Rod (unit of length)

The rod is an Anglo-Saxon unit of length used to measure land.

Etymology and uses

It is also known as a "perch" or "pole". However, although their total length is the same (5.5 yards or 5.0292 meters), it is sometimes understood that when using the words pole or rod, they mean is referring to length, and if perch is used it is a unit of area or, in medieval architecture, a unit of volume. Actually, this use is not entirely correct, since for length you should use "pole", "rod" or "perch"; for surface: "rod", "pole" or "perch" squares; and neither of these terms would be appropriate for volume.

Even so, in Sri Lanka the term "perch" it remains a standard of surface area equivalent to 25 m². And, in the case of the medieval perch, it is the volume of a masonry wall 1 perch (5.0292 m) long, 18 inches (45.72 cm) high, and 12 inches (30.48 cm) wide, which is equal to a total volume of 24.75 ft³ (cubic feet) or 0.700841953152 m³ (700.841953152 liters).

Finally, in Spanish this term is translated as vara ("rod") or pétiga ( "pole" and "percha"), but not to be confused with the old Spanish measure of length, called vara, which goes from 0.7704 to 0.8380 meters. For this reason, in some translations of books written in English (such as The Pillars of the Earth), it has been preferred to keep the English word pole, which refers both to the unit of length as the iron rod of this length that the master mason used to measure.

History

In England, the perch was officially discarded in favor of the rod as early as the 15th century, however, local custom maintained its use. In the 13th century, perches were variously recorded in length as 18 feet (5.49 m), 20 feet (6.1 m), 22 feet (6.71 m), and 24 feet (7.32 m), and even as late as 1820, a House of Commons report noted lengths of 16 1⁄2 feet (5.03 m), 18 feet (5.49 m), 21 feet (6.4 m), 24 feet (7.32 m) and even 25 feet (7.62 m). In Ireland, a perch was standardized to 21 feet (6.4 m), thus making the Irish chain, furlong, and mile proportionally longer, by 27.27%, than the "standard" English measure. Until English King Henry VIII seized land from the Roman Catholic Church in 1536, land measurements as we know them were essentially unknown. Instead a narrated system of landmarks and lists was used. Enrique wanted to increase the funds for his wars even more so he seized, directly, the property of the Church (he also assumed the debts of the monasteries), and as James Burke wrote and quoted, in the book "Connections& #34;, that the English monk Richard Benese "produced a book on how to survey land using the simple tools of his time, a stick with a rope with knots at certain intervals, waxed and resined to counteract bad weather" 3. 4;. Benese poetically described the measure of an acre in terms of a perch:

"an acre of wood, too, of field (health) land, both are always forty perch in length, and four perch in breadth, though an acre of wood is more in amount [value, was more commercially valuable] than an acre of country land"

About a century later, when iron became a more abundant and common material, came the practice of using single-chain and perch-length rods made from a detachable rigid chain. A chain is a major unit of length measuring 66 feet (20.1168 m), or 22 yards, or 100 links, or 4 rods (20.1168 m). There are 10 chains or 40 rods in a furlong (eighth of a mile), and so 80 chains or 320 rods in a statue mile (1760 yards, 1609.344 m, 1.609344 km); of which the definition was established by the royal surveyor John Ogilby (called the "sworn viewer") only after the Great Fire of London (1666).

An acre is defined as the area of 10 square ridges (that is, an area of one ridge per furlong), and derives from new technology plow shapes and the desire to rapidly survey Church-claimed land in a number of squares for a quick sale by Henry VIII's agents, the buyers simply wanted to know what they were buying, while Henry was raising money for wars against Scotland and France. Consequently, the surveyor's chain and surveyor's rods (the perch) have been used for several centuries in Great Britain and in various other countries influenced by British practices such as North America and Australia. For the time of the industrial revolution and the rapidity of land sales, the canal and railway topographies, and all; Surveyor's poles, such as those used by George Washington, were generally made of dimensionally stable metal (linked bar of semi-flexible mild iron casting (not steel), such that the four folded elements of a chain were easily transported by brush and branches when carried by a single man of a surveying team.With a direct ratio between the length of a surveyor's chain and the sides of both, one acre and one square mile, were tools commonly used by surveyors., only to sketch a traceable baseline on the ground to serve as a reference line for instrumental triangulations (theodolite).

The rod as a measure of surveying was standardized by Edmund Gunter in England in 1607, as a quarter of a chain (of 66 feet (20.12 m)), or 16 1⁄2 feet (5.03 m) long

In Ancient Cultures

The perch as a linear measure in Rome (also decempeda) was 10 feet (3.05 m), and in France it ranged from 10 feet (perche romanie) to 22 feet (perche d'arpent - apparently 1⁄10 of "an arrow's range" - about 220 feet). To further confuse matters, by ancient Roman definition, an arpent equaled 120 Roman feet. The related unit of square measure was the scrupulum or decempeda quadrata, equivalent to about 8.76 m² (94.3 foot²).

