 Scale to weight oneself by oneself |
From the time of antiquity, each state had developed its own system of weights and measures. This situation remained virtually unchanged in many countries up until the French Revolution. At the close of the eighteenth century, the metric/decimal system based on the meter, presented in concrete form on a sample made of platinum, was introduced in France. In the nineteenth century this system became increasingly popular, to the point of being universally accepted. The weighing scales, one of the most ancient instruments utilized by mankind, has been perfected over the course of the centuries. From the lever scales and the first two-armed scales used to weigh merchandise, more refined instruments were gradually developed, such as the goldsmiths' and spice-merchants' scales. With progress in quantitative analysis, the analytic balance was developed, a precision instrument indispensable to all laboratories. The pieces displayed here include small trip scales, machines for weighing persons, weigh-bridges, from the XVII, XVIII and XIX centuries, as well as weighs and gauges for linear measurement, capacity and volume. |