Talk:Foot (length)
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This article is written in American English, and some terms used in it are different or absent from British English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
Contents |
[edit] US Survey Feet
US survey feet are not used only by the USCGS as stated in the article, but by many surveyors throughout the US. See [1] for instance
- I've always wondered if the "survey foot" ever existed in reality (as opposed to in law). It differs very little from the International Foot; most measurement isn't accurate enough to tell the difference. Has anyone ever built equipment accurate enough to distinguish a survey foot from an international one, and if yes, was it really calibrated to survey feet? Paul Koning 20:18, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
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- You must be joking? Are you at all familiar with the state plane coordinate system? If you dismiss that very minimal difference between 1 ift and 1 USft and make that same mistake over and over and over again.. and just keep going until you get to Cheboygan, Michigan - the difference in units creates a 40ft gap. Is that a measurable distance? Chad Snoke 17:01, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
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- I'm not joking. If you go from the coast to Sheboygan, are your measurements accurate enough that you can tell the 40 foot gap is there? Or is it just going to disappear in the noise? To put it differently, can someone point to a piece of surveying equipment that is sufficiently accurate that you can verify it is calibrated to survey feet and not to international feet? It's clearly true that your ordinary commercial surveyor doesn't work at that level, not by several orders of magnitude. They claim, what, 10^-4 accuracy? And if you do a closure error check on their work you may find that the actual error is substantially higher than that. (I found a 6 foot closure error on a 30 year old survey of 16 acres...) The difference between the survey foot definition and the international standard foot is 2 parts in a million. That's achievable accuracy in a high end metrology lab (something I know fairly well), but a real stretch for anyone in the outdoors. Paul Koning (talk) 18:59, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
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- It isn't just a question of measurements, it is also an issue of Cartesian coordinates. In the state plane coordinate system, which used survey feet until the late 20th century (and sometimes still does) 0, 0 is not placed in the middle of the state, it is placed far to the southwest, to make sure all coordinates within the state are positive. So conversion errors can accumulate from the 0, 0 coordinate to the point of interest, and can be significant. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 19:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] Plural
I added "(plural: feet)" in order to make the phrase "there are three feet in a yard" less jarring to those people whose first language is not English (and even to those for whom it is). --Bob.
[edit] Origin
I removed this:
Let's compromise and just talk about the origin of foot measures
- The Pes was a Roman foot of 296 mm
- Its divisions were the digitus of 1/16 pous or 18.5 mm and
- the uncia of 1/12 pes or 24.67 mm and the palmus of 74 mm
- Some of its multiples were the remen, passus, stadium, milliare and degree
- Its immediate predecessor was an Ionic Greek Pous of 308.4 mm
- Other related Greek feet included
- The Atic pous = 308.4 mm
- The Athenian pous = 316 mm
- Their immediate predeccessors were the Egyptian foot or bd of 300 mm
- The mesopotamian ñušur = 300 mm
- there were 5/4 pes to a remen of 15" = 381 mm
- There were 5 pes to a passus or pace = 1.48 m
- There were 625 pes to a stadium = 185 m
- In England the stadium was the basis for the
- English furlong
- 1 English furlong = 625 fote
- 8 English furlong = 1 English Myle
Rktect 06:49, August 20, 2005 (UTC)
However, average foot length is about 240 mm (9.4 in) for current Europeans. So the explanation must be slightly more involved.
as there is plenty of evidence that a man's foot was used for defining the foot measure, usually a king or leader. For example Roy de France had a foot of 32.48 cm, and many British men had foots of around 12 inches. However [2] describes how the foot measure came about, through a recognition of certain ratios among human body parts leading to a rough and variable foot length, with King Edward I of England first defining a yard and thereafter the foot and the inch. -Wikibob | Talk 21:12, 2004 Sep 26 (UTC)
Ok, I retract my claim about British men's feet above!
English Customary Weights and Measures by Russ Rowlett describes a plausible origin whereby the natural foot (of around 9-10 inches) was initially used and 'evolved' to around 12 inches due to the length of 12 inches being a convenient multiple and subdivision of other lengths used at the time.
