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For purposes of measuring cloth, the early yard was divided by the binary method into two, four, eight and sixteen parts. [61] The two most common divisions were the fourth and sixteenth parts. The quarter of a yard (9 inches) was known as the "quarter" without further qualification, while the sixteenth of a yard (2.25 inches) was called a nail ...
By 1935, industry in 16 countries had adopted the "industrial inch" as it came to be known. [8] [9] In 1946, the British Commonwealth Scientific Conference recommended that members of the British Commonwealth adopt the inch as exactly 25.4 mm, and the 36-inch yard as exactly 0.9144 meters.
Ancient Greek texts show that the span was used as a fixed measure in ancient Greece since at least archaic period.The word spithame (Greek: "σπιθαμή"), "span", [4] is attested in the work of Herodotus [5] in the 5th century BC; however, the span was used in Greece long before that, since the word trispithamos (Greek: "τρισπίθαμος"), "three spans long", [6] occurs as early as ...
There are anecdotal objections to the use of metric units in carpentry and the building trades, on the basis that it is easier to remember an integer number of inches plus a fraction, rather than a measurement in millimeters, [9] or that foot-inch measurements are more suitable when distances are frequently divided into halves, thirds, and ...
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.
In both customary and imperial units, one foot comprises 12 inches, and one yard comprises three feet. Since an international agreement in 1959 , the foot is defined as equal to exactly 0.3048 meters.
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The Composition of Yards and Perches (Latin: Compositio Ulnarum et Perticarum) or the Statute of Ells and Perches was a medieval English statute defining the length of the barleycorn, inch, foot, yard, and perch, as well as the area of the acre. Its date has been estimated at 1266–1303. [1]