Unit of Length
Although Gunter's chain was later superseded by the steel tape, (a form of Tape measure), its legacy was a new unit of length called the chain, which measured 66 feet (or 100 links). This unit still exists as a location identifier on British railways, as well as in some areas of Australia and America. In the United States, for example, Public Lands Survey plats are published in the chain unit to maintain the consistency of a two-hundred-year-old database.
The length of a cricket pitch is exactly one chain (22 yards).
Read more about this topic: Gunter's Chain
Famous quotes containing the words unit and/or length:
“During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I ... [urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enacting that all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner’s jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“At length he would call to let us know where he was waiting for us with his canoe, when, on account of the windings of the stream, we did not know where the shore was, but he did not call often enough, forgetting that we were not Indians.... This was not because he was unaccommodating, but a proof of superior manners. Indians like to get along with the least possible communication and ado. He was really paying us a great compliment all the while, thinking that we preferred a hint to a kick.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)