A measurement is the determination of the magnitude of a quantity by

comparison with a standard for that quantity. To express a measurement,

there must be a basic unit of the quantity involved, e.g., the inch or second,
and a standard of measurement an instrument calibrated in such units,
e.g., a ruler or clock. Measurements always have uncertainties. The accuracy
of a measurement that is, how close it is likely to be to the true value can
be indicated by the number of significant figures or by a stated uncertainty.
Weights and measures were among the earliest tools invented by man. As
John Quincy Adams once said, Weights and measures may be ranked among
the necessaries of life to every individual of human society. Primitive
societies needed rudimentary measures for many tasks: constructing
dwellings of an appropriate size and shape, fashioning clothing and bartering
food or raw materials. In ancient times, the body ruled when it came to
measuring. The length of a foot, the width of a finger, and the distance of a
step were all accepted measurements. Man understandably turned first to
parts of his body and his natural surroundings for measuring instruments.
Early Babylonian and Egyptian records indicate that length was first
measured with the forearm, hand, or finger and that time was measured by
the periods of the sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies.
Length is the most necessary measurement in everyday life, and units of
length in many countries still reflect humanity's first elementary methods.
The inch is a thumb. The foot speaks for itself. The yard relates closely to a
human pace, but also derives from two cubits (the measure of the forearm).
The mile is in origin the Roman mille passus - a 'thousand paces',
approximating to a mile because the Romans define a pace as two steps,
bringing the walker back to the same foot. With measurements such as
these, it is easy to explain how far away the next village is and to work out
whether an object will get through a doorway.
For the complex measuring problems of civilization - surveying land to
register property rights, or selling a commodity by length - a more precise
unit is required. The solution is a rod or bar, of an exact length, kept in a
central public place. From this 'standard' other identical rods can be copied
and distributed through the community.
For measurements of weight, the human body provides no such easy
approximations as for length. But nature steps in: Seeds and grains of wheat
and are reasonably standard in size. Weight can be expressed with some
degree of accuracy in terms of a number of grains - a measure still used by

jewelers. For instance, the "carat," still used as a mass unit for gems, is
derived from the carob seed.
Among the requirements of traders or tax collectors, a reliable standard of
volume is the hardest to achieve. Nature provides some very rough averages,
such as goatskins. Baskets, sacks or pottery jars can be made to
approximately consistent sizes, sufficient perhaps for many everyday
transactions.
Time, a central theme in modern life, has for most of human history been
thought of in very imprecise terms. From 1889 until 1967, the unit of time
was defined as a certain fraction of the mean solar day, the average time
between successive arrivals of the sun at its highest point in the sky. The
present standard, which is much more precise, was adopted in 1967.
The measurement system commonly used in the United States today is
nearly the same as that brought by the colonists from England. These
measures had their origins in a variety of cultures Babylonian, Egyptian,
Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman French. The ancient "digit," "palm," "span"
and "cubic" units of length slowly lost preference to the length units "inch,"
"foot," and "yard."
Standardizing various units and combining them into loosely related systems
of measurement units sometimes occurred in fascinating ways. Tradition
holds that King Henry I decreed that a yard should be the distance from the
tip of his nose to the end of his outstretched thumb. The length of a furlong
(or furrow-long) was established by early Tudor rulers as 220 yards. This led
Queen Elizabeth I to declare in the 16th century, that henceforth the
traditional Roman mile of 5000 feet would be replaced by one of 5280 feet,
making the mile exactly eight furlongs and providing a convenient
relationship between the furlong and the mile. Thus, through royal edicts,
England by the 18th century had achieved a greater degree of
standardization than other European countries.
Even then, there was no unified measurement system until the 18th century.
In spite of the attempts of Charlemagne and many kings after him, aiming to
reduce the number of existing measurements, France was one of the most
inventive and most chaotic countries in this area. In 1790, in the midst of the
French Revolution, the National Assembly of France requested the French
Academy of Sciences to "deduce an invariable standard for all the measures

