\ \ \ ~~ , PAPERS The origin of the (reputed quart' and other measures B. E. Moody United Glass Limited, London, 5.£.7 The reputed quart. equal to tll'o-thirds of an imperial was required to achieve this uniformity, but they would quart, is a firmly established, but unofficial, 'standard' be quite wrong. There is virtually no mention of the capacity for lrine- and spirit-boll/es, not only ill the UK. reputed quart in dictionary or reference book, no but also in most other parts of rhe lror/d. Up to nO\l', no officially agreed value and no account of its origin or satisfactory explanation for rhis has been found. reason for existence. The Excise authorities refuse to In an attempt to so Ire the mystery, the author has recognize it officially (although they themselves make studied the del'elopment of English glass \I'ine-botrles use of it), and the nearest it has come to official from the time when the first ones lrere made early in the recognition in recent years was when the Hodgson sel'enteenth century, and also rhe related history of Committee on Weights and Measures suggested in weights and measures. It l\'as found that the reputed 1951 that it should be abolished. quart has been ill continuous use for about three hundred This adherence to such an unofficial 'standard' is years, and it is suggested thar it \\'Os origina!!y an UII­ rather remarkable, and becomes even more so with the official rariatioll on the legal \\'ine quart, \I'hicll itself had discovery that the reputed quart has been in common arisen largely by accident, fo!!oll'ing mistakes in the use in England continuously for at least 300 years, wording of the early 1011's. although the legal capacity units have been changed at least twice during this time. It is unusual for anyone who is buying a bottle of wine All this becomes stranger still when we consider or spirits in this country to stop and enquire how much other parts of the world, as we find that many other the bottle holds. In fact the public tends to regard the countries also have a 'standard' size for wine-bottles 'bottle' as an actual capacity measure for wines and which agrees very well with the British reputed quart. spirits, and on the whole this is not very far from the For example, European countries favour :t litre, and truth. The better-informed members of the public, recently they have formally agreed on this as their including of course the bottle makers, know that standard. In the United States the preferred size is nearly all British bottles of this type are made to hold four-fifths of the U.S. quart. Even as far away as 26t fluid ounces, which although it is only two-thirds Russia there is, or was in 1920 according to Inter­ of an. imperial quart, is known as a 'reputed quart'. national Critical Tables, a standard wine-bottle of Bottles used for a few special wines and for brandy capacity 6t 'tcharkas'. These various bottle capacities vary slightly from this capacity, but in general 26t oz when expressed in cubic inches are as follows: seems to be the standard. Half- and quarter-bottles are often known as 'reputed pints' and 'reputed half pints'. Region Name, etc. Capacity in Cll. in. Those who know the difficulties involved in getting agreement on any sort of commercial standard would U.K. Reputed quart 46·24 expect that considerable effort and probably legislation Europe i litre 45·77 Presented at the Society's Harrogate Meeting on 22 September U.s.A. t U.S. quart 46·20 1959. Russia 6t tcharkas 46·91 Class Technology Vol. 1 No. 2 April 1960 ss B. E. ~IOODY : THE OIUGI:\" OF THE 'REPUTED QUART' ,\:-;0 OTHER \IEASCRES There are a few other bottles which fall into this liquids. The Assize of Measures of 1197, was worded group, for example the French champagne-bottle is as follows : said to hold 27 British fluid oz, or 46·82 cu . in. There 'The law is that all the measures throughout England was also an old Scottish 'five-gill' spirit-bottle which shall be of the same size, as for corn so~ for bean~ and might be included, as 5 gills is equal to 43·35 cu. in . similar things .... Likewise the measures for wine It may therefore be concluded that it has somehow and ale and all other liquids shall be of the same become established almost universally that a volume of size .. .. ' around 46 cu. in . is the 'right' size for a wine- or The sizes or shapes of these early measures are not spirit-bottle. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a known accurately as none has survived, but a fairly theory about the origin of the reputed quart in good guess can be made. They would have to be England; in doing so a number of other related prob­ convenient for filling and emptying. which suggests a lems about the hi story of British weights and measures large wide vessel for dry goods, and a smaller and will become resolved. This theory demands that the reputed quart originated in England but how the same narrower vessel for liquids. In fact they were probably capacity came to~ be used in s; ma~y other countries very similar to the more recent dry and liquid measures, the oldest surviving examples of which are the Henry cannot yet be explained. The course followed in the investigation was to VI! ones of 1497 (Figure I). study how the various capacity units became estab- 1isi1ed and changed or abolished, and then to see how this fitted in with the actual capacities of wine-bottles. This paper follows approximately the same plan, so the capacity units used in England during the bst few hundred yeal:s will be con s id~red first. - Early gallons and bushels The basic British capacity measure today is the im­ perial gallon, which was defined in 1824 as the volume occupied by 10 lb of water at 61' F; this is equal to 277 ·42 cu. in . Before this date there were three different gallons recognized: the 'corn gallon' of about 270 cu . in., the 'ale gallon' of about 282 cu. in. , and the 'wine gallon' of 231 cu. in. Our reputed quart is in fact about one-fifth of the old wine gallon. but that does not help to explain its origin, so~ we ~ust look more deeply into how and why these various units came about and how they were related to each other. Until the thirteenth century, the method used in England to fix standard measures was to declare a particular vessel to be the standard, after which copies of this vessel could be made and circulated. These Figure I. Hrll1Y VII stalldard gal/all olld bushel meosurr, 1497 standards were usually fixed by the king and intended to be used throughout the kingdom, but in addition many other standards were issued by local authorities The dry measure was known as a bushel · this which might not always agree with the royal ones. In suggests that the earliest dry measures may hav~ been the City of London the local standards were firmly simple wooden boxes, as the words 'bushel', 'box', and established at an early date by the Aldermen, and the French 'bois' probably all come from the same these may have been the basis of some of the measures root. The liquid measure apparently did not acquire a which the sovereigns sought to establish as national name until the thirteenth century, when it became standards. The earliest known reference to this type of known as a gallon. standard speaks of 'King Edgar's Winchester Bushel'.* If the principle of one measure for solids and one for The system which the law-makers of the twelfth liquids had been adhered to,. the history of weights and century tried to establish was that there should be one meastlI'es might have been much simpler, though per­ standard measure for dry goods and another for haps less inte,'esting. What happened, however, was t The te.\t of the Assize of Measures, 8 RicharJ J, is given in • Winchester ,i·a s the capital of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom. Roger Hovcdcn·s Chrollicle, wrillen about 1200. 56 Clo.\"S Technology Vol. I No. 2 April 1960 B. E. !\1000Y : TIlE ORIGL'" OF TilE 'J{EI'UTED QL',\Wr' A:\O OTHER ;\IL\SURES that in the succeed ing centuries the laws and customs meaning of the word 'gallon' was specifically 'a became more and more complicated and confused , and measure for winc'. it is difficult today to discover even what some of the This Tractatus was one of the earliest legal docu­ original intentions really were. How did all this come ments to refer to the liquid measure by the name about? 'gallon'. In a 'Statute for Wine and Bushels' issued a few years earlier, this term did not appear and the text Early history of capacity standards simply stated : 'The standard for the bushel and for wine shall be sca led with an iron seal. .. .'* The system of distributing standard measuring vessels There is no fully authentic version of the Tractatus never worked very well, presumably because there were still in existence, and unfortunately the two oldest not enough genuine standard measures and too many manuscript versions disagree over the wording of the spurious ones. So when in 1215 the Barons presented 2allon definition; a fuller discussion of these rival texts their famous ultimatum to King John, they included is given in Appendix I.