Length and Area

• The units in common use were inches, feet, yards and miles. We all had to know our twelve times table! An inch is the width of a thumb, a foot is the length of a foot (!) and a yard is a single stride, all for a large man. My own thumb is 3/4 inch across, my foot is 11 inches and my stride is 2 feet. However, the word 'stride' is ambiguous. It may mean two steps, that is until you are on the same foot again, in which case my stride is 4 feet.
• The foot has been used for over a thousand years, the inch since medieval times, and the yard in the reign of Henry I (1100-1135) was within a tenth of an inch of the modern yard. Henry I decreed the lawful yard to be the distance between the tip of his nose and the end of his thumb, and in 1324, Edward II decreed that the inch was the length of 3 barley corns placed end-to-end. There are some Tudor measures here. The foot, a length of the human foot, became anything from 9 3/4 to 19 inches.   It was not until 1844 that there was anything resembling a real standard. In that year the British government created a standard master yard in the famous length of bronze, marked off in feet and inches which is still on view at Greenwich.
• Click here for a photo and description of the Trafalgar Square standard measures.
• A light year is the distance that light travels in a year. The nearest stars are a few light years away. A foot is approximately a light nanosecond! (A nanosecond is a billionth of a second, or 1/1,000,000,000 secs.)
• The inch is defined as exactly 2.54 centimetres. This means that the Imperial units of length are based on the metric system!
• A mile is derived from "mille", Latin for thousand, since a mile is a thousand Roman double paces, from left foot to left foot, about 5 feet, which would make 5000 feet. The mile is 5280 feet. In the past every part of England had its own mile, up to 2880 yards (it is now 1760 yards). In Ireland, the mile was 2240 yards well into the 20C.
• A chain is the length of a cricket pitch. It has been used since 1620. It was so-called because it was measured with a real chain, with real links, made of metal. Its correct name is a Gunter's chain or surveyor's chain, since it was invented by the Rev. Edmund Gunter (1581-1626), a professor of astronomy at Gresham College, London. There is another chain of 100 feet, where each link is one foot long. This is the Ramsden's chain or engineer's chain (see near bottom for page for an example). The Gunter's chain is 4 poles long, which means that one chain by one furlong is an acre. This also means that an acre is 10 square chains.
  A correspondent says "The whole of the United States was measured and mapped using the Gunters Chain and his chain still applies to all title plans in use today..  For this reason all city blocks, roads and avenues are multiples of the Chain.  Towns were laid out at 6 miles square or 36 sq miles.  Early farms were sold to would-be farmers as lots of 640 acres or 1 sq mile.  Interestingly enough the Geodetic coastal survey and ordnance surveys of the entire US are metric."
• Medieval ploughing was done with oxen, up to 4 pairs at a time. The ploughman handled the plough. His boy controlled the oxen using a stick, which had to be long enough to reach all the oxen. This was the rod, pole or perch. It was an obvious implement to measure the fields, such as 4 poles to the chain. A BBC webpage about allotments says that "an allotment plot is 10 poles" and claims that "A pole is measured as the length from the back of the plough to the nose of the ox". I suppose that if you wanted to control the front ox, you needed a pole long enough to reach! The perch was used in the reign of Henry II (1154-1189), the pole since the 16C, and the rod since 1450. In the 16th century the lawful rod was decreed to be the combined length of the left feet of 16 men as they left church on a Sunday morning. An earlier name for a rod was a gyrd. In North Devon there is a tradition that fencing, that is to say the cutting and laying of a hedge, would be done at so much a land yard, which seemed to be about 5 paces or 5.5 yards, which would equate to a rod, pole or perch. If anyone more about land yards, do let me know.
• A furlong is a "furrow long" or length of a mediaeval field. It is used for the lengths of some horse races.The furlong was also known as flatt, furshott, or sheth. The length varied depending on the type of soil. It was usual for horses to take a short breather at the end of the furrow before turning in to the next furrow. The heavier the soil, the harder the horses had to work, and so the less time between breathers. This led to shorter furrows or furlongs between the ends, and therefore local variations in furlong length. These variations were not removed until the railways required a universal standard measurement.
• Hands are used to measure horses. You measure from the ground to the withers of the horse (its shoulder) since it won't keep its head still. 3 hands = 1 foot (which sounds slightly odd).
• A line has been used since the 17C. It is used by botanists to describe the size of plants (which must be very small!) It is not common (in fact, I had never heard of it until I started researching this site!)
• A thou is a colloquial term for a thousandth of an inch. It was introduced in 1844. It is generally credited to Joseph Whitworth who demonstrated that as little as 1/1000" was the difference between clearance and intereference.
• These measurements are all land units. Sailors have their own units.

