Solving a metrological problem numerically:

The foot, the perch, and the acre of England

Olivier Reguin • chercheur associé • Université du Québec à Montréal • [email protected]

This paper recalls the communications I delivered first in French at the XXIII International Congress of History
of Science and Technology, Budapest, 2009, and second in English at the Congress of the Canadian Society of
Medievalists, Montréal, 2010. A more developed and referenced essay is available in the journal of the Society:
Florilegium, vol. 29 (2012), p. 229-246 (in French). Its content will appear among other chapters in an
exhaustive survey of ancient linear and area measurement titled Mesures agraires médiévales et modernes.
Système des anciennes unités de longueur et de superficie.

If you read about origins of British measures, you will hear of barley corns, of Gaelic people’s
small feet mixed with large feet of Saxon people; of King’s arm and nose, ... But we have to
separate metrology from legends. So let’s seek the historical and numerical way again.

1. Acre of England

4 × 40 rods = 160 square rods

Rod of 16 1/2 feet

An English or US acre is delimited as a field to plow measuring for by forty perches or rods,
which represents one hundred and sixty square rods, the linear rod containing sixteen and a
half feet. This definition didn’t change since it appeared during the thirteenth century, in
different sources often quoted. Before that, an acre was accounted in perches of sixteen
Roman feet, like the Carolingian one—for the grant founding Battle Abbey after Hastings, for
instance. So, what about a larger, sixteen and a half feet rod of different, longer feet ? This
problem was never satisfactorily resolved.

2. Comparing taxation :

120 Joch Hufe = 120 acres hide

Acre of England = Carolingian Imperial Joch

On the Continent and in England as well, large allocations of arable land were accounted for
taxes, called manses in French, Hufen in German, hides in English. A hide of one hundred and
twenty acres seems to have been used from the Domesday Book but more clearly in later
documents. Whereas, there was in Germany a Hufe of one hundred and twenty Imperial Joch
— that means yoke in English. Thus I bring both allotments together, and I postulate, the acre
of England to be a conversion of the Imperial Joch.

3. Imperial Joch

Carolingian rod of 16 Roman feet

6 × 30 rods = 180 square rods

This Joch was described since the ninth century: it was formed with six by thirty Carolingian
rods of sixteen Roman feet, which represents one hundred and eighty square rods. This unit
showed itself to be of crucial importance in my research: it’s the third and last unit of the
Carolingian system — I recognize it under many other forms in all Western countries.

4. Moving to Imperial perch

Joch in 180 Carolingian square rods:

180 × 16 × 16 = 46 080 square feet.

Joch in 80 Imperial perches:

80 × 24 × 24 = 46 080 square feet.

Among those forms, the Joch has been measured, too, with the Imperial perch going back to
the late Antiquity, containing twenty four Roman feet. In this manner, the Joch included no
more than eighty square perches, since one hundred and eighty multiplied by the square of
sixteen equals eighty multiplied by the square of twenty four.

I noticed that this layout in eighty Imperial square perches was widely used in France,
particularly in provinces held in the power of the Plantagenet dynasty, who reigned in
England, too, during centuries. Let’s see some examples:
 5. Imperial Joch in France

Province Unit’s layout

Brittany 80 cordes of 24 × 24 feet
Maine 80 chaînées of 24 × 24 feet
80 chaînées of 25 × 25 feet
Anjou 80 perches of 25 × 25 feet
Touraine 80 chaînées of 25 × 25 feet
Poitou n perches of 25 × 25 feet
n chaînées of 24 × 24 feet
Normandy 160 perches of 24 × 24 feet
160 perches of 22 × 22 feet

This table is significant. Only the acre of Normandy contained one hundred and sixty square
perches: it was just as large as two. That fits very well with historical evidences reporting that
in Normandy, the charruée was accounted for sixty acres, instead of one hundred and twenty
acres—as was the hide, its equivalent in England.

