Land measures

[Berlin-Bob]

Coming back to land measurements (i.e rods and roods) ....

On the Wiki page I quoted, if you stroll scroll down a bit you can find this:

The verification of the foot as described in the 16th century by Jacob Koebel in his book Geometrei. Von künstlichem Feldmessen und absehen is:[38]

   

Stand at the door of a church on a Sunday and bid 16 men to stop, tall ones and small ones, as they happen to pass out when the service is finished; then make them put their left feet one behind the other, and the length thus obtained shall be a right and lawful rood to measure and survey the land with, and the 16th part of it shall be the right and lawful foot.

and you can see the woodcut too:

Determination of the rod, using the length of the left foot of 16 randomly chosen people coming from church service. Woodcut published in the book Geometrei by Jakob Köbel (Frankfurt, c. 1536).

All in all, a very interesting article.

Bob

[LizzieW]

Interestingly, my OH has an allotment today which is measured in rods for the calculation of rental.

We used to chant this at school for distances

12 inches = one foot
3 feet = one yard
22 yards = one chain
10 chains = one furlong
8 furlongs = one mile

4 rods, poles or perchs = 1 chain
10 chains = one furlong
8 furlongs = one mile

12 inches = one foot
3 feet = one yard
1760 yards = one mile

Weights were
16 ounces = 1lb (pound)
14 pounds = one stone
2 stone = one quarter
4 quarters = one hundredweight
20 hundredweight = one ton
2240 pounds = one ton

[Ray T]

For those who don't know, or may be interested, a "chain" was just that. A surveyor's instrument. Measuring tapes can stretch so surveyors have traditionally used metal chains to measure length. The metric ones have 10 links to the metre and were a bit of a pig to carry round.

A "furlong" is derived from the term a "furrow long"; i.e. the length of a medieval strip field usually ploughed by oxen.

[GFHWP]

The original surveying chain - the Gunters chain, was 66ft long had 100 links so each one was equal to 7.92 inches.
Early surveyors used this bit of steel to measure the lenght and breadth of the UK, and produced maps so accurate even modern laser rangefinding and satellite mapping has alterered them only slightly.

Phil