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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 ]
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.
The main units of length (inch, foot, yard and international mile) were the same in the US, though the US rarely uses some of the intermediate units today, such as the (surveyor's) chain (22 yards) and the furlong (220 yards). At one time, the definition of the nautical mile was based on the surface area of the Clarke ellipsoid.
Most of the units of measure have been adapted in one way or another since the Norman Conquest (1066). The units of linear measure have changed the least – the yard (which replaced the ell) and the chain were measures derived in England. The foot used by craftsmen supplanted the longer foot used in agriculture.
The Compositio redefined the yard, foot, inch, and barleycorn to 10 ⁄ 11 of their previous value. [dubious – discuss] However, it retained the Anglo-Saxon rod of 15 x 11 ⁄ 10 feet (5.03 metres) and the acre of 4 × 40 square rods. Thus, the rod went from 5 old yards to 5 + 1 ⁄ 2 new yards, or 15 old feet to 16 + 1 ⁄ 2 new feet. The ...
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.