Man has used many devices to measure things. The origin of the basic units of measurement can be traced to many ancient civilizations, back through the Roman and Greek civilizations to the time of Ancient Egypt. The Chinese and Egyptians divided units into tenths. The Romans subdivided into twelfths - twelve inches in a foot; twelve months in a year. The Hindus divided into halves, quarters, eighths and sixteenths. The ancient a bylonians used six divisions.
For convenience the shorter units of measurement were determined by parts of the body. The cubit was the distance from the tip of the man?s fingers to the elbow, a distance of about 18 inches (45 centimetres).
King Henry I (1100-1135) set the yard as the standard measure.
He decreed in the 12th Century that the yard should be the distance from the tip of his nose to the tip of outstretched finger. It was 36 inches (3 feet)
The rod is an old English measure of distance equal to 16.5 feet (5m). The Norman kings preferred to call it a perch. The rod originally was equal to exactly 15 feet but when the shorter foot became established in the 13th century the rod became 16.5 feet.
The inch was a traditional unit of distance equal to a 12th of a foot. It originat
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