Read the following sentence from the story "the balek scales".

there on the table stood the great balek scales, an old-fashioned, ornate bronze-gilt contraption, which my grandfather's grandparents had already faced when they were children, their grubby hands holding their little baskets of mushrooms, their paper bags of hayflowers, breathlessly watching the number of weights frau balek had to throw on the scale before the swinging pointer came to rest exactly over the line, that thin line of justice which had to be redrawn every year.

the speaker used the images in this sentence to most likely imply that the scales

a. have never moved from their original location.
b. are intimidating to those who stand before them.
c. have been handed down through many generations.
d. are antiquated in their ability to accurately measure.