Rules or Rulers

G'day

Here in the colonies we still have interesting locations such as ' Three Chain Road'

Whether this was the lengths of the convicts chains or whatever is a mystery to me. How long is a chain?

Still a nice place to live though.

* Danny M *

I think the chains are now 20m, while since I did land surveying at college but they were definately metric but the actual "Chain " as a measurement is a Michael says.

J

Edited By JasonB on 28/03/2014 20:11:03

I've told this story before, but what the....

During an argument at work, a particularly stroppy Workshop Foreman told me, angrily "...dimension the thing how you like...".

As a draughtsman with a love for history, the next series of drawings I produced were dimensioned in Cubits. I did have a conversion back to the more conventional and somewhat tedious millimetres. However the dribbling I used to hear from the Foreman stopped there!!

This little story went down in the companies "Folklore Stories" I have been led to believe

Graham, my memory tells me that my ditched slip stick was a British Thornton. It hit the bin with most of my tattier drawing instruments, however I kept the Kern stuff, and a rather magnificent beam compass, made by a model engineer in Southampton.

cheers

Bill

This is a pretty good summary ...

Note particularly that, pre-Gunter, Rods/Poles/Perches varied in length according to what quality of land was being measured [and this carried over to the measurement of area]. Effectively, there was a "scale factor" applied, appropriate to the "value" of the plot. ... Obviously; although this "fiddle-factor" was fine at a local level, it is not really practical when attempting to survey the Britsh Isles.

MichaelG.

A chain always was and remains 22 yards. The perpetrators of the Napoleonic measurement system can call 20 metres anything they like, BUT it is still only a mere 20 metres. Anyway a chain must remain at 22 yards in perpetuity, otherwise how will they know how long to make a standard imperial 22 yard cricket pitch?

There is a video somewhere on youtube I think or was it a website where someone goes through a whole list of obscure measurements including many I had never heard of exccept for Nails which it left out. It was mentioned on one of the engineering forums (probably HSM) in the last year so does anyone know what I'm talking about? I'd like to find it again to go through it and write down all the units mentioned.

.

Vary according to local definitions

Edit: corrected the link.

MichaelG.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 29/03/2014 11:22:32