An inch (plural: inches; abbreviation or symbol: in or ″ – a double prime The prime symbol , double prime symbol ( ″ ), triple prime symbol ( ‴ ) etc. are used to designate several different units, and for various other purposes in mathematics, the sciences and linguistics. The prime symbol should not be confused with the apostrophe, single quotation mark, acute accent or grave accent; and the double prime should) is the name of a unit A unit of measurement is a definite magnitude of a physical quantity, defined and adopted by convention and/or by law, that is used as a standard for measurement of the same physical quantity. Any other value of the physical quantity can be expressed as a simple multiple of the unit of measurement of length In certain contexts, the term "length" is reserved for a certain dimension of an object along which the length is measured. For example it is possible to cut a length of a wire which is shorter than wire thickness. Another example is FET transistors, in which the channel width may be larger than channel length in a number of different systems, including Imperial units Imperial units or the imperial system is a system of units, first defined in the British Weights and Measures Act of 1824, later refined and reduced. The system came into official use across the British Empire. By the late 20th century most nations of the former empire had officially adopted the metric system as their main system of measurement, and United States customary units The United States customary system is the most commonly used system of measurement in the United States. It is similar but not identical to the British Imperial units. The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that does not mainly use the metric system in its commercial and standards activities, although the International System of Units (SI,. There are 36 inches in a yard A yard is a unit of length in several different systems, including English units, Imperial units, and United States customary units. It is equal to 3 feet or 36 inches, although its length in SI units varied slightly from system to system. The most commonly used yard today is the international yard, which is defined to be exactly 0.9144 metre and 12 inches in a foot A foot is a non-SI unit of length in a number of different systems including English units, Imperial units, and United States customary units. Its size can vary from system to system, but in each is around a quarter to a third of a meter. The most commonly used foot today is the international foot. There are three feet in a yard and 12 inches in a. A corresponding unit of area Area is a quantity expressing the two-dimensional size of a defined part of a surface, typically a region bounded by a closed curve. The surface area of a 3-dimensional solid is the total area of the exposed surface, such as the sum of the areas of the exposed sides of a polyhedron. Area is an important invariant in the differential geometry of is the square inch A square inch is a unit of area, equal to the area of a square with sides of one inch. The following symbols are used to denote square inches: and a corresponding unit of volume Volume is how much three-dimensional space a substance or shape occupies or contains, often quantified numerically using the SI derived unit, the cubic metre. The volume of a container is generally understood to be the capacity of the container, i. e. the amount of fluid (gas or liquid) that the container could hold, rather than the amount of is the cubic inch A cubic inch is a non-SI unit of volume, equal to the volume of a cube with sides of one inch. The inch is usually the universal unit of measurement in the United States ^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language, and is widely used in the United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland[note 7] is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of the island of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land, and Canada The land occupied by Canada was inhabited for millennia by various groups of Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored, and later settled, along the Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three, despite the introduction of metric to the latter two in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively. The inch is sometimes used informally in other Commonwealth nations such as Australia For at least 40,000 years before European settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who belonged to one or more of the roughly 250 language groups. After sporadic visits by fishermen from the immediate north and discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by the British.

International inch

Effective July 1, 1959, the United States ^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language and countries of the British Commonwealth The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and previously as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states. All but two of these countries were formerly part of the British Empire defined the length of the international yard A yard is a unit of length in several different systems, including English units, Imperial units, and United States customary units. It is equal to 3 feet or 36 inches, although its length in SI units varied slightly from system to system. The most commonly used yard today is the international yard, which is defined to be exactly 0.9144 metre to be exactly 0.9144 meters The metre , symbol m, is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Originally intended to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the Earth's equator to the North Pole, its definition has been periodically refined to reflect growing knowledge of metrology. Since 1983, it is defined as the distance travelled by light in a. ^[1] Consequently, the international inch is defined to be equal to exactly 25.4 millimeters The millimetre is a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one thousandth of a metre, which is the SI base unit of length. This creates a slight difference between the international units and surveyor's units which are described in the article on the foot A foot is a non-SI unit of length in a number of different systems including English units, Imperial units, and United States customary units. Its size can vary from system to system, but in each is around a quarter to a third of a meter. The most commonly used foot today is the international foot. There are three feet in a yard and 12 inches in a.

