Output details

Markets and Measurements in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Chapter 5 draws on some similar material to that used in the 2009 article ‘Transactions, standardisation and competition: establishing uniform sizes in the British wire industry c.1880’ submitted as a reserve output. However, the book develops broader arguments regarding measurement practices over a longer time period, and draws on a wider range of primary sources, extending through comparison and in-depth analysis some of the issues addressed in the article.

We propose this monograph for double-weighting on the grounds that it generates a particularly complex thesis which challenges existing scholarship. This is the argument that measurement in the nineteenth century was a social act, a practical matter of operating in local economic contexts, rather than a purely abstract matter of standardizing weights and measures. The monograph also meets other criteria, in that it is based on a very extensive body of primary source material and uses an innovative methodological approach, deploying historical tools to confront a cross-disciplinary problem.