Brannock and Barlycorns

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By The Metric Maven

In 2010, what is thought to be the oldest known shoe was uncovered in Armenia. It is estimated to be 6,000 years old.  The shoe was immediately identified as a right footed shoe which had been designed one thousand years before the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. The shoe’s length is 245 mm and its width is approximately 76-100 mm, with straw inside. The “modern” size of this shoe is  U.S. size 7 women, according to a Discovery News report. The shoe was constructed from a single piece of cowhide laced with a leather cord. The next oldest known shoe is that of Ötzi The Ice Man. His shoe was more sophisticated than the Armenian find. Ötsi’s shoes had bearskin bottoms, with deerskin sides and a bark-string net which form-fit around the foot. The shoes were stuffed with grass.

Of interest to me, was the claim, that the oldest shoe is known to be from a right foot. This is because one of the great modern shoe innovations was the development of right and left shoes. Although this development occurred in the mid 1800s, the majority of shoes worn by soldiers in the US Civil War were identical, without left and right.

Was the first known shoe designed to be a right shoe, or was it “broken in” and only later became identifiable as a right footed shoe? I suspect it is the latter. This implies it took over 6000 years for humans to realize the utility of creating right and left shoes. This innovation was accomplished by using foot models for right and left shoes of a given size. These foot models are known as lasts. When viewed through modern eyes, the lack of a right and left shoe seems unimaginable.

Brannock Measuring Devices

Uncomfortable shoes cannot be tolerated for long. Because of this, one would suspect the science of foot measurement and shoe sizing would be mature. The most ubiquitous method of foot measurement for shoes is the Brannock measuring device. It was created by Charles Brannock in 1927. Currently this device continues to be the dominant method for foot measurement in the service of shoe sizing in the US.

Perhaps the most famous shoes in US popular culture are the ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. A number of ruby slippers were made for the movie with sizes from 5 to 6 with widths of B to D. Most people in the US will quote their shoe size without a second thought. But what are the measurement units?  I suspect almost no one knows. If a person were asked to guess what imperial measurement unit the US shoe size value is based, they would probably not guess the barleycorn. The original Anglo-Saxon
measurement unit was the barleycorn. It was decided after 1066 AD, that three barleycorns equal one inch. Yes, the difference between one shoe size and the next whole size is one barley corn, or 1/3 of an inch. A half shoe size is 1/6 of an inch.

So what is the length of Judy Garland’s slippers? Shoe size doesn’t immediately tell us how many millimeters long her shoes were. Women’s shoes have two different size definitions, Common and Foot Industries of America (FIA). The common size is based on “last length” which is the length of the inside of the shoe. This measurement is known to only produce a very crude estimation of shoe size.

The mathematical formula is: Female Shoe Size = 3 x Last Length (in inches) – 22.5. I hope I have not lost you at this point. I only brought this up to explain why the current method of determining shoe size is out of date, non-intuitive, and desperately needs reform. It also needs to be changed so I can spend less time in shoe stores. What is the approximate length of Judy Garland’s foot?—it is approximately 237 mm according to the common formula.

The alphabetical shoe width designations in the US are ad hoc and have no accepted standard. Our current shoe sizing does not incorporate width in proportion to any measurement. One can only wonder why a salesman would ever bother to measure foot width with a Brannock Device—perhaps they don’t.

I’ve had the experience of trying on numerous shoes, and sometimes never finding a comfortable pair. It’s explained to me without embarrassment that “the same shoe
size from different manufactures, are not the same.” A small forest of rejected shoe boxes generally begin to surround me, producing claustrophobia, which compounds my shoe purchasing aversion. I never want to reach the point where the salesman has only The Cruel Shoes left to offer. There must be a better way.

