And the advent of systematic measuring

BODY PROPORTIONS

Vitruvius was an ancient Roman architect who wrote a series of ten books on

architecture - one of the few collections of books of its type that survived into the

Renaissance. In the third volume, which is on the proportions of temples, he states

that these buildings should be based on the proportions of man, because the human

body is the model of perfection. He justifies this by stating that the human

body with arms and legs extended fits into the perfect geometric forms, the circle,

and the square.

VITRUVIUS

An illustration of Vitruvian man by

Cesariano in his Cosmo Vitruvius of 1521 reeks

of failure. Cesariano drew a perfect circle

and square tangent to each other at the four points of the square;

then he forced a figure of a man into the design

so that his hands and feet touch the points.

NOT QUITE THERE…

"Vitruvian Man“

Illustration in the edition of "De

Architectura" by Vitruvius; illustrated

edition by Cesare Cesariano, Como,

Gottardus da Ponte, 1521

STILL, NOT QUITE…

It took the genius of Leonardo da Vinci to solve the problem.

Leonardo started by drawing a perfectly

proportioned man and then found the circle

and square in the figure. The circle and

square are only tangent at one place,

the base.

HERE WE GO!

Will these ‘standard’ measurements be the

same across the world?

HOW TO MEASURE…

INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF UNITS

• The standards were published in 1960 as the result of an initiative started in 1948.

• In addition to defining a new realisation of the metric system, the General Conference on Weights and Measures, an organisation set up by the Convention of the Metre in 1875, succeeded in bringing together many international organizations to agree not only the definitions of the SI, but also rules on writing and presenting measurements in a standardised manner around the globe.

• The system has been adopted nearly globally. Only Burma, Liberia and the United States have not adopted SI units as their official system of weights and measures.

INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF UNITS