thought it Was (14 page)

We had been more than perplexed when we discovered that spheres with diameters measured in Megalithic units produce volumes that conform to cubic metres, litres and metric tonnes. It had seemed ridiculous in the extreme – but now we could see an underlying pattern emerging. The use of the second and the pendulum had drawn the French team into the ancient matrix that held some deep reality from the turning of the Earth. We really needed to understand better what a second of time actually is, but first we decided to see if there were any other recent measurement systems that may provide an additional piece for our giant jigsaw puzzle.

Following the French Revolution the Académie des Sciences decided to introduce a new system of decimal weights and measures that was to be based on the length derived from a pendulum that produced a time interval of one second. Using this ancient Mesopotamian measure of time would have automatically reinvented the double-kush without the fact being realized. Eventually they had to concede that their timepieces were not accurate enough to measure a precise second and they therefore used a subdivision of the globe from the equator to the North Pole as the basis of the new metric system. The metre that was settled upon was one 10,000,000th part of the Earth’s quadrant and extremely close in length to the seconds pendulum that they had originally wanted to achieve.

The seconds pendulum was used as a backup means of recreating the metre and even the imperial system used this same technique for possible emergencies. Having reinvented the double-kush the French then proceeded to reincarnate the ancient Mesopotamian units of weight and capacity by means of cubes that were on a one-tenth subdivision of the metre. Professor Livio C. Stecchini has shown how there was a later realization that this supposedly new, scientifically-based system was virtually identical to the Mesopotamian one used several thousand years before.

We had still not explained why spheres with diameters of Megalithic dimensions produce volumes from the metric system – but we had established that the ‘metric’ system was far from a recent invention as is generally claimed.

The social cauldron that was the French Revolution had given rise to the development of a scientific measuring system fit for an ambitious new republic. On the other side of the Atlantic another fledgling nation was steadily establishing itself after an eight-year war for independence that had finished in 1783. The American War of Independence had seen 13 British colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America reject their parent country of Great Britain to form the United States of America.

One of the architects of what is now the world’s only superpower was Thomas Jefferson. This Virginian aristocrat was one of the most brilliant American exponents of the Enlightenment, a political philosophy that he applied to the task of nation-building. It was Jefferson who drafted the famous Declaration of Independence that was signed on 4th July 1776, in his capital city of Philadelphia.

The 4th July was to become a significant date in the life of this outstanding statesman. Not only was his Declaration of Independence signed on that day but he also died on 4th July 1826. Of special interest to us is the fact that Thomas Jefferson drafted a particularly significant document, once again on the 4th July – this time in the year 1790.
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We had been looking for other modern systems of measurement and found that Thomas Jefferson had created his own version of a decimal system of weights and measures just ahead of the French. The report on the metric system, prepared by Pierre Simon Laplace and his colleagues, was presented to the Académie des Sciences on 19th March 1791, but Jefferson had submitted his report to the House of Representatives in Philadelphia more than nine months earlier.

Jefferson’s revolutionary concept of unified decimal measures, weights and coins was brilliant but was never adopted, except for his currency idea, the dollar, which arrived two years later. It is certain that Jefferson knew about the events unfolding in France because he was the American representative in France between 1784 and 1789, before returning to the United States to become Secretary of State in George Washington’s government. The document Jefferson submitted confirms his awareness of European ideas of the same ilk:

‘… a printed copy of a proposition made by the Bishop of Autun, to the National Assembly of France, on the subject of weights and measures; and three days afterwards I received, through the channel of the public papers, the speech of Sir John Riggs Miller, of April 13th, in the British House of Commons, on the same subject.’

Jefferson may have been influenced by the French idea of a national measurement system but it is clear from the nature of his recommendations that he had developed his methodology through a train of logic.

As we read his words we were gladdened to discover that this great man had shared our own deductions regarding a starting point for any standard linear length, more than two centuries before our time. His opening words set out the fundamental truths as he saw them, which confirmed all our own thoughts about the starting point for creating any natural unit of measurement at all.

‘There exists not in nature, as far as has been hitherto observed, a single subject or species of subject, accessible to man, which presents one constant and uniform dimension.’

Jefferson clearly stated his belief that nobody in known history had ever identified a naturally-occurring object or event that provides a repeatable unit of measurement. He then went on to clarify that there is only one candidate. He came to the same conclusion we had:

‘The globe of the earth itself, indeed, might be considered as invariable in all its dimensions, and that its circumference would furnish an invariable measure; but no one of its circles, great or small, is accessible to measurement through all its parts, and the various trials to measure definite portions of them, have been of such various results as to show there is no dependence on that operation for certainty.

