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Although Gunter's chain was later superseded by the steel tape, (a form of Tape measure), its legacy was a new unit of length called the chain, which measured 66 feet (or 100 links).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 coroners 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 (18561950)
“Unless a group of workers know their work is under surveillance, that they are being rated as fairly as human beings, with the fallibility that goes with human judgment, can rate them, and that at least an attempt is made to measure their worth to an organization in relative terms, they are likely to sink back on length of service as the sole reason for retention and promotion.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877?)