You can see that there might be some confusion over m (meaning miles) and m (meaning metres)!

A lovely letter in New Scientist said "The proper units for large areas, such as those of giant icebergs and hurricanes, are the Wales (metric) and the Delaware (imperial). The conversion rate is approximately 3.215 Delawares to the Wales... Measurements of height is, of course, in Eiffeltowers and Empirestatebuildings (1.368 Eiffeltowers to the Empirestatebuilding)." Here is a good website which calculates areas in this unit! I think that the Wales has replaced the Isleofwight, which used to be the standard unit. I have also spotted the Luxembourg as a measure of icebergs as well. This is, of course, rather a large area. A football pitch is often used for small areas, and Cambridge has been used for medium areas. As a very rough approximation (and that is all these units are!)

5000 Football Pitches = 1 Cambridge

500 Cambridges = 1 Wales.

It seems logical to go onto cubic measurements or volume after talking about area. Volume is usually measured in units such as pints, gallons and so on, which are described in a separate webpage. You also have cubic inches and so on. There don't seem to be many cubic measurements similar to the acre. Here are a couple.

I thought the cord was an American unit, but a corresepondent corrected me. He said that it was used in Northumberland. "My father was using cords in his younger days when he worked in a timber yard. I remember him showing me a strange tape measure, marked with units about 4" apart, that they used to work out the cordage of a piece of timber from its length." Also, a webpage on the Common Rights in the New Forest mentions that a cord is a stack of wood in 4 foot lengths, 4 feet high and 8 feet long. It is concerned with Right of Fuelwood (Estovers).
In some districts the cord had dimensions of 16 feet by 4 feet by 2 feet. This is still 128 cubic feet.

This website claims that in England, a fathom is a measure of capacity for round wood = 216 cubic feet, that is, the volume that would be occupied by a stack 6 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 6 feet high. That is surprising, as a fathom is usually a nautical term of length meaning 6 feet (deep). The same website also claims that in Yorkshire, England, the fandam was a measure of the circumference of haystacks, measured by a circle of people hugging the stack, their outstretched hands just touching.

Another correspondent told me about the measured rick, and added "A rick is a any size stack of cornstalks, wood, straw or similar stuff, left in the field. Any ol' pile of firewood may also be called a rick, although most people just call it a woodpile. It takes about 8 cords of wood to heat a home for the entire winter."

