8 Jul
2012
8 Jul
'12
9:01 a.m.
another one that is totally misused these days is vessel tonnage. The
origin of "tonnage" is fascinating.
steve
On 7/8/2012 10:31 AM, Camiel Vanderhoeven wrote:
On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 10:51 PM, Chuck Guzis<cclist
at sydex.com> wrote:
But not all measures make sense. A long tine
ago, an English friend
referred to "a gallon of potatoes". That one left me scratching my
head.
The classic Dutch measure for potatoes is called "mud", from the
Latin
"modius". The Latin modius was 8.75 liters, or 2.3 gallons. The Dutch
mud was around 110 liters, or 29 gallons (it varied according to
locality and over time), whereas the Flemish mud was around 640 liters
(170 gallons). To measure potatoes, they used a crate that could hold
one mud. Eventually, people realised that it made more sense to
measure potatoes by weight, so a mud of potatoes became 70 kilograms
of potatoes rather than 100 liters of potatoes.
I bet the same thing happened in England.
Camiel.