Learning lessons from Ancient Egypt

[...]of the view on the importance of reproducible (‘standardized’) and ‘traceable’ measurement results, the pyramids are still standing upright after more than 4,000 years. The heavy sanction for not making the length measurement results ‘traceable’ to a common (metrological) reference and therefor...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Accreditation and quality assurance 2005-07, Vol.10 (7), p.325-326
Main Author: Bièvre, P De
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Calibration
Developing countries
Egyptian civilization
Errors
LDCs
Marble
Mars
Mars missions
Privatization
Pyramids
Sanctions
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:[...]of the view on the importance of reproducible (‘standardized’) and ‘traceable’ measurement results, the pyramids are still standing upright after more than 4,000 years. The heavy sanction for not making the length measurement results ‘traceable’ to a common (metrological) reference and therefore ‘comparable’ amongst themselves, was aimed at preventing errors in construction leading to higher cost and to enable pricing of the marble blocks presumably proportional to their size. Regular calibration of the measurement standards must be made compulsory and sanctions must be passed for not doing so in order: to prevent major errors with ensuing cost (e.g. loss of the Mars mission by NASA); to prevent cheating in the buyer–seller relation (e.g. in trade between developed and developing countries); to enable the implementation of regulations (e.g. of EC directives in health and environment to the advantage of the citizen who is not hindered by an excess of knowledge about measurement).
ISSN:0949-1775
1432-0517
DOI:10.1007/s00769-005-0010-y