Stessa misura, stesso peso, stesso nome La Sicilia e il modello metrico decimale (secoli XVI-XIX)

[automatically translated] This book tells the story of the reform of metric-weighting systems in use in Sicily from UNITA Middle Ages. Abbot Piazzi, the founder of the Observatory of Palermo and the discoverer of the asteroid Ceres Ferdinandea, is the one who writes this story with its memorials, his notes, his bills. The deputation which he presides has the task of bringing unity to all the measures in use on the island. Exhausting enterprise that lasted years and which had its first landfall in the law of 31 December 1809 by which it launched the Code Metric Sicilian. Control by the ruler of the weight system was a prerequisite for the reduction of local particularism and for the exercise of a strong central power. Since that time the feudal lords, the consuls of the arts, merchants and other representatives of the classes begin a battle against the attempt to impose the measures of the king at the expense of the existing reality. The "newspaper of what has been done by the Deputation of Weights and Measures", held by Piazzi and his collaborators, allows an accurate reconstruction of the path followed. The Constitution of 1812 will validate the reform and the political and cultural project that underlies it, the opposition from the classes will not be less.