Kilts by the hectare

[Kirbstone]

The area known as the Acre was arrived at as the agreed area a fit man armed with a scythe could reap (cut) in a working day...70 yards by 70 yards. This could be divided into 4 Roods.
Getting into linear measurement, the length of a Cricket wicket between stumps in One Chain, or Four Perches, or 22 yards. Ten of those is a Furlong (220 yards) and eight of Those is a (Statute) Mile.....1760 yrds. Ask Sir Roger Bannister. He knows a thing or two about that distance!

Tom K.

[Mugs-n-such]

Thanks for the info on where the acre came from...that is very interesting. So I'm a bit confused, is a perch the same length as a rod? 4 rods = one chain (16.5 x 4 = 66) and 4 perches are also a chain? I had figured that there are 80 chains per mile. At the risk of being accused of hijacking this thread, does anyone know how deep a fathom is? Kirbstone, you're a sea-faring man, you should know. Also, I think there is a technical term for 6 fathoms, but I forget what it is, I guess I could google it if I weren't so lazy. Btw I found my digital camera. Oh, you made me work so hard to find it, I had to lift a couple of sheaves of paper off a box, and there it was...I nearly broke my back,

[crfriend]

At the risk of being accused of hijacking this thread, does anyone know how deep a fathom is?

One fathom is six feet in depth, so sixty fathoms is 360 feet.

When navigating, or, more properly, piloting, make sure you know what measurements your charts are using -- some are in feet, some in fathoms, and some in that more modern notion, "meters". If you're thinking in fathoms and your chart is in feet, you're in some pretty nasty shape! Boats, and their owners, typically get very unhappy if the boat needs more water than is available under her keel.

[Mugs-n-such]

While we're on nautical measures, I thought this was interesting:

A "shackle", not shockle by my experience, is a now obsolete olden term of seamanship for a unit of measurement of ship's anchor chain in bygone nautical terms, and is equal to 15 fathoms or 90 feet of anchor chain (1 fathom equals 6 feet of depth of water). Fathoms are 6-feet units of depth of bodies of marine waters. The U.S. Government's National Ocean Service produces nautical navigation charts for sailers with ocean, bay, and gulf depths marked in feet and fathoms.
A shackle today is a piece of rigging. An anchor shackle is one type of shackle, and is the locking link that connects the anchor chain to the anchor. There are other types and uses for shackles besides use for anchors. (from answers.yahoo.com)

Boats, and their owners, typically get very unhappy if the boat needs more water than is available under her keel.

Now I'll have to read 6,000 books on boating to find out why this is so...NOT! (Sorry, I guess I'm a frustrated comedian...or clown more like it)

[Kirbstone]

Never having consulted a U.S. marine chart I cannot comment on their units of measurement, but I suspect they're Imperial. On this side of the Hatlantical Pond all modern navigation charts have depths given in meters at low water springs, which means you need to be seriously incompetent if you run aground on a falling tide, but lots still do it!
You see, it's necessary in general to know how much your vessel draws. Yer-average yacht would draw 2-2.5 meters, so add another and that's the magic number you need to have in mind when traversing underwater contour lines.
A lovely case in point was in 2003 when we were traversing an ancient submerged volcanic caldera beside the Greek Island of Simi, just off the SW Turkish coast in a friend's Bavaria 44, which draws 2 meters. The perimiter was visible as a ring of islets, the gap between two having a depth of just 3 meters according to Heikel's 'Pilot'. The Med. has no appreciable tidal range so that was the figure. I stood on the foredeck as we inched under motor across the rim. In the middle of the caldera the depth was off the gauge, but rose rapidly until the clear white-rocky bottom was very visible as we crossed the rim, the depth thereafter descending into the unfathomable range very quickly.

T.

[Since1982]

I own a piece of property outside of Chattanooga Tennessee that is 24 Acres and I guarantee it is one huge square of land. Most all acreage sold in the USA is sold in evenly measured into squared plots. It may be sold differently in the United Kingdom. I dunno.

[Milfmog]

That is definitely confusing...however, an ACRE is 4,840 square yards and it's square..not narrow. Sheesh..

An acre is definitely not square, that would make ploughing slower than it needs to be since turning a horse or ox drawn plough loses a significant amount of time. I was told (and have to confess I've never tried to verify it) that an acre, the area of a subsistence farmers land, was a chain by a furlong and that furlong is a corruption of the words "furrow long" because the land would be ploughed parallel to the long side of the plot to minimise the number of times it was necessary to turn around.

A quick check of wikipedia (that marvelous source of information that might be correct) produced the following:

The farm-derived units of measurement are:

1.The rod is a historical unit of length equal to 5½ yards. It may have originated from the typical length of a mediaeval ox-goad.

2.The furlong (meaning furrow length) was the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting. This was standardised to be exactly 40 rods.

3.An acre was the amount of land tillable by one man behind one ox in one day. Traditional acres were long and narrow due to the difficulty in turning the plough.

