What is the measurement of 'one foot' based on?

kyle knox

It means the length of an adult man's foot. Dec 19 01, 1:12 AM

Moleman

It is not as easy as that. In England, a major beginning in standardisation units of length was being made by about the 13th century. For instance, there was a statute of those times which declared: 'It is ordained that 3 grains of barley, dry and round, make an inch, 12 inches make a foot, 3 feet make an Ulna, 5 and a half Ulnae make a rod....'. The Ulna later became the yard. But, at the same time there were also references to 'the iron yard of our Lord the {King';} and that came from the very first 'Assize of Measures' ordered by Richard the First in 1196, which defined all other measures in terms of the yard! However, what is certain is that over the following centuries it was the yard which was the 'standard' measure, (defined as the distance between two marks scratched in a metal bar held by the Exchequer), and all the other measures - from inches to miles were based on that. This standard for the yard lasted until The Weights and Measures Act of 1963 when it was decreed that 'the yard shall be 0.9144 metre exactly'. The metre is the SI standard of length and is defined as the distance a beam of light would travel in 1 / 299792458th of a second. The above definition of the yard resulted in the imperial foot being 0.3048 metres exactly. However, in the USA, in 1866 the metre was declared to be 39.37 inches. This made the US foot to be 0.3048006096---- metres (approx.) http://www.ex.ac.uk/cimt/dictunit/notes.htm Dec 19 01, 8:46 AM

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