The international standard symbol for inch is in (see ISO 31-1 ISO 31-1 is the part of international standard ISO 31 that defines names and symbols for quantities and units related to space and time, Annex A). In some cases, the inch is denoted by a double prime The prime symbol , double prime symbol ( ″ ), triple prime symbol ( ‴ ) etc. are used to designate several different units, and for various other purposes in mathematics, the sciences and linguistics. The prime symbol should not be confused with the apostrophe, single quotation mark, acute accent or grave accent; and the double prime should, which is often approximated by double quotes Quotation marks or inverted commas are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, a phrase, or a word. They come as a pair of opening and closing marks in either of two styles: single (‘…’) or double (“…”), and the foot A foot is a non-SI unit of length in a number of different systems including English units, Imperial units, and United States customary units. Its size can vary from system to system, but in each is around a quarter to a third of a meter. The most commonly used foot today is the international foot. There are three feet in a yard and 12 inches in a by a prime The prime symbol , double prime symbol ( ″ ), triple prime symbol ( ‴ ) etc. are used to designate several different units, and for various other purposes in mathematics, the sciences and linguistics. The prime symbol should not be confused with the apostrophe, single quotation mark, acute accent or grave accent; and the double prime should, which is often approximated by an apostrophe The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets. In English, it serves two main purposes—the omission of one or more letters (as in doesn't for does not) and the marking of possessives (as in the cat's whiskers). (In strictly limited cases, it is allowed to.

Equivalence to other units of length

1 international inch is equal to:

• 1,000 thou A thou also known as a mil or point, is the verbalized abbreviation for "thousandth(s) of an inch", a unit of length incremented at 0.001 inch (1 thou is 0.001 inches.)
• 1,000 mil (1 mil = 1 thou = 0.001 inches)
• 1,000,000 microinches (1 μin is one millionth of an inch.)

• ~0.02778 yards A yard is a unit of length in several different systems, including English units, Imperial units, and United States customary units. It is equal to 3 feet or 36 inches, although its length in SI units varied slightly from system to system. The most commonly used yard today is the international yard, which is defined to be exactly 0.9144 metre (1 yard is equal to 36 inches.)
• 2.54 centimeters A centimetre is a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one hundredth of a metre, which is the current SI base unit of length. Centi is the SI prefix for a factor of 10−2. Hence a centimetre can be written as 10 × 10−3 m (engineering notation) or 1E−2 m (scientific E notation) — meaning 10 × 101 mm or 1 m/100 respectively. The (1 centimeter is equal to about 0.3937 international inches.)

Historical origin

The origin of the inch is disputed. Historically, in different parts of the world (even different cities within the same country) and at different points in time, the inch has referred to similar but different standard lengths.

The English word inch comes from Latin uncia meaning "one twelfth part" (in this case, one twelfth of a foot); the word ounce The ounce is a unit of mass with several definitions, the most commonly used of which are equal to approximately 28 grams. The ounce is used in a number of different systems, including various systems of mass that form part of the imperial and United States customary systems. Its size can vary from system to system. The most commonly used ounces (one twelfth of a troy pound) has the same origin.