Clearly the need for reform in the US shoe industry is long, long overdue. The introduction of the metric system into the US would provide the perfect opportunity to implement much needed reforms. In this case the leading candidate for shoe size reform is known as Mondopoint  (ISO 9407:1991) which is an International Standard for shoe sizes. Mondopoint is based on the mean foot length and width for which the shoe is suitable. It is measured in millimeters. A shoe size of 280/110 indicates a mean foot length of 280 millimeters and width of 110 millimeters. Because Mondopoint also takes the foot width into account, it allows for better fitting than most other systems. It is, therefore, used by NATO and other military services. Mondopoint is also used for ski boots. The introduction of Mondopoint in the US during a metric switchover would allow for more exact shoe manufacture and provide consumers with a better shoe shopping experience at a lower cost.

Don’t put a shoe on the wrong foot, demand Modopoint.

Related Essay:

For Shoes, It’s The Metric 1960s

If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page and contribute. Also purchase his books about the metric system:

The first book is titled: Our Crumbling Invisible Infrastructure. It is a succinct set of essays  that explain why the absence of the metric system in the US is detrimental to our personal heath and our economy. These essays are separately available for free on my website,  but the book has them all in one place in print. The book may be purchased from Amazon here.


The second book is titled The Dimensions of the Cosmos. It takes the metric prefixes from yotta to Yocto and uses each metric prefix to describe a metric world. The book has a considerable number of color images to compliment the prose. It has been receiving good reviews. I think would be a great reference for US science teachers. It has a considerable number of scientific factoids and anecdotes that I believe would be of considerable educational use. It is available from Amazon here.


The third book is not of direct importance to metric education. It is called Death By A Thousand Cuts, A Secret History of the Metric System in The United States. This monograph explains how we have been unable to legally deal with weights and measures in the United States from George Washington, to our current day. This book is also available on Amazon here.

Don’t Get Engaged with Gauge

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By The Metric Maven

Bulldog Edition

One day many years ago I had a strange experience with a word. It lost its meaning. I could pronounce it, and think about it, but the word had become temporarily disconnected from its assigned meaning. The sensation was one of disengagement with a description of  my world. Thankfully I experienced this for only a short period of time. Recently I discovered this phenomenon  has a name: semantic satiation. Here is a definition:

Semantic satiation (also semantic saturation) is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who can only process the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.

Semantic satiation describes a situation where a word has a meaning but it is temporarily lost. I have also experienced the loss in meaning of a word that is not just used in a repetitious manner, but is also assigned a multitude of meaningless meanings. This word also has at least 14 definitions. This mercurial word is gauge.

We have 12 gauge shot guns, wire gauge, railroad gauge, drill bit gauge, stubs iron wire gauge, sheet metal gauge, film gauge, loading gauge, structure gauge, and who knows how many dimension gauges of which I’ve never heard.

But gauge can also refer to a measuring or comparison device such as an air gauge, rain gauge, gauge blocks, water gauge, needle gauge, and many more.

The idea of gauge is batted about by Engineers and technical people with certainty—as if there should be an immediate comprehension. Yet, if you examine gauge as a dimension standard, you will immediately realize this is an oxymoron. Gauge is a dimensionless number. Gauge seems to be the measurement equivalent of the throw away phrase “Ya know what I’m sayin’?”

For instance, let’s suppose I want to drill some holes into a printed circuit board for a solid bare wire to pass through. I want the wire to have a hole that is as close to its diameter as possible. If I had a metric wire with a diameter of 1 mm, I could go to my drill index and select a 1 mm drill bit. It would then be easy to drill a hole as close as possible to fit the 1mm wire. Metric wire sizes correlate with metric drill bit sizes. It’s so easy even a caveman could do it.

There is only one problem with this simple solution, I live in the United States and thus far I’ve found no distributor of metric wire. I must rely on American Wire Gauge for wire sizing. I must go to a wire gauge table and find the American Wire Gauge number is 18 (AWG 18), for wire which has a 0.0403″ diameter (1.024 mm). The wire gauge numbers go from 0000 (0.4600″) to 40 (0.00314″) with larger gauge numbers proportional to smaller sizes.