Apparantly, before the foot was standardised people used three different lengths:
- a foot of 13 inches made from two shaftments of 6.5 inches each,
- a foot equal to 12 inches,
- a "natural foot", Latin: pes naturalis, of about 9.8 inches
[3] has these tidbits about the measure:
- the traditional Danish foot, equal to about 12.365 inches or 31.41 centimeters.
- early civilizations of the Middle East had a longer foot, roughly 30 centimeters
- a Greek foot is at about 30.8 centimeters (12.1 inches)
- a Roman foot at 29.6 centimeters (11.7 inches)
- Swedish fot aka the Stockholm foot, equal to 11.689 inches or 29.69 centimeters
- German fuss came in several versions:
- Viennese fuss was 12.444 inches (31.608 cm),
- Rheinfuss (Rhine foot) was 12.357 inches (31.387 cm)
- Bavarian fuß was 29 cm (11.41 inches)
- French pied had several lengths, the best known being the royal foot (pied de roi) of 32.48 cm
- Italian pie varied, 29.8 cm was one common length, but Venice used 34.8 cm and Bologna 38 cm
- Spanish pie was the traditional foot of Spain and:
- in Spain was about 27.86 cm (10.97 in)
- in Argentine was 28.89 cm (11.37 in)
- in Texas was 11 1/9 inches or 28.22 cm
Finally, in 1869 Benjamin Gould measured the feet of the Chinese Terracotta Army, and found the average foot length was 25.6 cm without shoes (10.07 inches) and 27.7 cm with shoes (10.9 inches) -Wikibob | Talk 22:42, 2004 Sep 27 (UTC)
- Thanks for your thoughts. It seems to have been a bit of a mishmash. Perhaps you can put some of that interesting stuff in the article. And feel free to revise my text. I just thought that is was relevant to qualify the often quoted 'foot measure = human foot' is not the average naked foot. If it is not close to the average foot, then the concept of 'foot measure = practical because most people have one available' becomes less credible. The foot in shoe seems plausible to me, but it is just an idea. Bobblewik (talk) 20:44, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
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- My father has a reference (I forgot the title, it may have been in Dutch) about old units. It discusses at length (so to speak) the many variations of the foot. One interesting item is an old drawing which, if I remember right, shows how the Rhineland foot was established: officials went to a church one Sunday, grabbed the first 12 men to leave after services, and lined up their feet. Measure, divide by 12, presto, the official foot.
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- Meanwhile, for your list: the Amsterdam foot had 11 inches, not 12. Paul Koning 20:21, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Proposed WikiProject
Right now the content related to the various articles relating to measurement seems to be rather indifferently handled. This is not good, because at least 45 or so are of a great deal of importance to Wikipedia, and are even regarded as Vital articles. On that basis, I am proposing a new project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Measurement to work with these articles, and the others that relate to the concepts of measurement. Any and all input in the proposed project, including indications of willingness to contribute to its work, would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your attention. John Carter 20:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Femottonne
Googling for (Femtotonne -attotonne -"The symbol ft is shared with that for") gives no results. Therefore I've removed the reference. Rich Farmbrough, 19:25 15 July 2008 (GMT).
[edit] Confusing text in the History section
The history section says "The originators devised [...] the degree of longitude, divided the circumference of the Earth into 360 degrees". Did they devise the longitude, or the degree, or the concept of a meridian? For this to make sense, Meridian should be used, but can anyone confirm the historical accuracy of the corrected sentence? Anatoly.bourov (talk) 18:11, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
- I have removed the weird paragraph. Provide some reliable sources if you want it back. Hellerick (talk) 07:08, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Should this article use U.S. spelling?
Since the U.S. is the only major industrialized nation still using the foot as a lawful general-purpose unit, I propose the spelling (including the unit meter) be changed to U.S. spelling. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 23:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Pointer to Request for Comment
At Talk:United States customary units a Request for Comment is in progress on whether, in the U.S., the link, rod, chain, and acre are based on the internatioal foot or the survey foot. --Jc3s5h (talk) 20:01, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
[edit] More feet!
Look at the Russian article Фут. It lists about 90 different feet with their lengths. Hellerick (talk) 14:55, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
