Archaic units of measurement

[watervole]

Ever wondered where these funny old units of measurement come from?  They were originally very practical units of measurement.

eg. Allotments are typically 5 or 10 rods in length. (a pole is the same measurement as a rod)

Plot sizes are measured in rods, an old Anglo-Saxon unit so-called because it was the length of the rod used to control a team of eight oxen (thus an item of standard length that was likely to be around and handy for measuring stuff).

A rod is 5.5 yards (5.03 metres).


An acre is the area of land that could be ploughed in a day, being a furrow long (one 'furlong')and a chain wide.

Turning a team of oxen was difficult, so the typical acre on the ground was a long narrow shape.  Short furrows would drain better, but long ones were easier to plough. The furlong was a compromise between the two factors.

A furlong = 10 chains.

But the chain has an extra layer of meaning.  It was the measuring tool of surveyors and had to be strong enough to not stretch, but light enough so that the surveyor could still carry it.  It was literally a chain, typically made with 100 links.


A chain = 4 rods = 22yd (20.12m) and is the length of a cricket wicket.  (I guess the surveyor's chain was another handy item)

A mile is 8 furlongs or 80 chains.

A foot is pretty self-evident.

An inch is derived from the width of a man's thumb at the broadest point. Again, one can see this as an easy practical measurement.

A fathom is used mainly at sea for measuring depth.  6 ft, fingertip to fingertip of outstretched arms.  Think of how you quickly measure the length of a rope and you can see why depth measurements made by a man dropping a lead on the end of a piece of thin rope would obviously be measured in fathoms.

 

A mile = 8 furlongs.

An acre is the area of land that could be ploughed in a day, being a furrow long (furlong)and a chain wide, or 160 square rods.

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

My favourite is not, in fact, an Imperial measurement but dates back to ancient Persia - the parasang (a lovely word in its own right) was the official measurement of distance and was based on the distance a horse would run if released and given a slap on the rump.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

An alternative derivation relates it to the distance an infantryman could march in a day - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasang - which does seem a bit more likely to give a consistent result...

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Except that the Medes and Persians were horse based in many ways - and that there is just as much variation as in how anyone can march. It is, also, just about the right distance for escaping predators.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

I'm sure a recent history programme pointed out that an acre could vary in size depending on where in the country you were, because it was easier to plough flat fields than hilly ones so it was an elastic measurement...

[rockwell-666.livejournal.com]

Other units of measurements include the the Hand (4") used for measuring horses and the Cubit being the length from the elbow to the finger tips (used for building Arks ;-) )

Also IIRC at one point Henry VIII defined the Yard as the distance from his nose to his out-stretched thumb.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

A hand being the width of a man's hand (it being easier to pat-a-cake your way from hoof to whithers than to get the horse to lie down and walk up it).

Since decimalisation I've found myself using the hand much more as a method of conversion as it aproximates to 10cm and I can visualise 15 hands and just have to add a 0.

[rockwell-666.livejournal.com]

I also use the span of my hand which is 8 1/2" and a good way of quickly approximating length.

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

Ajajajajaj, maths is not among my strong spots...definitely not. This is really horrible - of course, very interesting but if I had to use these...
I have enough problems with pounds, inches, feet and miles...
Sometimes I think I must be mentally handicapped.:-(

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Which is why I love the metric system!

These old units only get used for odd, specialised applications. They're obsolete in all other aspects.

[rockwell-666.livejournal.com]

The thing is, whilst there was an awful lot of the old units, they did have their uses.

For example in base 10 you only have two factors, 2 and 5, but in base 12 (which is effectively what a foot is) you've got 2, 3, 4 and 6, the same goes for packing eg selling a dozen eggs you have 3x4 or half a dozen eggs 2x3, but with 10 you don't have the same versatility.

Many of the other meaurements worked similarly.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I was always fascinated by the BAbylonian use of 60 as a base. (which is why we have 360 degrees in a circle). 60 has many useful factors, including 12.

[uitlander]

"A foot is fairly self evident"

Is it? Not all that many people have feet 12" long, and I'd be surprised if the average foot size was anything like as big back into the Anglo-Saxon period. It would be nice if that was the derivation though.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

The size of the standard foot has varied a lot over time. Different countries had different lengths as their foot and it's only in relatively recent times that it became standardised. (the inch varied a lot too)

It would have been a male foot, of course, so that immediately increases the average.

[uitlander]

It is certainly true that average foot size has varied significantly over time, and also that ours (whether male or female) are significantly larger than the average for past populations. But I fear this line of reasoning may be a red herring.

The inch was based on a Roman unit of measure - the uncia. The foot was based on another Roman unit of measure the pes, which was made up of 12 unciae.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Apparently (http://www.brogueshoes.co.uk/Shoe_Size_Chart.html) shoe size 11 is supposed to be 12" long, and I think that is indeed around the average size for UK males.

Of course, Anglo-Saxons would likely have had smaller feet -- but they would have had smaller thumbs too, so their inches would be narrower. It seems reasonable that the proportion 12 thumbs = 1 foot would have held good.

Looking at my own extremities, my foot is about 10.5" long and my thumb only a smidge over 7/8" wide, so it works for me.

[jon-a-five.livejournal.com]

Well I'm an 11 and I've just used my ruler to find out heel to big toe tip is 11 inches (or 28cm in real money :-)

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Don't forget that the measurement would generally be used with shoes on - more useful that way.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

I thought the inch was the length of the last joint of your thumb, but Wikipedia suggests that is just post-hoc justification of inch inflation over the years. Still useful for planning walks though!

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

Back at school we were taught that a chain was the length of a cricket pitch. I encountered the measure frequently when researching the road makers in New Guinea during the Second World War. Australian road makers measured distances in miles and chains, while the Americans used yards.

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

And you haven't even touched volume.

4 Gills = 1 Pint
2 Pints = 1 Quart
4 Quarts = 1 Gallon
9 Gallons = 1 Firkin
2 Firkins = 1 Kilderkin
2 Kilderkins = 1 Barrel
1.5 Barrels = 1 Hogshead
2 Barrels = 1 Puncheon
2 Hogshead = 1 Butt

We had to learn all of these units at primary school, along with times tables and collective names of animals. A pace of asses, anyone?

[watervole.livejournal.com]

But the more interesting question is where these units derive from. Clearly a gill was useful for something once or it wouldn't have become a standard measuring unit.

However, the standard pub measure for spirits is a 1/4 gill, so where did the gill originate? It's only use these days is as a pub measure.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

the standard pub measure for spirits is a 1/4 gill

I like the sound of your local pub. In the various places I've lived, 1/6 gill has been the standard measure. (25ml now.)

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

I don't know where the names come from, but according to the dictionary of weights and measures I have they come from weights of liquid. The Tun held a ton of water, the Fluid Ounce an ounce. The subdivisions came down in binary. The difference in gallons between the UK and US is because water and wine have different densities.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

So which is water and which wine?

[damerell.livejournal.com]

That may be why the US floz is about 5% different, but US and UK gallons are different mostly because a US pint is 16 floz and ours is 20 floz, hence the American saying "a pint's a pound the world round".

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Gills have been gone for a few years now (although the 25ml and 35ml measures are close to the old gill fractions). The Scots used to have a much larger gill.

[jon-a-five.livejournal.com]

May favourite is the shotgun 'gauge'. Which is the number of lead balls of that caliber to the pound. So a 12 gauge means you could take 1/12 of a pound of lead, roll it into a ball and it would fit in the barrel. Which is why the smaller the gauge the larger the caliber.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent example!

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

Knitting needles work the same way, or they did until they went metric.