And the advent of systematic measuring Body proportions And the advent of systematic measuring

vitruvius 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.

Not quite there… 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.

Still, not quite… "Vitruvian Man“ Illustration in the edition of "De Architectura" by Vitruvius; illustrated edition by Cesare Cesariano, Como, Gottardus da Ponte, 1521

Here we go! 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.

Will these ‘standard’ measurements be the same across the world? How to measure… Will these ‘standard’ measurements be the same across the world?

International system of units

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.