Furlong - History

History

The name furlong derives from the Old English words furh (furrow) and lang (long). Dating back at least to early Anglo-Saxon times, it originally referred to the length of the furrow in one acre of a ploughed open field (a medieval communal field which was divided into strips). The system of long furrows arose because turning a team of oxen pulling a heavy plough was difficult. This offset the drainage advantages of short furrows and meant furrows were made as long as possible. An acre is an area that is one furlong long and one chain (66 feet or 22 yards) wide. For this reason, the furlong was once also called an acre's length, though in modern usage an area of one acre can be any shape.

Among the early Saxons, the rod was the fundamental unit of land measurement. A furlong was forty rods, an acre 4 × 40 rods, or 4 rods by 1 furlong. and thus 160 square rods. At the time, the Saxons used the North German foot, which was 10% longer than the foot of today. When England switched to the shorter foot in the late 13th century, rods and furlongs remained unchanged, since property boundaries were already defined in rods and furlongs. The only thing that changed was the number of feet and yards in a rod or a furlong, and the number of square feet and square yards in an acre. The definition of the rod went from 15 old feet to 16 1/2 new feet, or from 5 old yards to 5 1/2 new yards. The furlong went from 600 old feet to 660 new feet, or from 200 old yards to 220 new yards. The acre went from 36,000 old square feet to 43,560 new square feet, or from 4000 old square yards to 4840 new square yards.

The furlong was historically viewed as equivalent to the Roman stade (stadium), which in turn derived from the Greek system. For example, the King James Bible uses the term "furlong" in place of the Greek stadion, whereas modern translations translate into miles in the main text and relate the original numbers in footnotes.

In the Roman system, there were 625 feet to the stade, eight stade to the mile, and three miles to the league. A league was considered to be the distance a man could walk in one hour, and the mile (mille, meaning one thousand) consisted of 1000 passus (paces, 5 feet, or double-step).

After the fall of Rome, Medieval Europe continued with the Roman system, which proceeded to diversify, leading to serious complications in trade, taxation, etc. Around the turn of the century of 1300, England by decree standardized a long list of measures. Among the important units of distance and length at the time were foot, yard, rod(or pole), furlong, and mile. The rod was 5½ yards or 16½ feet (= 3 feet/yard × 5½ yards), and the mile was 8 furlongs, so the definition of the furlong became 40 rods and that of the mile became 5280 feet (= 8 furlongs × 40 rods/furlong × 16½ feet/rod).

A 1675 description states, "Dimensurator or Measuring Instrument whereof the mosts usual has been the Chain, and the common length for English Measures 4 Poles, as answering indifferently to the Englishs Mile and Acre, 10 such Chains in length making a Furlong, and 10 single square Chains an Acre, so that a square Mile contains 640 square Acres." —John Ogilby, Britannia, 1675

The official use of furlong was abolished in the United Kingdom under the Weights and Measures Act of 1985, which also abolished from official use many other traditional units of measurement.