Balance Beam and Weight Pans ca. 1830

This bronze and copper weighing instrument, made using a combination of metal casting and beating, with three ornate linked chains holding each of the removable pans, was typical of the sort of equipment kept by burgh officials to ensure fair trade within the town through the periodic testing of weights and measures in markets and shops.  This balance beam, designed to measure a standard seven pounds, belonged to the Royal Burgh of Dunbar in East Lothian and was made by the small firm, J. White & Sons of Auchtermuchty.  Each burgh would own a range of standard weight checking devices. Apothecaries and goldsmiths employed particularly sensitive systems of measurement reflecting the value of the goods in which they traded.  This one can be held by hand and was probably used for testing weights employed by grocers or butchers for sales of butter, cheese or meat.  The Burgh of Dunbar purchased several balances, weights and scales from J. White & Sons in the nineteenth century.   

Scotland as with much of Europe used a variety of local weights and measures before the nineteenth century, with traders relying on printed guides for converting from one measure to another when trading across regions. The role of town council officials in regulating fair trade for the benefit of local communities extended to rights of inspection of weights and measures.   Fair trade within localities was not however conducive to efficient long distance trade. The Highland Society of Scotland under the guidance of Sir John Sinclair was so concerned at the implications for the economy that it commissioned a report into Scottish weights and measures in 1813 and in 1814 the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce petitioned Parliament for standardization.  It was the Imperial Weights and Measures Act of 1824 that marked a key point in the eradication of local variations and thereby facilitated trade within and beyond the nation.   

J. White & Sons, founded in 1715 as a blacksmith and iron founder, is Scotland’s oldest surviving firm, having remained in White family ownership through eight generations.  In its early years, scale making was a modest extension of the blacksmithing business, but by the early nineteenth century, with a new brass foundry and diversification into lock and gun making, precision metal work became the dominant output.