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The term, yard derives from the Old English gerd, gyrd etc., which was used for branches, staves and measuring rods. [5] It is first attested in the late 7th century laws of Ine of Wessex, [6] where the "yard of land" mentioned [6] is the yardland, an old English unit of tax assessment equal to 1 ⁄ 4 hide.
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 ...
The megalithic yard is a hypothetical ancient unit of length equal to about 2.72 feet (0.83 m). [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Some researchers believe it was used in the construction of megalithic structures. The proposal was made by Alexander Thom as a result of his surveys of 600 megalithic sites in England , Scotland , Wales and Brittany . [ 4 ]
In measures of length, the quarter (qr.) was ¼ of a yard, formerly an important measure in the cloth trade. [3] [4] [5] 3 qr. was a Flemish ell, 4 quarters were a yard, 5 qr. was an (English) ell, and 6 qr. was an aune or French ell. [3] [4] Each quarter was made up of 4 nails.
The international yard was about two millionths of a meter longer than the imperial yard, while the international pound was about six ten-millionths of a kilogram lighter than the imperial pound. [13] The metric-based international yard and international pound were adopted by the United States National Bureau of Standards effective 1 July 1959.
l/m = 1693 × l m /Nec × m/kg, where l/m is the yarn length in metres, l m /Nec is the English cotton count and m/kg is the yarn weight in kilograms. The following length units are defined. Bundle: usually 10 lb (4.5 kg) Thread: a length of 54 in (1.4 m)—the circumference of a warp beam; Lea: 120 yd (110 m) Hank: a length of 7 leas or 840 yd ...
The rod, perch, or pole (sometimes also lug) is a surveyor's tool [1] and unit of length of various historical definitions. In British imperial and US customary units, it is defined as 16 + 1 ⁄ 2 feet, equal to exactly 1 ⁄ 320 of a mile, or 5 + 1 ⁄ 2 yards (a quarter of a surveyor's chain), and is exactly 5.0292 meters.
Under the 1300 Composition of Yards and Perches, one of the statutes of uncertain date that was notionally in force until the 1824 Weights and Measures Act, "3 barly cornes dry and rounde" [2] [3] were to serve as the basis for the inch and thence the larger units of feet, yards, perches and thus of the acre, an important unit of area.