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The Egyptian equivalent of the foot—a measure of four palms or 16 digits—was known as the djeser and has been reconstructed as about 30 cm (11.8 in). The Greek foot (πούς, pous) had a length of 1 / 600 of a stadion, [12] one stadion being about 181.2 m (594 ft); [13] therefore a foot was, at the time, about 302 mm (11.9 in). Its ...
The inch (symbol: in or ″) is a unit of length in the British Imperial and the United States customary systems of measurement. It is equal to 1 / 36 yard or 1 / 12 of a foot . Derived from the Roman uncia ("twelfth"), the word inch is also sometimes used to translate similar units in other measurement systems, usually ...
For measuring length, the U.S. customary system uses the inch, foot, yard, and mile, which are the only four customary length measurements in everyday use. From 1893, the foot was legally defined as exactly 1200 ⁄ 3937 m (approximately 0.304 8006 m). [13] Since July 1, 1959, the units of length have been defined on the basis of 1 yd = 0.9144 ...
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.
The other units of length and mass, and all units of area, volume, and derived units such as density were derived from these two base units. Mesures usuelles (French for customary measures) were a system of measurement introduced as a compromise between the metric system and traditional measurements. It was used in France from 1812 to 1839.
The prefix symbols are always prepended to the symbol for the unit without any intervening space or punctuation. [9] This distinguishes a prefixed unit symbol from the product of unit symbols, for which a space or mid-height dot as separator is required. So, for instance, while 'ms' means millisecond, 'm s' or 'm·s' means metre-second.
The millimetre (mm), centimetre (cm) and the kilometre (km), derived from the metre, are also commonly used units. In U.S. customary units, English or imperial system of units, commonly used units of length are the inch (in), the foot (ft), the yard (yd), and the mile (mi). A unit of length used in navigation is the nautical mile (nmi). [7]
A unit of measurement, or unit of measure, is a definite magnitude of a quantity, defined and adopted by convention or by law, that is used as a standard for measurement of the same kind of quantity. [1] Any other quantity of that kind can be expressed as a multiple of the unit of measurement. [2] For example, a length is a physical quantity.