Now I need to find a drill bit with a 0.0403″ diameter. The gauge sizes for drill bits are from 1 to 80 and A to Z. I locate Drill bit gauge 59 which is 0.041″ (1.041 mm). This is close to 1 mm and probably acceptable, but the wire gauge number is 18 and the drill bit gauge number is 59. There is no correlation. Don’t ask 18 what?, or 59 what?, they are just dimensionless integers, chosen by our infallible Anglo-Saxon ancestors–who used three barleycorn in a row to define an inch—and used the weight of 7000 barleycorns for a pound.

Why does the drill bit gauge designations change from numbers to letters?—I have no idea. This complete lack of correlation between gauge sizes of wire, and drill bits, illustrates that gauge is a meaningless dimension designator. Gauge simply stands between you and a useful, accepted, accurate, and understood dimension—like millimeters.

I find myself astonished that there is considerable resistance to metric system adoption, even when I point this irrationality in gauge designation out to machinists. It begins to look like they want a set of mystic runes to read, so their profession remains esoteric, and difficult to understand by outsiders. Why have a system this confusing?—when there is one—the metric system—which is ready to go. If you have 0.7 mm wire and a drill set with a 0.7 mm bit, what’s to dislike? No look-up tables, no strangely odd numbers and letters, just drill the hole.

How about American Standard Sheet Metal Gauge?  Let’s take 19 gauge sheet metal, how close to a millimeter thick is that?  Well it depends on the material:

Gauge       Steel               Stainless Steel           Aluminum                  Zinc

19     0.0418″ (1.06 mm)     0.044″ (1.1 mm)     0.036″ (0.91 mm)     0.060″ (1.5 mm)

So what does gauge number mean if the dimensions are all significantly different! It doesn’t seem to represent a constant dimension.  Why on earth can’t we just shoot for say 1 mm +/- a tolerance?—and have numbers with units attached? Or, if there is a manufacturing reason for the differences, just use millimeters. The larger the gauge numbers for sheet metal, the smaller the thickness. If we want the closest 1 mm drill bit, it’s 59 gauge. The closest 1 mm wire is 18 gauge.  The closest 1 mm sheet of metal is 19 gauge. We won’t even go into Stubs Iron Wire Gauge, and tubing gauge. There is no rational correlation between gauge number and physical dimensions.

A 12 gauge shotgun has a barrel diameter in which twelve balls of lead, of the same diameter as the barrel, are equal to one pound. It takes twenty lead balls of the same diameter as the 20 gauge shotgun barrel to equal a pound. What if you obtain a .410 shotgun?–well that’s in caliber.  I would argue that 9 mm is more descriptive than 12 gauge, 20 gauge or .410, even to Americans.

The use of gauge, as a  size description in America,  is a perfect illustration of the completely irrational dimensional arrangement of our building construction materials. They are the materials that drive our physical economy.  This causes confusion and waste, for no reason. Our system is long past being ripe for reform—it’s rotting. I don’t understand why the American public, and the technical community, doesn’t demand mandatory conversion to the metric system. I just can’t gauge why.

Related essay:

Without Metric Threads We’re Screwed

If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page and contribute. Also purchase his books about the metric system:

The first book is titled: Our Crumbling Invisible Infrastructure. It is a succinct set of essays  that explain why the absence of the metric system in the US is detrimental to our personal heath and our economy. These essays are separately available for free on my website,  but the book has them all in one place in print. The book may be purchased from Amazon here.


The second book is titled The Dimensions of the Cosmos. It takes the metric prefixes from yotta to Yocto and uses each metric prefix to describe a metric world. The book has a considerable number of color images to compliment the prose. It has been receiving good reviews. I think would be a great reference for US science teachers. It has a considerable number of scientific factoids and anecdotes that I believe would be of considerable educational use. It is available from Amazon here.


The third book is not of direct importance to metric education. It is called Death By A Thousand Cuts, A Secret History of the Metric System in The United States. This monograph explains how we have been unable to legally deal with weights and measures in the United States from George Washington, to our current day. This book is also available on Amazon here.