Units of Measurement

[Danny McG]

Is France a British province?

The OP most likely hailed from the US and had an unclear grasp of the origins of this non American system of measurement

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

Is France a British province?

How many hundreds of years of wars were fought because some people in England thought that this proposition was, at least partially true?

 

[Dave]

I have absolutely no idea what size a football pitch is. Football pitches can vary wildly.

You've missed my point. (And varies "wildly" might be stretching it.) They vary, but people have some inkling of an idea of the size of a sports pitch or of a sports stadium. They are in the same "ball park"! We have also already explained in great detail how London buses are not all the same size either, so that isn't an exact measurement but they've seen one.

My point is that as a "ball park" example, these descriptions work, albeit in a very rough manner, but not when you use multiples. When you say it is the size of 980 football pitches (of whatever kind) then firstly, someone has no comprehension of what multiple size that is, and secondly, all those variations you mention are also multiplied by 980. So, if you think that using one on it's own is inaccurate, the using x980 produces some statistical formula that includes 980 in it's calculation of deviation.

 

[Pyan]

The OP most likely hailed from the US and had an unclear grasp of the origins of this non American system of measurement

Imperial length measurement is superior to metric in one important way, though: you've the handy-sized foot in Imperial, which can be easily divided into twelfths, quarters, thirds and halves, but metric has nothing between 1m and 1cm (unless you count the decimeter, which no-one does).
I had to use m² at work, but I always had to start in yds² (roughly) and convert the result.

 

[farntfar]

Whereas the length of a cricket pitch, or at least the distace between the wickets, is a fixed length. An was once, indeed, a unit of measurement: 1 chain.
Do you still use chains in the US?

For a Brit, a chain is equal to 22 yards,
or 1/80 of a mile
or 100 rods (or links), which is about the only time one imperial unit was 10 to the power x as big as another imperial unit

 

[Pyan]

Chains are still used by land surveyors, because unlike measuring tapes, they don't stretch.

 

[Ursa major]

How many hundreds of years of wars were fought because some people in England thought that this proposition was

For much of that time, those "people in England" were "people in what is now France".

For instance: to quote Wikipedia's article on the Angevin Empire (not a name used at the time):

Capital: No official capital. Court was generally held at Angers and Chinon.

But back then, it was mostly** about who ruled/owned what, not countries as we think of them today.


** - Though not always. For example, King John's second son was elected "King of the Romans" (those "Romans" being German, obviously...).

 

[Venusian Broon]

Imperial length measurement is superior to metric in one important way, though: you've the handy-sized foot in Imperial, which can be easily divided into twelfths, quarters, thirds and halves, but metric has nothing between 1m and 1cm (unless you count the decimeter, which no-one does).
I had to use m² at work, but I always had to start in yds² (roughly) and convert the result.

How on earth is this superior???

I've never come across the need to accurately measure out a third of a foot, nor even try to envisage it. Plus why is the foot 'handy'?

I could argue the other way that a metre can be easily divided into halves, quarters, fifths, tenths, twentieths, fiftieths and, of course, one hundredths. And it's a nice 'everyday' size.

Anyway, purely subjective, I suppose. You work with what you are used to, and brought up with. I always have to convert all those anachronistic imperial units into comfortable SI ones to get a mental picture of what we are talking about.

 

[farntfar]

Chains are still used by land surveyors, because unlike measuring tapes, they don't stretch.

​

But these measurements were not really imperial measurements, except for the use of land surveyors and architects, as you say.

The man in the street never worked in rods and chains, and only knew a furlong from the race track or the betting office.

My Father, an architect, could see distances in links and chains, as you say, but then on his drawings he had to convert to feet and inches, and later into metres to present to his clients.
And you think 12 inches in a foot was silly. 7.92 inches in a link is ridiculous, even if it is a sort of attempt at decimalisation, there being 100 links in a chain, as shown above.

As I asked above: Are rods, chains and furlongs used in the US?

 

[Pyan]

Don't forget cloves, tods, weys, strikes, pecks, pots, gills, tierces, bolls, coombs, pipes, butts, cord, shids, tunells, hands, leagues, rods, poles and perches, etc, etc...

Forgotten British and Irish units of measurement

 

[Dave]

Forgotten British and Irish units of measurement

barrel: The most familiar barrel in current use is the oil barrel, which contains exactly 42 US gallons (approximately 35 imperial gallons or 159 litres).

Except that barrels were handmade and there was no such trading standard like 'tolerable negative errors' (TNEs), Barrels could be made slightly smaller (to swindle the customer) or larger (to swindle the duty collector.)

