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The Egyptian equivalent of the foot—a measure of four palms or 16 digits—was known as the djeser and has been reconstructed as about 30 cm (11.8 in). The Greek foot (πούς, pous) had a length of 1 / 600 of a stadion, [12] one stadion being about 181.2 m (594 ft); [13] therefore a foot was, at the time, about 302 mm (11.9 in). Its ...
The basic unit of Roman linear measurement was the pes (plural: pedes) or Roman foot. Investigation of its relation to the English foot goes back at least to 1647, when John Greaves published his Discourse on the Romane foot .
The agricultural foot was reduced to 10 ⁄ 11 of its former size, causing the rod, pole or perch to become 16 + 1 ⁄ 2 (rather than the older 15) agricultural feet. The furlong and the acre, once it became a measure of the size of a piece of land rather than its value, remained relatively unchanged. In the last thousand years, three principal ...
During the Anglo-Saxon period, the North German foot of 13.2 inches (335 millimetres) was the nominal basis for other units of linear measurement. The foot was divided into 4 palms or 12 thumbs. A cubit was 2 feet, an elne 4 feet. The rod was 15 Anglo-Saxon feet, the furlong 10 rods.
Detail of a cubit rod in the Museo Egizio of Turin The earliest recorded systems of weights and measures originate in the 3rd or 4th millennium BC. Even the very earliest civilizations needed measurement for purposes of agriculture, construction and trade. Early standard units might only have applied to a single community or small region, with every area developing its own standards for ...
For measuring length, the U.S. customary system uses the inch, foot, yard, and mile, which are the only four customary length measurements in everyday use. From 1893, the foot was legally defined as exactly 1200 ⁄ 3937 m (approximately 0.304 8006 m). [13] Since July 1, 1959, the units of length have been defined on the basis of 1 yd = 0.9144 ...
In antiquity, systems of measurement were defined locally: the different units might be defined independently according to the length of a king's thumb or the size of his foot, the length of stride, the length of arm, or maybe the weight of water in a keg of specific size, perhaps itself defined in hands and knuckles. The unifying ...
The following table lists the units of the Jeffersonian decimal system, and their relationship with one another. The values of these units are based on Jefferson's proposal of a foot that was equal in length to one-fifth of a second rod, one fourth of an inch shorter than the foot in use at the time, and approximately equal to 0.298461684 m. [5]