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This porcelain scale (pictured here in its fitted case) was made in 1867, probably by Louis Casella, a scientific instrument maker based in London.

The scale shows the relationship between British inches and those of the Great Pyramid, as deduced by Charles Piazzi Smyth. Each Great Pyramid inch is .001 of an inch longer than the British inch.

Smyth noted that 25 Pyramid inches were one ten-millionth of the earth's semi-axis of rotation, and this, he claimed, made the Pyramid inch the most scientific unit ever proposed as a standard of length. As the 'Pyramid' inch was only marginally longer than a British inch, it would therefore be more sensible to adopt the Imperial system internationally rather than the other, metric, contender.

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• Online ID: 000-190-004-745-C
• Image Rights Holder: National Museums Scotland
• Project: National Museums Scotland
  Project description   View all records in project
• Ref: National Museums Scotland  T.1962.108
• Date: 1867
  May 1867
  
• Material: Ceramic base
  Comparative scale / case / thermometer
  
• Dimensions: 29.00" L x 4.00" x 0.50"; case 32.75" x 8.75" x 4.63"
  
• What: Comparative scale / case / thermometer
  
• Subject: 19. MATHEMATICS (Departmental Classification)
  
• Who: C. Piazzi Smyth (User)
  Casella, London (Scale maker)
  
• Where: Egypt, Great Pyramid
  England, London
  
• Event:
• Description: One of a set of metrological instruments used by C. Piazzi Smyth at the Great Pyramid - a comparative scale of British and Pyramid inches by Casella, ceramic base, in a case with a thermometer, 1867
  
• 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. 
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