Department of Weights and Measures

Dad worked in the Irish Civil Service. He entered the Service in 1944, and moved to Dublin. Eventually ending up in Dublin Castle. When he finally retired the Evening Herald devoted a large article to his tenure at the head of this small but busy Department. text is taken directly from the Herald article.
''The weight of time
beats Mr. Scales''
''AFTER a quarter of a century balancing the scales of the official technical officer of weights and measures, John Maguire is saying goodbye to gills, grams and gallons.
“Mr. Scales” as John is fondly called by his colleagues has been working in the weights and measures section of the Dept. of Trade, Commerce and industry since 1944.
And his colleagues showed their appreciation when Tommy McGrath, divisional head, presented John, a Kilkenny man with a finely sketched drawing of North King Street and a book on Irish Homes and Castles.
“I think I should even be in the Guinness Book of Records”, John said, “for having spent 30 years working in the same room in Dublin Castle”.
For all those years John has been quietly checking that the pint mark stamped on your glass really means a pint and that the scales in the local grocery shop are not tipped in the shopkeepers favour.
“Our job is to see fraud is not being committed against members of the public by someone using an irregular weighing machine or altering correct measures like the old case of the bar man putting his thumb in the glass when he is pouring a dash of whiskey’ said John.
While John set standard measure from his office in Dublin Castle, he also dispatched inspectors throughout the country to check shops, stores, and petrol pumps to see that the consumer always got his full pound’s worth.
“ In the case of the big thumbed barman the only thing to do is to catch him red handed or red thumbed as the case may be”, John says. And once caught he would soon find himself in court under the Scales of Justice.
John’s job has been to examine and test new weighing and measuring machines and in those years he has seen a wide variety of changes through from metrification in measurements to electronics in machinery.
“There used to be a wide diversity of measures but with the E.E.C. there has been a greater standardization of scales”. John says.