 

[JunkMonkey]

You've missed my point. (And varies "wildly" might be stretching it.) They vary, but people have some inkling of an idea of the size of a sports pitch or of a sports stadium. They are in the same "ball park"! We have also already explained in great detail how London buses are not all the same size either, so that isn't an exact measurement but they've seen one.

My point is that as a "ball park" example, these descriptions work, albeit in a very rough manner, but not when you use multiples. When you say it is the size of 980 football pitches (of whatever kind) then firstly, someone has no comprehension of what multiple size that is, and secondly, all those variations you mention are also multiplied by 980. So, if you think that using one on it's own is inaccurate, the using x980 produces some statistical formula that includes 980 in it's calculation of deviation.

That site mentions pitch sizes from 40yds to 118yds long - that's a pretty wide (if not wild) range. But I take your point. Saying something is 980 times the size of anything is incomprehensible. It's just 'big'.

By varying the size of X in "it is 980 times X in size". The bigness of the thing is varied. Doesn't make it any more comprehensible like you say but "980 times the size of Wales" is obviously levels of magnitude bigger than "980 times the size of a football pitch". It might be more accurate to compare real measurements but after a while a series of zeroes looks just like any other series of zeroes. Difficult to intuitively grasp the implication of every additional zero as a tenfold increase. 10,000,000 and 100,000,000 look, at a glance, to be very similar but no one would mistake Wales for a Football pitch. (It's too lumpy for a start.)

 

[Vertigo]

Except that barrels were handmade and there was no such trading standard like 'tolerable negative errors' (TNEs), Barrels could be made slightly smaller (to swindle the customer) or larger (to swindle the duty collector.)

There may be more but as far as I'm aware there are 4 different official 'barrels':
US fluid = 252 US fluid pints = .1156m3
US dry = 210 US dry pints = .1192m3
Petrol = 336 US fluid pints = .1590m3
Imperial = 288 Imp pints = .1637m3

Some many years ago I wrote a formula calculator which could work in any, units requiring that I also included all the possible conversions (at least all that I could find!). It covers everything from volume to pressure, length to entropy, luminance to illuminance and many more including, of course, mass but not weight!

To give an idea here's the choice of length units (strictly speaking some are redundant as they're just modifiers metre, millimetre, kilometre, nanometre but it's more convenient to include them):

I should probably add that digit, reach and stride are made up units (although there is actually an ancient digit unit) as my software also allowed you to invent your own units and define them in terms of 'real' ones. Useful for consistency in fantasy or alien units when writing!

 

[Ursa major]

pecks

There was some sort of saying about eating a peck of dirt by the time you die.

I always imagined a peck as being very small -- only birds peck things and birds are usually small -- but then, one day, I saw a peck measure. (It was made of brass and was owned by the local council's Trading Standards.)

 

[Dave]

Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

Chains are still used by land surveyors, because unlike measuring tapes, they don't stretch.

View attachment 121329​

Must be a British thing. No surveyor in the US uses a physical chains to measure anything. A transit with a calibrated stick is far more accurate. Here is an example from then 19th century. This was the standard until the 1990s. Of course now everything is electronic.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers

Peter didn't like the Butt of onions sitting next to the peppers.

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

You've missed my point. (And varies "wildly" might be stretching it.) They vary, but people have some inkling of an idea of the size of a sports pitch or of a sports stadium. They are in the same "ball park"! We have also already explained in great detail how London buses are not all the same size either, so that isn't an exact measurement but they've seen one.

My point is that as a "ball park" example, these descriptions work, albeit in a very rough manner, but not when you use multiples. When you say it is the size of 980 football pitches (of whatever kind) then firstly, someone has no comprehension of what multiple size that is, and secondly, all those variations you mention are also multiplied by 980. So, if you think that using one on it's own is inaccurate, the using x980 produces some statistical formula that includes 980 in it's calculation of deviation.

A US Football field covers approximately an acre of land. An acre is 4840 square yards, Football field 5000 square yards. (100 yd x 50 yd)
A regulation Soccer field is approximately the same size with the soccer field a bit larger. Throughout the US, high school Soccer and Football teams share the same stadiums. Here is a typical US high school stadium. If you look carefully you can see the Soccer Field lines as well as the US football lines.

 

[Alex The G and T]

Peter didn't like the Butt of onions sitting next to the peppers.

And it would take all week to pick a Tun.

 

[Alex The G and T]

As I asked above: Are rods, chains and furlongs used in the US?

The only place I've seen rods and chains are in very old Land Deed descriptions.

Furlongs are only for horse races.

Auto races are measured in "Laps." The length of a Lap is highly variable and specific to the size of the venue.