Original manufacturors of gunpowder, being alchamists, measured all liquids by volume, using somewhat primitive gauduated flasks,
Graduated glass(ish) columns , or graduated or measured “droppers”, or if small amounts , liquids were dispensed by “drops”.
Drops, btw can be surprisingly accurate, since they are more dependant upon liquid density and surface tension than anything else.
all solids or dry particulate matter were measured by What they termed as “weight”, using balance beam scaled and (supposedly) standardized weights. Of course “standards” varied by local, and era. That there is a whole another fascinating rabbit hole to dive down into.
We can go as far back as the “cubit” ….and b@tch about how innaccurate the ancients were …
But instead i will quote the wiki article about the accuracy of ancient standards excavated from the indus valley:
From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StandardizationSnip quote……………..
Early examples
Standard weights and measures were developed by the Indus Valley civilization.[4] The centralized weight and measure system served the commercial interest of Indus merchants as smaller weight measures were used to measure luxury goods while larger weights were employed for buying bulkier items, such as food grains etc.[5] Weights existed in multiples of a standard weight and in categories.[5] Technical standardisation enabled gauging devices to be effectively used in angular measurement and measurement for construction.[6] Uniform units of length were used in the planning of towns such as Lothal, Surkotada, Kalibangan, Dolavira, Harappa, and Mohenjo-daro.[4] The weights and measures of the Indus civilization also reached Persia and Central Asia, where they were further modified.[7] Shigeo Iwata describes the excavated weights unearthed from the Indus civilization:
A total of 558 weights were excavated from Mohenjodaro, Harappa, and Chanhu-daro, not including defective weights. They did not find statistically significant differences between weights that were excavated from five different layers, each measuring about 1.5 m in depth. This was evidence that strong control existed for at least a 500-year period. The 13.7-g weight seems to be one of the units used in the Indus valley. The notation was based on the binary and decimal systems. 83% of the weights which were excavated from the above three cities were cubic, and 68% were made of chert.
Endsnip quote…..
At one time various communities that had a large(ish) population of scientifical typoids (ie university towns) had publicly accesible standards thingies for the sake of “enabling uniform commerce and trade” .
Some folks attempted to use coins as a standard unit of wieght/mass but common handling wear and coin edge shaving resulted in a less than harmonious outcome. Edge shaving btw is why many coins ended up with “milled edges” or serated edges.
Another unique but laborious method of measure was to use “the volume of so many drops of distilled water, as measure from a pipette ending in a hole the size of xyz … “. Whereupon we end up with trying to duplicated the hole size, accurately marking the volume, the container material, where the water meniscus is measured, the temperature, humidty, barometric pressure, time of day, season of thr year, phase of the moon, position of the sun, and where the measuror held his/her tongue …..
One readily uniformish method was by using the “gauge” ie number of pure lead balls to the pound.
IF one had acess to an accurate balance beam scale and an accurate one pound weight/mass one could make sure that 20 of the 20 ga balls
One had for ones musket/fowler did indeed make up one pound, one can then use a single ball to measure the equal amount of powder, then pour that into a paper/ wooden/ whatever cartridge…. And/or use that volume to manufacture a container of duplicate volume,
(henceforth called a “powder measure” and/or “powder scoop” ) which can then be used in the field for a reasonabley close approximation of the appropriate volume, based upon the prior measure weight/mass … +/- between 1-5 % depending upon the skill of the user and probably worse depending upon the distractions at the time
….