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American Customary Measurements: Difference between revisions
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The following is intended as a primer for non-Americans to whom the customary units of measurement may seem foreign, cryptic or simply hard to visualize. In modern times, most of these units are defined by their metric equivalents.
'''Distance'''. The basic unit of distance is the foot (0.3048 m), which is divided into twelve inches (2.54 cm). Five centimeters is very close to two inches. When more precision than that is required, fractions of an inch are used (Generally power of 2 based (1/2, 1/4, 1/8)), except in certain engineering disciplines which use decimal inches. Measurements in feet and inches are commonly abbreviated using one apostrophe for feet and two apostrophes for inches - six-foot-four, for example, becomes 6' 4''. Three feet make up a yard (0.9144 m). On land, 5,280 feet make up a mile (
Since 1959, the foot has been internationally defined as exactly 30.48 cm. For historical compatibility, though, real estate maps are still drawn in the older "survey feet", which are 1200⁄3937, or about .3048006 m long.
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