Reference calculators
Measurement systems the world mostly left behind.
Every civilization built its own way of measuring weight, length, and land before the meter and the pound standardized the world. Measure Past keeps those systems usable: pick a tradition below, get a live calculator, the exact formulas, and where each unit came from.
Burmese Weights & Measures
Viss, kyat (tical), taung, pyi, and pè — the traditional system of Myanmar. Weight still prices gold in Yangon today.
Thai Weights & Measures
Baht, wa, thanan, and rai — the traditional system of Thailand. Land is still titled in rai-ngan-wah, and gold still prices by the baht.
Chinese Weights & Measures
Jin, liang, chi, sheng, and mu — the traditional 市制 system of China. Markets still weigh produce by the jin, and farmland is still measured in mu.
Ancient Indian Weights & Measures
Ratti, karsha, hasta, and yojana — from Kautilya's Arthashastra, complete with the ancient office that fined merchants for using unstamped measures. Ratti still weighs gemstones in Indian jewelry shops today.
Old English Weights & Measures
Barleycorn, rod, stone, and hide — from Anglo-Saxon roots through Magna Carta's own weights-and-measures clause. Unlike the rest of this site, most of these units never actually left.
Old Norse Weights & Measures
Mörk, eyrir, faðmur, and skippund — the Viking Age silver-weight and land system preserved through Icelandic law. Eyrir is the direct root of øre, still part of Danish and Norwegian currency today.
Japanese Weights & Measures
Momme, shaku, shō, and tsubo — Japan's shakkanhō system. Real estate is still sold by the tsubo, sake by the shō, and pearls the world over by the momme.
Ancient Greek Weights & Measures
Obol, drachma, stadion, and plethron — the Attic standard behind Eratosthenes' measurement of the Earth. The talent went from a weight of silver to the English word for skill.
Ancient Egyptian Weights & Measures
Deben, royal cubit, hekat, and setat — the units behind the pyramids, the Wilbour Papyrus land survey, and an economy priced entirely in copper weight, no coins required.
Korean Weights & Measures
Don, cheok, doe, and pyeong — rooted in King Sejong's 15th-century pitch-pipe standard. Pyeong was banned from real estate listings in 2007 and nobody stopped using it.
Ancient Roman Weights & Measures
Libra, pes, modius, and iugerum — the units behind six English words at once: money, mint, mile, pound, ounce, and inch. Rome's land grid is still visible from satellite photos today.
More traditions
Mesopotamia & Babylon, the Indus Valley (Harappan), and Khmer & Angkor are next on the list.
Why this exists
Search "kg to lbs" and you'll get a hundred instant answers. Search "viss to kg" and you mostly won't — even though viss is still how rice and gold get weighed across Myanmar. These systems aren't obsolete everywhere; they're just under-documented. Measure Past is a growing reference: one calculator per unit category, sourced against at least two independent references, with the historical context most converters leave out.