The (Gunter's) chain used to be an important item of surveying equipment. It's an actual chain 22 yards in length. They have one on display at the Weald & Downland Museum at Singleton which is a few miles from where I'm sitting.
Don't think you'd need to look in a museum - as a (now retired) Chartered Surveyor, it would still be my preferred method of measurement. If only because it's a damn sight lighter than most of the alternatives (like the 100-foot Engineers Chain)!
Maybe off-topic, but it was a brilliant (1620) invention, and is so far the only entirely-successful application of the 'decimalisation' principle (that is, the principle of using measurements divisible by ten) that has yet been devised.
It was basically a chain 66 feet (22 yards) long, divided into 100 links.
Thing is, British (and American) property is still measured in yards, translated into acres and furlongs. It's a nuisance, though, that these are measured in feet and yards, and those are usually based on 12, not 10. Gunter, way back then, solved that problem by making his chain 22 yards long - which meant that 10 chains made a furlong, 8 furlongs made a statute mile, and - probably most important - 10 SQUARE chains made an acre........
So - Gunter produced the only sensible 'metric system' that has ever been invented - 'metricating' the Imperial system of measurement.
Of course, the French then produced the current, nonsensical, Metric System, which has left all of us drowning in a sea of decimal points; as one example, an acre is (approximately
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 12:20 pm