UNITS
A unit of measurement is a definite magnitude of a quantity, defined and adopted by convention or by law, that is used as a standard for measurement of the same kind of quantity. Concerning even today the practices that fundamentally touch masses are hardest to change, earlier units of measurement were always defined and adopted by convention instead of law. Despite laws, convenience is timeless and placeless after all.
An inch is the length of the knuckle joint of a man’s thumb and a foot is the length of the same man's foot. A yard is the length of the step of this fictional man, approximately three of his feet, and a fathom is double that length which is six feet. Easy to learn, convenient to use.
Until it is not so convenient anymore...
Obviously, when this fictional man is not so fictional anymore, people living in different parts of the globe start to compare their feet and argue about whose feet are more a feet. Especially when those feet concern how much land you are going to inherit or how much tax you have to pay.
Open and hidden conflicts due to not being able to measure things aside, the complications regarding finer machinery as well as finer will constructs are still considered one of the main reasons for The Interregnum and The Great Stagnation even today.
Obviously not the first person to realize this problem, but the first person to write something that luckily survived until modern times is Yosef A. Sakhar also known as Yosef of Sakar.
As the doctor equivalent of his time, a barber, and a well-read man Yosef realized that increasing a patient's vitality through authority increases his heart rate. Thus as the compassionate man that he is, he decided to address this problem.
Despite the obvious evidence that this well-known humanitarian obviously trying to solve the vitality problems of elderly gentlemen for certain nightly activities, the unit he addressed was rather ambitious, time itself.
The most convenient and thus the most common unit of his time, a first also known as a moment, was defined as the time required for one thumb of a heart, and a second was two thumbs, a complete heartbeat.
Despite the heart's natural pacemaker, Yosef easily realized the biggest flaw of this common unit of time, meaning the resting heartbeats of his overly eager patients were not so resting, which caused severe complications that I am too prude to address here.
Eager to establish a gold standard to solve the nightly problems of men all around the globe, he used the transition radiation of pure gold. Despite repeated failures and the agony of his elderly patients, Yosef A. Sakhar is still considered the first authority wielder to define a standard unit of measurement and is openly praised for his accomplishments, just not by older gentlemen and their thankful partners.
Now I am not that greedy, I don't need to accomplish a new golden standard of measurement. All I need is to define certain convenient standard units of measurement to stay alive in this damn place. How hard can it be, right?
The answer to that question turns out to be... Impossibly hard... There are seven base unit measurements namely for length, mass, time, electric current, temperature, amount of substance, and luminous intensity. For authority holders of this place though, there can be defined an eighth unit, source density. Not that it is my problem.
The time standard is the easiest thanks to the damn system interface which has its own circadian clock pacemaker. According to the system, the length of a day on Acun, a Künel day, is very close to the length of a Shemal day on Cihan, approximately 28 Cihan periods, 28 periods 17 breathes 85 moments in fact. Thus I am still using the standard Imperial units of time, except my Acun periods are 1.17 Cihan periods instead of the convenient 1.00.
The length standard was another easy one thanks to my own body together with the clothing and accessories on me. Now it is not something too precise due to the nature of things but I can confidently say that my lengths are as close as one part per ten thousand to the standard universal length. Platinum is the same platinum all across the universe afterall, right?
Everything else though? I have to adapt and improvise.
Mass? Thank God, I have an eidetic memory and my boots are standard-issue. I still remember weighing them for an easily won bet for the first time.
Temperature? Although I have no idea about the standard atmospheric pressure of Acun, I have a rough estimation with the help of some lucky-found liquid mercury and it is not that hard to obtain some pure water.
Electric current? Standard conductivities of dozens of elements are already in my memory thus, not hard to calculate with some pro-batteries.
Amount of substance? Now that is a tricky one, I have no way to determine the fraction of isotopes in Acun. All I have is approximations with the molar mass of the most stable isotope which should be good enough.
Luminous intensity? I have absolutely no idea. It is easy to create light, but it is a pain to measure it.
External source density though? I suggest that any energy unit would suffice for its calculation but locals still object me on this point.
Let them calculate it themselves then. I have more pressing issues.
Essays
Agāh H. Ates
571 AR + 001 AC
Damn, Erke! Messes up everything.
571 AR + 003 AC
