These standards established the length of a rod, yard, and foot as well. A rod was 5. The Republic of the Union of Myanmar, formerly Burma uses furlongs to note distances on their highways signs; however, they are unique in this regard. And England continues to reference the length of their many canals by both miles and furlongs. Interesting facts:. You can see this in the breeding requirements, track names, and naming restrictions. Furlongs were the unit of measurement initially used to set up racecourses in England back in the s when horse racing formalized.
Horse races less than a mile are referred to by furlongs. Once a race exceeds a mile, it goes by fractions of a mile. For example, a three-quarter-mile race is listed as six furlongs, but a mile and a quarter race is called a mile and quarter, not a mile and four furlongs.
Most horses begin their racing career competing in races less than a mile. Races are timed at quarter poles 2 furlongs and are listed in the racing forms. These quarter pole times are how Thoroughbreds have a faster record at this distance. I suppose that if you wanted to control the front ox, you needed a pole long enough to reach! The perch was used in the reign of Henry II , the pole since the 16C, and the rod since In the 16th century the lawful rod was decreed to be the combined length of the left feet of 16 men as they left church on a Sunday morning.
In North Devon there is a tradition that fencing, that is to say the cutting and laying of a hedge, would be done at so much a land yard, which seemed to be about 5 paces or 5.
An earlier name for a rod was a gyrd which is the derivation of a yard. A correspondent told me: "In the early s my mother had come into possession of a small cottage in Bwlch y Cibau mid Wales.
She wanted the hedge round the garden laid and made stock proof. A local man in his late 50s I think quoted her as three and six a rod.
The Ramsden's chain or engineer's chain is feet long, where each link is one foot long see below. I've had a suggestion that this chain was called after Ramsden was Jesse Ramsden , an English astronomical and scientific instrument maker. A correspondent writes: "From my own experience using this chain, it was used for geographically surveying land.
On longer stretches, two people, one at each end of the chain, would 'flip flop' end for end. One person would remain stationary while the other walked past the first until the chain reached its tether producing a count of unit measure and then usually an iron peg placed at the desired length to be marked off.
These are called surveyors' stakes. Fathoms measure depth of water. They have been in use in England since before , and may be derived from faethm , the Anglo Saxon word for 'to embrace' because it is roughly the distance from one hand to the other if your arms are out-stretched.
There was a similar unit in Scandinavia and Germany. Shakespeare writes in The Tempest: Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made: Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But does suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.
Fathoms were also used to measure the depth of coal seams and Cornish mines. Dolcoath Mine in Camborne was one of the deepest with a level at fathoms or feet vertical drop. There is a local saying about a person who keeps him or herself to themselves as being "as deep as Dolcoath". To fathom something means to throroughly understand it or get to the bottom of it.
This could come from taking a sounding from a ship, which would be measured in fathoms. Shackles were a measure of the length of cable. According to a 19th Century Seamanship Manual, ships were usually equipped with 12 shackles of bower cable where each shackle was a These When paying out the anchor cable, counting the number of shackles passing gave a measure of the length used.
In , the Royal Navy switched from Modern heavy mooring chain is usually sold in 15 fathom lengths or 'shots' an American term. The specification sheets quote the number of links per shot. The cable is a tenth of a nautical mile. Since the nautical mile has altered, so has the cable. The metric equivalent left is based on the old Imperial length of feet. The cable seems to be a measure of length along the surface, rather than a measure of depth, or even the length of an anchor cable.
An anchor cable will always be an integral number of shackles long, but the unit cable is 6. At the same time, their cable became a tenth of the International Nautical Mile.
Nautical miles measure distance. As these differ slightly ' at pole and ' at equator was adopted this being its approximate value in the English Channel. The International nautical mile is metres, so is very slightly different from the UK nautical mile The metric equivalent on the left is in kilometres to 2 decimal places, which ducks the whole problem.
If you want an irrelevant fact, one minute of arc on Mars is close to a kilometre. Perhaps the French who defined the kilometre were really Martians! The kilometre, like the nautical mile, was also defined as one minute of arc on a great circle on the earth. However, it was one minute of arc in the new French revolutionary decimal system, in which a circle was made up of degrees, each of minutes.
Of course disputes over the standard size of a great circle on the earth meant it wasn't absolutely exact, but it's exceedingly close! A knot is a nautical mile per hour. Hands are used to measure horses. You measure from the ground to the withers of the horse its shoulder since it won't keep its head still. A palm was 3 inches. A hand is an inch bigger. Possibly the idea was that a hand was the width of the hand including the thumb, and a palm was the width excluding the thumb.
The American record for 12 furlongs on dirt is held by Secretariat, who completed a sweep of the Triple Crown when he dominated the Belmont S. His unprecedented final time of remains unmatched, nearly 40 years later.
Ready to start betting on horse racing? Check out our How to Bet page for explainers, tips, and handicapping advice! Home racing. Photo by Coady Photography. Many maps use land surveyors' measures of distance in their scales. Area There were a wide variety of traditional measurements of land used into the seventeenth century.
They do not have absolute quantities, but can be measured against each other: Measure Equivalent 1 acre The area that could be ploughed by a team of eight oxen in one day 1 hide The area deemed to be able to support a typical peasant family, ploughed in a year by a team of eight oxen.
Nominally acres, although the actual area varied. Also called among other names a carucate or a ploughland A hide was made up of 8 oxgangs or bovates, or 4 virgates In this rental from the parish of Cromwell, meadow ground is given in acres, but arable land which had to be ploughed in oxgangs.
Detail from Cromwell rental, Ne A 54 - 'Oxgangs of arrable' The standard area measure in the Imperial system was the acre, which was divided into roods and perches. Detail from Cromwell rental, Ne A 54 - 'Meddow the whole rent' Metric measurements are as follows: Measure Equivalent square millimetres sq.
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