Measuring rod

This adjustable measuring rod of fifty inches or two cubits is unsigned, but it is known from surviving receipts that Charles Piazzi Smyth ordered these measuring instruments from Thomas Cooke & Sons of York as a special commission.

These sliding rods - there are several of different dimensions in the collection - were made for taking the internal dimensions of the various passages that are built within the Great Pyramid. They apparently 'gave great satisfaction' in use.

This is one of the instruments specially-commissioned by Charles Piazzi Smyth in connection with his voyage to Egypt where he and his wife Jessica spent four months in 1865 measuring the dimensions of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh in an attempt to discover whether there was a unit of length used by the constructors.

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Online ID:	000-190-004-748-C
Image Rights Holder:	National Museums Scotland
Project:	0098: National Museums Scotland Project description \| View all records in project
Ref:	National Museums Scotland T.1975.191
Date:	Around 1865 c. 1865
Material:
Dimensions:	50.00"
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Description:	Measuring rod of fifty inches or two cubits, unsigned, c. 1865
References:	C. Piazzi Smyth, Life and Work at the Great Pyramid, 3 vols., Edinburgh, 1867. C. Piazzi Smyth, Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, 4th edition London, 1880, esp. ch. 14, 'Linear and surface measure', pp 290-304. H.A. Bruck and M.T. Bruck, The Peripatetic Astronomer: the Life of Charles Piazzi Smyth. Bristol, Adam Hilger, 1988, esp. chs. 6 and 7, pp 95-134; esp. pp 104-5.
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