Page 24 - EngineerIT September 2022

MEASUREMENT AND INSTRUMENTATION

Calibration, a story of value

By Jenine Jansen van Vuuren, Comtest Technologies (Pty) Ltd

Calibration competency transfer through technology: How calibration management

brings this value to life in our modern world.

alibration may be one of the most undervalued and There are some Mesopotamian tables with dimensional
misunderstood concepts in our modern world: a concept calculations and in some Egyptian papyri, we see examples
Ccontaining a value that is not always realised in our of maths being used to determine the fractional nature of
contemporary era. measuring units.
We will start off with a little detour to ancient times, when
civilisations like the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians already
realised and used the value that the concepts of standardisation
and calibration bring.

A little detour…
In ancient civilisations, people devised ways to measure goods
for trade, measure time for the distribution of water rights and
distance for construction as well as trade. Initially, these units
would have been contained and standardised within certain
tribal groups and regions, and at one point even to specific
rulers.
The Mesopotamians came up with the concept of the cubit,
but as we will later see it was the Egyptians who thought of
standardisation of the unit, as they initially defined it as being
the measurement of the distance between the elbow and middle
finger of the ruling pharaohs. However, they soon discovered
that it was not a reliable standard.
This led the Egyptians to devise, probably, the first
documented standard, the royal cubit which was a black marble
rod to which all other cubit measuring rods could be “calibrated”
or traced back to. This created a standardised royal cubit.
Further to the royal cubit standard, the pyramids were
built using site references and working standards. Due to this, I
guess we can say that one of the first quality systems involving
a standardised measurement system ensured the quality of the
Egyptian pyramids, enabling them to stand the test of time.
It can be said that the science of measurement was the
birthplace of modern mathematics.

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