Recognising and understanding the object
- Materials
- wood or metal depending on construction
- Parts
- graduated beam, hook, counterweight, suspension or holding point
- Purpose
- Determine a load’s mass through balance and a scale.
- Period
- Context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century household collections and historical accounts; individual objects differ in date.
- Place and distribution
- Measuring instruments presented by Rokiškis Regional Museum.
What it is and how it works
A bezmėnas is a weighing device recognised through its hook, marked beam and counterweight. Rokiškis Museum’s educational account describes a form with a weighted end and a movable holding point. Establish which part moves in the particular mechanism rather than assuming every form is identical.
Evidence and examples
A number on an old instrument does not automatically mean kilograms. The museum mentions older pound graduations, and the pound itself varied between systems. Read the marks and establish the period before attempting a conversion.
How to identify it
Take clear photographs of the scale and both ends, recording missing parts separately. A surviving instrument is not necessarily calibrated for reliable weighing today. Its history becomes more informative when an account names the products that a household or trader weighed. The object can then connect an abstract unit to an actual exchange.