4.An oxgang was the amount of land tillable by one ox in a ploughing season. This could vary from village to village, but was typically around 15 acres.

5.A virgate was the amount of land tillable by two oxen in a ploughing season.

6.A carucate was the amount of land tillable by a team of eight oxen in a ploughing season. This was equal to 8 oxgangs or 4 virgates.

Make of that lot what you will...

Have fun,


Ian.

[mugman]

Wow. Where else on the interweb would you find a kilt/skirt-endorsing congregation with so much more knowledge of the wider world's niceties to share.

I'm massively confused by the sizes of a farmer's furrylongjohns and carrotcakes mentioned above as my academic nature is sadly zilch, but I certainly enjoyed the moment !


Pete

[Since1982]

2.The furlong (meaning furrow length) was the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting. This was standardised to be exactly 40 rods.

3.An acre was the amount of land tillable by one man behind one ox in one day. Traditional acres were long and narrow due to the difficulty in turning the plough.

4.An oxgang was the amount of land tillable by one ox in a ploughing season. This could vary from village to village, but was typically around 15 acres.

5.A virgate was the amount of land tillable by two oxen in a ploughing season.




I've moved all references to ox, oxen or oxgang to blue ( all legendary Oxen are blue) and the very well used term WAS to red as in the far distant past. In today's world, at least in the USA mechanical, fuel powered units do all the work Oxen used to do. So the need for long skinny plots of land to plow aren't neccessary, OR long skinny homes/villages to fit are also not neccessary. Things DO change.

6.A carucate wasthe amount of land tillable by a team of eight oxen in a ploughing season. This was equal to 8 oxgangs or 4 virgates.

[Kilted Musician]

Gee... you give somone an inch and they take a furlong!

--Rick

[Mugs-n-such]

I always thought an acre was just a measure of area, 43,560 sq feet or 4,840 sq yards, that it could be ANY shape, depending on the shape of your farm. Theoretically, it could be even circular, although I doubt there are any circular farm fields. The radius of a circular acre would be, I guess, the square root of (43,560/pi) since the area of a circle is pi times r squared.
If I weren't so lazy I could find out what that is but I'm thinking most people would be like, "who cares?"

[crfriend]

I always thought an acre was just a measure of area, 43,560 sq feet or 4,840 sq yards, that it could be ANY shape, depending on the shape of your farm. Theoretically, it could be even circular, although I doubt there are any circular farm fields.

That's the way the term is typically used today, but "classic" units frequently have historical baggage associated with them, like the acre-as-rectangle. Now, on the topic of circular farm fields, if you've ever flown over an agricultural area you've no doubt seen verdant green circles nestled within brown squares. The circle is the area sweept out by travelling irrigators which rotate around a supply source in the center of the field. The corners are dry and probably planted with something of not much interest to keep wind erosion down; the harvest comes from the irrigated part. So, to all intents and purposes one has a "round field".

The radius of a circular acre would be, I guess, the square root of (43,560/pi) since the area of a circle is pi times r squared.
If I weren't so lazy I could find out what that is but I'm thinking most people would be like, "who cares?"

This is why we have calculating devices. They help the curious figure these sorts of things out.

[JohnH]

I always thought an acre was just a measure of area, 43,560 sq feet or 4,840 sq yards, that it could be ANY shape, depending on the shape of your farm. Theoretically, it could be even circular, although I doubt there are any circular farm fields. The radius of a circular acre would be, I guess, the square root of (43,560/pi) since the area of a circle is pi times r squared.
If I weren't so lazy I could find out what that is but I'm thinking most people would be like, "who cares?"

True, the shape does not matter. However, I used to wonder why if you took the square root of 43,560 sq ft. that's in an acre to get the measurement of a side of a square containing the area of an acre, you don't get an integer. Instead, the measurement calculates on a calculator to 208.710325571 feet.

I really opened up can of worms when I started discussing the concept of the acre.

John

[crfriend]

I really opened up can of worms when I started discussing the concept of the acre.

Yes, and it's been an interesting diversion. This is another example of what happens when folks forget the original meaning of something and merely overlay the modern usage. Once the original meanings are understood, one gets why things are the way they are.

Using the above logic, it should be possible to drive the point home to all but the densest that the primary reasons guys "only" wear trousers today is historical and, nowadays, largely null and void.

[Kirbstone]

so (returning to the thread), if a good heavy twelve-yarder kilt (more than half the length of a Cricket Wicket) were say, 24 inches or two-thirds of a yard 'long', i.e. from waist to hem it would when fully extended cover some eight square yards (or two one-thousand-two hundred & twenty-fifths of an acre!!), which of course it wouldn't 'coz they stitch down the pleats from the waist to the bum, don't they?

All those amazing historical measurements remind me of Kenneth Williams doing Rambling Syd Rumpold....and where did Wurzel Gummidge come in?..or go?

T.