There is a volume of measure for lumber in the US called the board-foot. A board foot is 144 cubic inches (or 1 foot x 1 foot x 1 inch). Rough lumber is sold in it. See Board Feet Estimation calculator. I have received an email about this: "My father  was a carpenter as was  father and grandfather,  and  in my youth I regularly overheard them using the  term 'super foot', which in short was 1 foot x 1 foot x  1 inch.     Prior to changing to metric measures, I  found the  term  commonly used  throughout Australia;  I  am led to believe  that it came from the UK." Has anyone from the UK heard of a similar measurement?
A correspondent answers this: "The use of super in conjunction with area measurement is short for superficial. All materials ordered from quarries whether hoggin, graded chippings or tarmac, are ordered by the yard or metre. These are cubic yards or cubic metres. Therefore a '10 yard load of tarmac' is actually 10 cubic yards. When the tarmac is spread 3" thick, the area covered is 120 super, or 120 square yards. In each case the word 'cubic' or 'square' is omitted but the words 'yard' or 'super' make the meaning absolutely clear. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary gives one of the meanings of 'superficial' as meaning 'relating to or involving two dimensions; esp. relating to extent of surface'".
A further comment from another correspondent: "In New Zealand the super foot was the standard measure for milled timer being 144 cubic inches.  I spend many years in timber as did my father and great grand fathers.  All large quantities of timber were described in super feet which was very handy for recutting.  Stocktaking in the timber yards, sales analysis and buying was similarly calculate in super feet.  it was easy to estimate the timber in a bundle or packet by eye.  Super feet slowly died out when we officially went metric in about 1975 but as you can imagine many of the old hands still used super feet to communicate with others skilled in the measure.   The conversion from super feet to lineal feet of a board was easy.  Conversion of a metric cube to lineal feet is much slower if done on the spot mentally."

There are various other measurements for timber including "Hoppus foot" (H.ft). 1 H.ft. = 1.273 cu.ft, or 1 cu.ft. = 0.785 H.ft. The hoppus foot is used for round or rough-squared timber and the formula uses the mid-quarter-girth (M.Q.G.) in inches, squared, then multiplied by the length in feet and then divided by 144 to give H.ft. The girth is measured in inches at the mid-point between the butt and the tip and then divided by 4 to get the M.Q G. Quarter Girth tapes are available, with 66' tapes for the length, and ready-reckoner tables for standard types of timber eg. pit props.Other common timber terms were the ton for firewood and pulpwood, the bundle for stakes and pea-sticks etc., and the linear foot for pit-props and fence rails etc. Wood for chipboard or fibreboard is sometimes traded in units of 100 cu. ft. of piled chips, equivalent to 50 H.ft. of solid wood.

My father used to work in th wooden beer barrel trade (a long time ago!) He says that the staves that went to make up a barrel were counted in mille. This was 1200 staves rather than a thousand.

I have a reference to a shipping ton = 40 cubic feet. This seems odd, since ton is usually a weight. But perhaps ships are more interested in volume! However, I have subsequently been informed by my of my useful correspondents that "This measurement allows shippers to obtain revenue based on either volume or weight and is an approximate equalisation of the volume and weight rates. Rates are usually obtained by the tonne, but large and light freights are charged by volume or 'freight (or shipping) tonne'."

Referring to my statement above that "There don't seem to be many cubic measurements similar to the acre", a correspondent says "You may be interested in knowing about the 'acre-foot'. Here in the USA it is used in reference to reservoir size and is the amount of water needed to cover an acre to the depth of one foot." Very logical! Another correspondent gives from his FUI (Fund of Useless Information) "It needs 22,000 gallons of water to cover an acre of land with one inch of irrigation."

Cubic measurement is really the same as capacity or volume. However, the measurements are on this page are used for objects that have dimensions, such as wood, while capacity units, like pints and bushels, are used for liquids or dry goods that can be poured into a bag, such as grain. A bushel is 1.28 cubic feet, but we don't normally think of it like that!