Matter, then, by its mere extension, furnishing nothing invariable, its motion is the only remaining resource.

The motion of the earth round its axis, though not absolutely uniform and invariable, may be considered as such for every human purpose. It is measured obviously, but unequally, by the departure of a given meridian from the sun, and its return to it, constituting a solar day. Throwing together the inequalities of solar days, a mean interval, or day, has been found, and divided, by very general consent, into 86,400 equal parts.’

Here Jefferson referred to the second of time, taking for granted that it is an accepted starting point. He therefore had no intention of changing the accepted method of measuring time. He then followed the exact process we had identified as being the principle used by the Stone Age Britons:

‘A pendulum, vibrating freely, in small and equal arcs, may be so adjusted in its length, as, by its vibrations, to make this division of the earth’s motion into 86,400 equal parts, called seconds of mean time.

Such a pendulum, then, becomes itself a measure of determinate length, to which all others may be referred to as a standard.’

Jefferson could not have known it, but here he was describing a process that had been used by humankind for more than 5,000 years. He next identified the characteristics of the pendulum technique:

‘Both theory and experience prove that, to preserve its isochronism [uniformity in time], it must be shorter towards the equator, and longer towards the poles. The height of the situation above the common level, as being an increment to the radius of the earth, diminishes the length of the pendulum.’

Belonging to a mechanical age, Jefferson identified the potential for the engine that swings the pendulum to interfere in the process. However, if swung by hand there would be no such problem and we doubt that an engine would affect the pendulum length unless it was clumsily applied:

‘To continue small and equal vibrations, through a sufficient length of time, and to count these vibrations, machinery and a power are necessary, which may exert a small but constant effort to renew the waste of motion; and the difficulty is so to apply these, as that they shall neither retard nor accelerate the vibrations.’

He next put forward a suggestion for an improvement to the method using the latest technology available at the time:

‘In order to avoid the uncertainties which respect the centre of oscillation, it has been proposed by Mr Leslie, an ingenious artist of Philadelphia, to substitute, for the pendulum, a uniform cylindrical rod, without a bob.

Could the diameter of such a rod be infinitely small, the centre of oscillation would be exactly at two-thirds of the whole length, measured from the point of suspension. Giving it a diameter which shall render it sufficiently inflexible, the centre will be displaced, indeed; but, in a second rod not the six hundred thousandth part of its length, and not the hundredth part as much as in a second pendulum with a spherical bob of proper diameter. This displacement is so infinitely minute, then, that we may consider the centre of oscillation, for all practical purposes, as residing at two-thirds of the length from the centre of suspension. The distance between these two centres might be easily and accurately ascertained in practice. But the whole rod is better for a standard than any portion of it, because sensibly defined at both its extremities.’

The ‘rod’ described by Mr Leslie is a ridged strip of metal without a weight on the end. This means that the weight of the rod itself responds to the Earth’s gravity rather than the stone at the end of a piece of twine. It is more accurate than a pendulum but Jefferson pointed out that such a rod will always be 50 per cent longer than a pendulum to produce the same time interval. As the seconds pendulum is a tiny fraction less than a metre, the rod described here is a fraction under 1.5 metres, at 149.158 centimetres. It is also almost exactly three Sumerian kush.

Next, Jefferson considered the effect of using the rod at different latitudes, which will result in small variations. He discussed using 45 degrees north because it is mid-way between the equator and the North Pole, but curiously he also chose 31 degrees north, which is a latitude than runs through the land that was ancient Sumer:

‘The difference between the second rod for 45° of latitude, and that for 31°, our other extreme, is to be examined.

The second pendulum for 45° of latitude, according to Sir Isaac Newton’s computation, must be of 39.14912 inches English measure; and a rod, to vibrate in the same time, must be of the same length between the centres of suspension and oscillation; and, consequently, its whole length 58.7 (or, more exactly, 58.72368) inches. This is longer than the rod which shall vibrate seconds in the 31° of latitude, by about
part of its whole length; a difference so minute, that it might be neglected, as insensible, for the common purposes of life, but, in cases requiring perfect exactness, the second rod, found by trial of its vibrations in any part of the United States, may be corrected by computation for the latitude of the place, and so brought exactly to the standard of 45°.