 During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries several attempts were made to provide a universal definition of measurement. Although accounts of measurement varied, the consensus was that measurement is a method of assigning numbers to magnitudes. For example, Helmholtz (1887: 17) defined measurement as the procedure by which one finds the denominate number that expresses the value of a magnitude, where a “denominate number” is a number together with a unit, e.g., 5 meters, and a magnitude is a quality of objects that is amenable to ordering from smaller to greater, e.g., length. Bertrand Russell similarly stated that measurement is 