• A span was originally the length from your little finger to your thumb if you stretch your fingers. It later became 9 inches (23 cm), which would make it a quarter of a yard.
• A nail was 2 and a quarter inches, which is a quarter of a span. So there were 16 nails to a yard. There is also a finger, which was 4 and a half inches, or 2 nails. These are cloth measures.
• A palm was 3 inches - so there were 4 palms to a foot. A hand is an inch bigger. Possibly the idea was that a hand was the width of the hand including the thumb, and a palm was the width excluding the thumb.
• The cubit is the earliest unit of length, used in Egypt in the 3rd Dynasty (2800-2300 BC). It is the length of the arm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. The English cubit is 18 inches long (46 cms), but the Romans, Egyptians and Hebrews all had different lengths. Cubits are used in the Bible. The ark was 300 cubits long.
• An ell is derived from "elbow". It started off similar to the cubit (see above), but the English ell was 45 inches long (115 cm). Other countries had different lengths for their ell. There was an old saying "Give him an inch and he'll take an ell". As the ell fell out of common use, the saying got changed to "Give him an inch and he'll take a mile" (which makes less sense). 45 inches is 5 spans, or a yard and a quarter. It could have been measured from finger-tip to nose, or possibly elbow to elbow! The ell was a measure of cloth, as was the bolt, which was 32 ells, or 40 yards.
• A cloth-yard was used to measure cloth. It is 37 inches long (94 cm), which is an inch longer than an ordinary yard. A cloth-yard shaft was an arrow a cloth-yard long.
• As I mentioned above, the inch was originally defined as 3 barleycorns. One of my correspondents mentions 4 poppy seeds = 1 barleycorn.
• A league is another measure that varies by country. In England, it is taken to be 3 miles. Tennyson wrote of the Charge of the Light Brigade:
       "Half a league, half a league, half a league onwards
       Into the valley of death rode the six hundred."

In fairy tales, there were seven league boots, which would carry you 7 leagues in one stride! Assuming that a stride is two steps, then that's 10.5 miles in a step. Jules Verne wrote a book about a submarine, called "20,000 Leagues under the Sea" (this refers to how far they travelled, not how deep they were!).
• A hide was enough land to support a house-hold, usually between 60-120 acres (24-48 hectares). A hide of good land was smaller than that of poor quality. Hides are used in the Doomsday Book. However, I have a reference of a hide as 100 acres.
• An acre is 4840 square yards (see above) and is a conventional measure of area. It was defined in the time of Edward I (1272-1307) and was supposed to be the area that a yoke of oxen could plough is a day. Acre is derived from the Latin for field. But the common field system of medieval times in Britain was ten acres. An acre is a furlong (furrow length) long and a chain wide. In fact, an archaic word for furlong was "acre-length" and for chain "acre-width". The Scottish and Irish used to have different values for their acres. The Scottish acre was 6150.4 square yards and the Irish acre was 7840 square yards.
• Some archaeologists have deduced a megalithic yard from the statistical study of prehistoric stone circles, which they estimate to be 2.72 feet. It seems strange that pre-historic man had such a consistent measure, when in the past the mile was defined differently in different parts of England! Surely, they just measured out their circles with paces, which tend to be that length. It doesn't have to be a formal unit. However, if you are interested in the megalithic yard, see this website, but I don't agree with it myself!

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Interesting tape measures

I have received some emails about old tape measures, asking me about them.

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The first request says "I collect a few old tools and I have an old 50 foot tape measure in a beautifully made leather case with brass winding handle etc. It's marked in feet and inches on one side but on the reverse it's in unspecified divisions. They are 7 3/4" approx 197mm long. Any idea what they may represent? The measure is English. It has the makers name on it but they ceased trading in the 1970s.I think the measure was my Dad's. In that case I would date it mid 1950s. My Dad was a construction engineer for a company called Dexion who made steel racking systems for warehouses etc. Perhaps they had the tapes specially made and the mystery divisions were to their specifications."
From a correspondent: "I have a 50 ft tape in a leather case, on one side stamped "John Rabone & Sons, Birmingham, England", on the other side "Rabone's Metallic Wired Tape", with a brass winding handle. I believe Rabone's have ceased trading. It came to me from a shed clearance of a person who had worked for a city council. On one side of the tape it is marked in feet and inches, i.e. 1 ... 11 1ft 1 ... 11 2ft .... On the reverse is marked '1 Link ..... 2 ...... 3 ........'. Ten links is opposite 6ft 7 (.2) inches, or 10 links = 79.2 inches, 100 links = 792 inches = 66 feet = 22 yards = 1 chain. I think this sounds very similar to, if not the same as, the one in your Interesting Tape Measures section."
Another email: 'I recently bought a Chesterman leather-cased tape measure at an auction in Manhattan, Kansas. The brass winder says 100 ft. and it has the same markings on the back of the tape as described in several of your e-mails. It starts with 1 link, and has numbered marks approximately every 7 3/4" and where mark 25 would be says 1 Pole. I think this clarifies some things seen on other tape measures. I was wondering how rare these tape measures are, and when they were made.'
Some of these tapes are definitely measuring links. A link is 7.92 inches and there are 25 links to a pole. But the first tape measure is described at 7 3/4" or 197mm. A link is over 201mm, and is closer to 8" than 7 3/4". So they may not all be the same.
A suggestion from another correspondent: 'Has anyone suggested that it might be related to masonry?   The usual rule-of-thumb that I use is that a brick is nominally 8" in length and 2-2/3" in height so that 3 rows = 8".   Of course this has to include the mortar so there is a lot of opportunity to vary the relationships. Anyhow, that was my thought:   A means to quickly determine the number of bricks.'

