"Ruling" the World

One of the most common problems facing beaders-- not to mention international travelers, scientists, and home chefs --is one of converting measurements between different measurement systems. The conversion of metric to Imperial and vice versa is a source of constant frustration for jewelry makers.  It's not unusual to find a hodgepodge of measurements for a single bead or finding.  Take this example: A sixteen inch strand of eight millimeter beads could contain 50 to 51 beads, depending on the precision of their measurements. Each bead has a one millimeter hole that will easily accommodate a .019 to .024 inch beading wire or a 22 gauge precious metal wire (which itself measures 0.0253 inches or 0.6426 millimeters).  Hold on there Einstein! This can be a dizzying nightmare for those of us without the mathematical skills to recite pi to 385 digits.
The standardized measurement funny business began in ancient Egypt with the royal cubit. The arguments haven't stopped for five thousand years. Various "official" systems of measurement would rise and fall with their associated empires. We're most familiar with the English Imperial system and its fraternal twin, the US customary system.  Both have roots in the Roman empire and use simple, everyday natural observations to calculate measurements. Of course, the definition of what is simple and everyday has changed a great deal since 45 BC.  At different times throughout history, the length of a Roman soldier's stride, the distance between the English king's nose and his thumb, the length of an ox, and the width of three barley corns have each influenced the Imperial system of measurement.  This system did not became officially standardized until the mid 19th century!  The largest problem was and is that hardly anything in the Imperial system is equally divisible. Imagine trying to figure how many digits are in a nail, how many nails are in a palm, how many palms are in a shaftment, how many shaftments are in a span, and how many spans are in an ell.  Simple and everyday, it is not.

Luckily, we have the metric system. It's a straightforward system of measurement where every unit is divisible by ten. The history of its development is long, boring, and of little interest to those without my nerdy predilections.  However a fascinating overview can be found here. Because of the metric system's logical standards most major countries have officially converted. The lone holdouts are the US, the UK, Liberia, and Burma.

So what is a beader to do? It's unlikely that the rest of the world will revert to a system of approximate measurements based on the best guesses of farmers born two thousand years ago; and with no strong movement for the metric system in the United States, it's doubtful that we'll see the death of the inch anytime soon. At this point, the most reasonable course of action would be to add a calculator and ruler with both inches and centimeters to your beading arsenal. If you're not able to break out a ruler, we provide a convenient measurement conversion chart.  Just want to know how many beads are on a strand, or how many beads you need to use?  Use our quick-reference bead conversion chart.
Do you have your own tricks or rules of thumb that help you make quick beading calculations?  (And yes, "thumb" used to be an official measurement1) Are you a metric fanatic or an Imperialist? Leave a comment below. I'd love to hear from you.