Calibration Shoe of Speyer
Until the beginning of the 19th century, Speyer had its own method of measuring length and size (mass). On the northern side of the passage through the Old Gate hangs an iron bar, known as the "Calibration Shoe of Speyer" (Speyerer Werkschuh). This 28.899 centimeter-long bar, subdivided into 12 inches, was available for any merchant in Speyer to use. Between 1772 and 1773, Senator Johannes Becker used it to measure the size of the city, including the four communities outside the walls.
Read more about this topic: Old Gate (Speyer)
Famous quotes containing the word shoe:
“There was an old woman and she lived in a shoe,
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.
She crumm’d ‘em some porridge without any bread
And she borrowed a beetle, and she knocked ‘em all on the head.
Then out went the old woman to bespeak ‘em a coffin
And when she came back she found’ em all a-loffing.”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. There was an old woman who lived in a shoe (l. 1–6)