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The second says "My better half found this item laying on the shingle at Bradwell on Sea. A tiny tape measure with J.Curwel & Sons on it. It looks 19th C. but what the hell is it for measuring? As you can see the increments apparently make no logical sense...but they must! The tape has standard imperial inch divisions with tiny numbers denoting each inch. I think it would have been a yard measure as the last symbol is III... but with mysterious numbers placed at strange intervals that get closer and closer together in multiples of three, then four, then six! The numbers go from 60 - 144, but 144 is where the tape has broken so it may have continued a little further? The imperial inches go one way, the strange increments the other! I hope you can help us identify this mysterious tape measure."
I've had one suggestion for this: "This sounds like a surveyors tape and would be used for possibly works out no of degrees like an engineers protractor."
My original idea was that it measured the width of a drum, of paper or cloth or similar. As the drum got wider, the length wound round the drum would get longer per wind.
Another suggestion sounds distinctly interesting! "Back in my youth, early 1950s,  I was learning to play the piano.   My parents bought me a pocket metronome for Christmas.   This was the same as a measuring tape (which my brother got at the same time!) but had a non-linear scale.   If I pulled it out to the 60 marking, held it by the end and let it swing like a pendulum, it gave me a reference for 60 beats per minute.   At 120 it meant 120 beats per minute.   Follow this through and each time you halve the length, the number of beats per minute doubles - hence the non-linear markings.   My metronome had a cloth tape and the  housing was made of plastic with an internal spring and ratchet with a small button to allow the tape to be  rewound.   As I remember, the scale was from 60 upwards - because of the non-linearity, it would have been to long to be used at slower rates!   Also there was a length of tape beyond the last marking - it would not have swung for very long at short lengths.   I don't remember the exact highest rate - probably around 160.   I would guess that the tape was just over a yard when fully extended.   I've never seen one since my childhood and I don't remember what happened to  mine in the end!" (He did eventually find it - photo on the right.)  "At least my pocket metronome allowed my father's mahogany cased  French Maelzel Paquet Metronome to survive -  I inherited that!   If it was a pocket metronome, some of the Curwel tape is missing.   From my school physics, I remember a pendulum would indicate 60 beats a minute when the length from the pivot to the point of the centre of gravity of the weight on the end was approximately 39 inches.   I was taught not let it swing more than 20 - 30 degrees or it became inaccurate!" If the name is J.Curwen & Sons, they were musical publishers, so this becomes a distinct possibility. There is an article about John Curwen

More about Chesterman: "Here's one of the Chesterman template rulers. 343 is the pattern number, and the engraved woring says 'standard for taper nedge (sic), 64ths, 1/64 to 9/64ths'. Someone with just as bad spelling has penned a newer number 828 and 'revers side' on! All this is engraved onto the back of a recycled 2" wide steel ruler. Rabone's are still making steel rules, but everything moved back to Birmingham when the factory closed. I'm not sure exactly what Stanley Tools purchased, maybe the flexible steel measuring tape side of the business."