Let’s do notice that the Imperial perch, when not of twenty four feet, could be divided in
twenty two feet: It was the same perch, measured by the pied de roi (king’s foot) of France.
Elsewhere, the perch contained twenty five feet, but it was once more the same. And, several
authors testify that the dukes of Normandy used that perch of twenty five feet. Their
successors most probably introduced it into England.

That process created a shorter foot measuring twenty four / twenty fifth of the Roman foot,
widely used in all Germanic countries and in England as well: It was the foot of the London
ell, composed with four feet of this kind.
 6. Splitting

From 80 Imperial square perches

to 160 new square rod:

One new linear rod =

Imperial perch × √2 ÷ 2

I put yet the following hypothesis: To come to an arrangement with the use of the Carolingian
acre of one hundred and sixty square rods in the country, administrators of the king of
England split each of the eighty Imperial square perches of the Joch in two, in order to build
the statutory acre. The only right way to do that was to built a new perch upon the half-
diagonal of the Imperial perch, following Pythagoras’ theorem that we all learned at school.

7. 25 feet perch × √2 ÷ 2

√2 = ~ 24/17

25 × 12/17 = ~ 17 3/5 feet

Starting from a twenty five feet perch and using a Medieval common approximation of root of
two (that is twenty four divided by seventeen), for the half diagonal, we would have a number
close to seventeen and three fifth feet of that kind.

On one hand, such numbers were not at all practical; and, on the other hand, the experts
appointed to adapt the Imperial Joch should have stated that the foot of their king was a short
one. Then, may be they considered it to be a fifteen digits foot existing at that time—and they
decided to give him back the sixteen digits of the Roman foot. So they enlarged that foot at its
sixteen fifteenth. How could we know that ?
 8. Choosing the ratio 15/16

Ell of 4 feet = 5 quarters of the yard of 3 feet

3 feet × 5/4 = 15/4 feet

15/4 feet ÷ 4 = 15/16

The ratio linking the statute foot and the shorter foot of the twenty five feet perch and that one
of the ell confirms this idea: the four short feet ell was accounted to equal five quarters of the
yard; thus five quarters of the three feet yard equals fifteen quarters of the foot; and fifteen
quarters divided by four equals fifteen sixteenth: That’s the foot of the ell.

9. Key of the problem

25 × √2 ÷ 2 =~ 17 3/5

17 3/5 × 15/16 = 16 1/2

One British statutory rod = 16 1/2 feet

That’s the key looked for through numbers: the half-diagonal of the Imperial perch divided in
twenty five feet became solved in a rod of seventeen and three fifth feet, which number
equals, at a fifteen to sixteen ratio, sixteen and a half feet. And this explains the surprising
account of the British statutory rod.

This solution goes hand to hand with a field-measure (the Joch) and with a perch (the
Imperial one) widely attested, and it reproduces the Imperial Joch in a very accurate manner.

10. Value of the British foot

16/15 × 24/25 = 128/125

English foot = 128/125 Roman type foot

This way inducts a foot at the following ratio: sixteen on fifteen of twenty four on twenty five
Roman foot, that is one hundred and twenty eight on one hundred and twenty five of this last
foot. That’s the new definition of the English foot to which the hypothesis leads us. As for its
precise dimension in metrics, we can rely on the eleven inches pied de roi, adjusted to the foot
considered to be a kind of Roman foot rectified during the Middle Ages, called neo-Roman.
 11. The Neo-Roman foot

Pied de roi / meter = 0.324 839 4 m

11 inches de roi = Neo-Roman foot = 0.297 769 4 m

The pied de roi in meter is just above three hundred and twenty five millimeters.

The 11 inches de roi foot is just above two hundred and ninety eight millimeters.

It’s a Neo-Roman foot.

12. English foot’s length

Neo-Roman foot at 0.297 769 4 m

x 128/125 = ~ 0.304 915 8 m

Present English foot = 0.304 800 m

The English foot equals this neo-Roman foot multiplied by one hundred and twenty eight and
divided by one hundred and twenty five, that’s about three hundred and four millimeters and
nine tenth. This dimension approaches the present English foot, within about one tenth of a
millimeter.