In some other languages, the word for "inch" is similar to or the same as the word for "thumb"; for example, French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in: pouce inch/thumb; Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by about 62 million people in Italy, San Marino and parts of Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia and France. It is spoken as a first language by many Italian citizens and immigrants abroad, for a total of approximately 70 million native speakers. In addition, it: pollice inch/thumb; Spanish Countries where Spanish has official status. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 25% or more of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 10-20% of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 5-9.9% of the population: pulgada inch, pulgar thumb; Portuguese Portuguese ( português or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated from a fusion of the dialect spoken in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal with closely related dialects spoken in territories to the south which had not yet been reconquered by the Christians to the Arabs by the time Portugal was born as a Christian kingdom: polegada inch, polegar thumb; Swedish Swedish ( svenska ) is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the Åland islands. It is to a considerable extent mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to a lesser extent with Danish (see especially "Classification"). Along: tum inch, tumme thumb; Danish Danish (dansk, pronounced [d̥ænˀsɡ̊] ) is one of the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages), a sub-group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken by around 6 million people, mainly in Denmark; the language is also used by the 50,000 Danes in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany: tomme inch, tommel thumb; Dutch Dutch ( Nederlands ) is a West Germanic language spoken by over 22 million people as a native language and over 5 million people as a second language. Most native speakers live in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, with smaller groups of speakers in parts of France, Germany and several former Dutch colonies. It is closely related to other: duim inch/thumb; Sanskrit Sanskrit , is an historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism,[note 1] and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is a classical language of India, others being Tamil, Kannada and Telugu: angulam inch, anguli finger; Slovak The Slovak language ( slovenský jazyk , slovenčina, not to be confused with slovenski jezik, slovenščina, or Slovenian), is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages (together with Czech, Polish, Silesian, Kashubian, and Sorbian): palec inch/thumb; Hungarian Hungarian (magyar nyelv listen ) is a Uralic language, more specifically a Finno-Ugric language distantly related to Finnish, Estonian and a number of other minority languages spoken in the Baltic states and northern European Russia eastward into central Siberia. Finno-Ugric languages are not related to the Indo-european languages that dominate: hüvelyk inch/thumb.

Given the etymology of the word "inch", it would seem that the inch is a unit derived from the foot A foot is a non-SI unit of length in a number of different systems including English units, Imperial units, and United States customary units. Its size can vary from system to system, but in each is around a quarter to a third of a meter. The most commonly used foot today is the international foot. There are three feet in a yard and 12 inches in a, but this was probably only so in Latin and in Roman times. In English, there are records of fairly precise definitions for the size of an inch (whereas the definitions for the size of a foot are probably anecdotal), so it seems that the foot was then defined as 12 times this length. For example, the old English ynche was defined (by King David I of Scotland in about 1150) as the width of an average man's thumb at the base of the nail, even including the requirement to calculate the average of a small, a medium, and a large man's measures. To account for the much larger length later called an inch, there are also attempts to link it to the distance between the tip of the thumb and the first joint of the thumb, but this may be speculation.

There are records of the unit being used circa AD Anno Domini and Before Christ (abbreviated as BC or B.C.) are designations used to label years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The calendar era to which they refer is based on the traditionally reckoned year of the conception or birth of Jesus, with AD denoting years after the start of this epoch, and BC denoting years before the start of 1000 (both Laws of Æthelberht Æthelberht (c. 560 – 24 February 616) was King of Kent from about 580 or 590 until his death. In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, the monk Bede lists Aethelberht as the third king to hold imperium over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. In the late ninth century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Æthelberht is referred to as a bretwalda, or " and Laws of Ælfred).^{[citation needed]}

An Anglo-Saxon unit of length was the barleycorn English units refers to the historical units of measurement in medieval England, which evolved as a combination of the Anglo-Saxon and Roman systems of units. They were redefined in England in 1824 by a Weights and Measures Act, which retained many but not all of the unit names with slightly different values, and again in the 1970s by the SI. After 1066, 1 inch was equal to 3 barleycorn, which continued to be its legal definition for several centuries, with the barleycorn being the base unit.^[2] One of the earliest such definitions is that of 1324, where the legal definition of the inch was set out in a statute of Edward II of England Edward II, called Edward of Carnarvon, was King of England from 1307 until he was deposed in January 1327. He was the seventh Plantagenet king, in a line that began with the reign of Henry II. Interspersed between the strong reigns of his father Edward I and son Edward III, the reign of Edward II was disastrous for England, marked by incompetence,, defining it as "three grains of barley, dry and round, placed end to end, lengthwise".^[2]

