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The Byzantine equivalent, the schoinion or "little rope", varied between 60 and 72 Greek feet depending upon the location. The Thai sen of 20 Thai fathoms or 40 m also means and is translated "rope". The Somerset rope was a former English unit used in drainage and hedging. It was 20 feet (now precisely 6.096 m). [1] [2]
In the metric system of measurement, the nominal diameter is given in millimetres. The current preferred international standard for rope sizes is to give the mass per unit length, in kilograms per metre. However, even sources otherwise using metric units may still give a "rope number" for large ropes, which is the circumference in inches. [6]
American surveyors use a decimal-based system of measurement devised by Edmund Gunter in 1620. The base unit is Gunter's chain of 66 feet (20 m) which is subdivided into 4 rods, each of 16.5 ft or 100 links of 0.66 feet. A link is abbreviated "lk", and links "lks", in old deeds and land surveys done for the government.
In metrology (the science of measurement), a standard (or etalon) is an object, system, or experiment that bears a defined relationship to a unit of measurement of a physical quantity. [1] Standards are the fundamental reference for a system of weights and measures , against which all other measuring devices are compared.
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.
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A cable in this usage cable is a thick rope or by transference a chain cable. [1] The OED gives quotations from c. 1400 onwards. A cable's length (often "cable length" or just "cable") is simply the standard length in which cables came, which by 1555 had settled to around 100 fathoms (600 ft; 180 m) or 1 ⁄ 10 nautical mile (0.19 km; 0.12 mi). [1]