In Continental Europe

Units comparable to the perch, pole, or rod were used in various European countries, with names including:

These were subdivided into several different shapes, and were of several different lengths.

Based on data from the following

N - Niemann (Quedlinburg and Leipzig - 1830).

In Great Britain

In England, the rod or perch was first defined in law by the "Composition of Yards and Perches," one of the late-century statutes of uncertain date XIII and early XIV century: &# 34;tres pedes faciunt ulnam, quinque ulne & dimidia faciunt perticam" (three feet makes a yard, five and a half yards makes a perch).

The length of the chain was standardized in 1620 by Edmund Gunter to exactly four rods. Fields were measured in acres, which were one ridge (four rods) to a furlong (in the UK, 10 ridges).

Metal bars one rod long were used as the standard length when surveying land. The rod was still in use as a common unit of measure in the mid-19th century, when Henry David Thoreau used it, frequently, when describing distances in his work, Walden.

In traditional Scottish units, a Scottish rood (ruid in Lowland Scots, ròd in Scottish Gaelic), also fall, measures 222 inches (6 ells).

Modern Usage

The rod was phased out as a legal unit of measurement in the UK as part of a ten-year metrication process that began on May 24, 1965.

In the US, the rod, along with the chain, furlong, and statute mile (as well as the survey inch and foot) are based on pre-1959 values for "United States customary units" of linear measurement. The Mendenhall Order of 1893 defined the yard as exactly 3600⁄3937 metres, with all other units of linear measurement, including the rod, based on the yard. In 1959, an international agreement (the international yard and pound agreement), defined the yard as the fundamental unit of length in the Imperial/USCU system, defined as exactly 0.9144 meters. However, the units mentioned above, when used in surveying, must retain their pre-1959 values, depending on the legislation of each state. For 2020, there are plans for the "U.S. National Geodetic Survey" and the "National Institute of Standards and Technology" to replace the definition of the units mentioned above by the 1959 international definition of the foot, being exactly 0.3048 meters.

Although no longer in widespread use, the rod is still employed in certain specialized fields. In recreational boating, maps measure "portages" (land roads on which canoes must be loaded) on rods; typical canoes are about a rod long. The term is also in widespread use in the acquisition of pipeline right-of-way, since bids for a right-of-way are often expressed as a "price per rod".

In the UK, allotted garden sizes in some areas continue to be measured in square poles, sometimes being referred to for simplification as poles rather than square poles.

In Vermont, the default right-of-way width for state and town highways and trails is three rods (49.5 feet or 15.0876 m). Rods can also be found in the old legal description of tracts of land in the United States, following the method of "metes and bounds" of land survey, as shown in this current legal description of real estate:

LEGAL DESCRIPTION: Beginning 45 rods East and 44 rods North Southwest from 1/4 Southwest corner of 1/4 Southwest; then North 36 rods to start location, Manistique Township, Schoolcraft County; Michigan".

Area and volume

The terms pole, perch, rod, and rood have all been used as a unit of area, and perch is also used as a unit of volume. As a unit of area, one square perch (the perch being standardized to equal 16 1⁄2 feet or 5 1⁄2 yards) is equal to one square rod, 30 1⁄4 square yard (25.29 square meters) or 1⁄ 160 acres. There are 40 square perches to a rood (for example, a 40 rods x 1 rod rectangular area), and 160 square perches to an acre (for example, a 40 rods x 4 rods rectangular area). This unit is usually referred to as a perch or pole, although square perch and square pole were the more accurate terms. The rod was also sometimes used as a unit of area to refer to a rood.

However, in the traditional French-based system in some countries, 1 square perche is 42.21 square meters.

As of August 2013, perches and roods are used as units of government survey in Jamaica. They appear on many title documents. The perch is also in extensive use in Sri Lanka, being favored even on the rood and acreage in real estate listed there. Coat racks were, informally, used as a measure on Queensland real estate, up to the turn of the 21st century, mostly for properties Historic posts in old suburbs.

Volume

A traditional unit of volume for stone and other masonry. A masonry rack is the volume of a stone wall one rack (16 1⁄2 feet or 5.03 meters) long, 18 inches (45.7 cm) high, and 12 inches (30.5 cm) thick. This is equivalent to exactly 24 3⁄4 cubic feet (0.92 cubic yards; 0.70 meters; 700 liters).

There are two different measurements for a perch depending on the type of masonry being built:

1. A masonry coating is measured by the 24 3⁄4 cubic feet perch (16 1⁄2 feet or 5.03 meters long, 18 inches or 45.7 cm high, and 12 inches or 30.5 cm thick). This is equivalent to exactly 24 3⁄4 cubic feet (0.916667 cubic yards; 0.700842 cubic meters).
2. A fenced wall or rubble made of broken stone of size, shape and irregular texture, made of stone without coating, is measured by (16 1⁄2 feet or 5.03 meters) long, 12 inches (30.5 cm) high, and 12 inches (30.5 cm) thick. This is equivalent to exactly 16 1⁄2 cubic feet (0.611111 cubic yards; 0.467228 cubic meters).

Equivalences