[meteorite-list] Ensisheim - total original weight discrepancies (cont.)

From: bernd.pauli_at_paulinet.de <bernd.pauli_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Jul 9 10:36:00 2004
Message-ID: <DIIE.00000012000024BF_at_paulinet.de>

Dear List,

Saturday, July 03, I wrote:

> Now, although U.B. Marvin seems to quote from the German translation:
> " ... a large, triangular stone, weighing three hundred pounds ...", I found
> something totally different in the facsimile edition, and, in consequence,
> also in the pirated edition, the German text of which is rendered in fig. 3
> of her review on p. 41 and this rules out a typo on the part of U.B. Marvin.

=>"... ein gro?er stayn bey eim zentner schwer ..."
=> a large stone weighing about o n e zentner

A typo in the Nuremberg Chronicle ?
A "doppelzentner" (a double "zentner - 2 x 50 kg) ?
2 stones as depicted in Brant's sheets and in the N. Chronicle ?
A meteorite shower at Ensisheim ?

Martin Altmann responded:

> pound and zentner weren't the weights or units of today, so from
> this figure one can say nothing about the Ensisheim stone weight.
> For this it would be necessary to have the meaning of zentner and
> pound of that region at that time as well as the meanings of those
> units of the publishers time and regions of those authors.

As this whetted my appetite to find out more, I wrote an email to the
staff of the Nuremberg municipal archives and got this reply from
a certain Dr. Beyerstedt :

"[At that time] one centner equalled 100 pounds in Nuremberg, and one
Nuremberg pound weighed 500.9 grams in nowaday's unit of weight."

So let me repeat my question:

"... why, for heaven's sake, does the Nuremberg Chronicle,
only mention about " one zentner", ... 50 kg, ... 100 pounds?"


Best wishes,

Bernd
Received on Fri 09 Jul 2004 10:35:58 AM PDT