13. Metrology 17th-18th century

Author Calculation Dimension

Bird, 1768 1 English foot = 135.116 115 4 lignes de roi ~ 0.304 799 m
Raper, 1760 1 pied de roi = 1.065 4 English foot ~ 0.304 900 m
[1.065 4 × 11/12 × 128/125 =~ 1.000 055…]
Young, 1740 1 English foot = 135.17 lignes de roi ~ 0.304 920 m
[144 × 11/12 × 128/125 = 135.168 lignes]
Greaves, 1649 1 neo-Roman foot = 0.976 English ft. ~ 0.305 100 m
[125/128 = 0.976 562 5 simplified in 0.976]

Here are some calculations of the English foot transcribed in metrical measures, following
sources going back to the times preceding the metric system.
Bird’s calculation is undoubtedly a basis for the ruler he built. It shows the foot eventually
fixed in eighteen twenty four within the Imperial system. It is about one tenth of a millimeter
shorter than expected, following my hypothesis.

For Raper, we can observe, he certainly knew the ratio I suggest; he simply decimalized it.

Thus, the inverse calculation used by Young is becoming clear: since the pied de roi included
one hundred and forty four lines, the result is round one hundred and thirty five lines point
seventeen.

In Greaves, the ratio at zero point nine hundred seventy six English foot for a neo-Roman foot
is nearly a decimalization of one hundred and twenty five on one hundred and twenty eight, as
postulated.

So we state that, for the metrologists from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, the
English foot seems to have been a little bit longer that the present foot. That’s not only
because they certainly accounted the English foot rightly. Some sample bars showed a foot of
this length, too.

14. Sample bars measuring, 18th century

Bar known as (Measured by / in) Length of the foot in metrics

Bird, 1758 (Troughton, 1796) ~ 0.304 800 m
Graham mark « E » (by himself, 1742) ~ 0.304 810 m
Graham mark « Exch » (by himself, 1743) ~ 0.304 740 m
st
(after the yard of Elizabeth I , 1588)
Yard of the Tower (Royal Society, 1743) ~ 0.304 840 m
Yard of Guild Hall (Royal Society, 1743) ~ 0.304 910 m
Three French feet (Royal Society, 1743) ~ 0.304 900 m
Ell of Elizabeth Ist, 1588 (Troughton, 1796) ~ 0.304 920 m

Here are some sample bars measures obtained by comparing reports from the eighteenth
century established under the aegis of the Royal Society. The data are simplified; of course
they are not absolute.

Although its present length has been officially made up in the year nineteen fifty nine only (!),
the contemporary English foot seems to have reached its dimension around seventeen sixty.
Before that, experts hesitated to follow the dimension of the Elizabethan yard or to consider
the other bars, which were all a little bit longer. The exchange between the Royal Society and
the Académie des sciences of Paris seems to be significant: the Academie returned an « E »
bar of Graham marked at three French feet. The result is extraordinary close to three hundred
and four millimeters and nine tenth for the English foot.

15. Conclusions

First. The British acre is a specific laying-out of the 80 Imperial square perches Joch.

Second. The British rod is a half-diagonal of the Imperial perch divided in 25 ell’s feet,
roughly 17 3/5 of those feet.

Third. The English foot is 16/15 of the ell’s foot: 17 3/5 × 15/16 = 16 1/2 feet in the rod.

Fourth. The combined ratios 16/15 × 24/25 give a 128/125 ratio between the English foot
and the Neo-Roman foot.

Fifth. Its mathematical value is about 0,304 900 m while its present dimension is
0,304 800 m, only a tenth of a millimetre shorter.

These conclusions are confirmed by the data reported above, remarkably precise and
consistent.

Once you find the way again, it’s very simple. That’s why it’s convincing—at least for me,
and hopefully for you…

The results demonstrate, too, that the English measures are not at all local: they belong to a
system stemming from Rome through the scientific and administrative Carolingian and later
Imperial culture.