and all the weights." In 1795 there were over seven hundred different units of
measure in France.
The Commission appointed by the Academy created a system that was, at
once, simple and scientific. The unit of length was to be a portion of the
Earth's circumference. Measures for capacity (volume) and mass were to be
derived from the unit of length, thus relating the basic units of the system to
each other and to nature. Furthermore, larger and smaller multiples of each
unit were to be created by multiplying or dividing the basic units by 10 and
its powers. Similar calculations in the metric system could be performed
simply by shifting the decimal point. Thus, the metric system is a "base-10"
or "decimal" system.
The Commission assigned the name metre - meter - to the unit of length. This
name was derived from the Greek word metron, meaning "a measure." The
physical standard representing the meter was to be constructed so that it
would equal one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the
equator along the meridian running near Dunkirk in France and Barcelona in
Spain.
Both simple and universal, the decimal metric system started to spread
outside France after its use was made compulsory in 1840. The development
of railways, the growth of industry and the increasing number of exchanges
all required accurate units of measure. The standardized structure and
decimal features of the metric system made it well suited for scientific and
engineering work. Adopted at the start of the 19th century in several Italian
provinces, the metric system became compulsory in the Netherlands from
1816 and was chosen by Spain in 1849. Consequently, it is not surprising that
the rapid spread of the system coincided with an age of rapid technological
development.
By the late 1860s, even better metric standards were needed to keep pace
with scientific advances. In 1875, an international agreement, known as the
Meter Convention, set up well-defined metric standards for length and mass
and established permanent mechanisms to recommend and adopt further
refinements in the metric system. This agreement, commonly called the
"Treaty of the Meter in the United States, was signed by 17 countries,
including the United States.
By 1900 a total of 35 nations -- including the major nations of continental
Europe and most of South America -- had officially accepted the metric

system. In 1960, the General Conference on Weights and Measures, the

diplomatic organization made up of the signatory nations to the Meter
Convention, adopted an extensive revision and simplification of the system.
Seven units -- the meter (for length), the kilogram (for mass), the second (for
time), the ampere (for electric current), the kelvin (for thermodynamic
temperature), the mole (for amount of substance), and the candela (for
luminous intensity) -- were established as the base units for the system. The
name Systeme International d'Unites (International System of Units), with the
international abbreviation SI, was adopted for this modern metric system.
Measurement science continues to develop more precise and easily
reproducible ways of defining measurement units.
Indeed, as societies evolved, measurements became more complex. The
invention of numbering systems and the science of mathematics made it
possible to create whole systems of measurement units suited to trade and
commerce, land division, taxation, and scientific research. For these more
sophisticated uses, it was necessary not only to weigh and measure more
complex things it was also necessary to do it accurately time after time and
in different places.
Of course, to determine the measurement of a given quantity, instruments
would be needed. A few of these include:

1. Vernier Caliper - The Vernier Caliper is a precision instrument that can be used to
measure internal and external distances extremely accurately. It is a slide-type caliper
used to take inside, outside, and depth measurements. A digital Vernier caliper
has an LCD digital display on which the reading appears, and the manual
version has both an imperial and metric scale. It is a precision instrument for
measuring the thickness and diameter of mechanical parts.
2. Micrometer Caliper - The micrometer caliper produces finer results than the Vernier
caliper. It is used to make very fine measurements beyond the hundredths of a centimeter.
As its name implies, distances are measured to 0.000001 m or 10-6 m (the SI prefix for an
order of magnitude of 6 is micro) which is equal to 0.0001 cm. This device uses the
uniformity in the spacing of threads on a bolt.
3. Spherometer - Spherometers are used to measure the radius of curvature of the

surface of a lens. For example, it can be used to measure the thickness of a

microscope slide or the depth of depression in a slide. Even the curvature of a
ball can be measured using a Spherometer.

4. Ruler - a straight strip or cylinder of plastic, wood, metal, or other rigid material,
typically marked at regular intervals, to draw straight lines or measure distances.
5.
Young, H., Freedman, R., & Ford, A.L. (2011). University phyics with modern
physics (13th ed.).

https://standards.nasa.gov/history_metric.pdf

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/plaintexthistories.asp?historyid=ac07

http://www.french-metrology.com/en/history/history-mesurement.asp

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Measurement

*http://visual.merriam-webster.com/science/measuring-devices.php

http://www.technologystudent.com/equip1/equipex1.htm

http://catalog.miniscience.com/catalog/physics/Spherometer.html