Similar definitions are recorded in both English and Welsh mediæval law tracts.^[3] One, dating from the first half of the 10th century, is contained in the Laws of Hywel Dda (see Hywel Dda Hywel Dda , (English: Hywel the Good;, sometimes anglicized to Howell the Good) was a well-thought-of king of Deheubarth in south-west Wales, who, using his cunning, eventually came to rule Wales from Prestatyn to Pembroke. As a descendant of Rhodri Mawr through his father Cadell, Hywel was a member of the Dinefwr branch of the dynasty and is also) which superseded those of Dyvnwal, an even earlier definition of the inch in Wales. Both definitions, as recorded in Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales (vol i., pp. 184,187,189), are that "three lengths of a barleycorn is the inch".^[4]

Charles Butler, a mathematics teacher at Cheam School, in 1814 recorded the old legal definition of the inch to be "three grains of sound ripe barley being taken out the middle of the ear, well dried, and laid end to end in a row", and placed the barleycorn, not the inch, as the base unit of the English Long Measure system, from which all other units were derived.^[5] John Bouvier similarly recorded in his 1843 law dictionary that the barleycorn was the fundamental measure.^[6] Butler observed, however, that "[a]s the length of the barley-corn cannot be fixed, so the inch according to this method will be uncertain", noting that a standard inch measure was now (by his time) kept in the Exchequer chamber, Guildhall, and that was the legal definition of the inch.^[5] This was a point also made by George Long in his 1842 Penny Cyclopædia, observing that standard measures had since surpassed the barleycorn definition of the inch, and that to recover the inch measure from its original definition, in the event that the standard measure were destroyed, would involve the measurement of large numbers of barleycorns and taking their average lengths. He noted that this process would not perfectly recover the standard, since it might introduce errors of anywhere between one hundredth and one tenth of an inch in the definition of a yard.^[7]

One source^[who?] says that the inch was at one time defined in terms of the yard A yard is a unit of length in several different systems, including English units, Imperial units, and United States customary units. It is equal to 3 feet or 36 inches, although its length in SI units varied slightly from system to system. The most commonly used yard today is the international yard, which is defined to be exactly 0.9144 metre, itself supposedly defined as the distance between Henry I of England Henry I was the fourth son of William I of England. He succeeded his elder brother William II as King of England in 1100 and defeated his eldest brother, Robert Curthose, to become Duke of Normandy in 1106. He was called Beauclerc for his scholarly interests and Lion of Justice for refinements which he brought about in the administrative and's nose and his thumb. This is unlikely as Henry was born in 1068.

Prior to the adoption of the international inch (see above), the United Kingdom and most countries of the British Commonwealth defined the inch in terms of the Imperial Standard Yard. But Canada had its own, different, definition of the inch, defined in terms of metric units. The Canadian inch was defined to be equal to 25.4 millimeters, the amount later accepted as the international inch.

Metric or decimal inch

A metric inch (25 mm instead of 25.4 mm) was the equivalent of an inch under a former proposal for the metrification and unification of the English system of measures. It is now considered to be a strange unit of measurement. See also "metric foot".

In Sweden, between 1855 to 1863, the existing Swedish "working inch" of ~24.74 mm was replaced by a "decimal inch" of ~29.69 mm which was one tenth of the Swedish foot. Proponents argued that a decimal system simplifies calculations. However, having two different Swedish inch measures (and the English inch on top of that) proved to be complicated. So in a transition period between 1878 and 1889 the metric units were introduced as the overall standard measures. However, the various inches survived some time in building and construction trades.

References

1. ^ Brian Lasater, The Dream of the West (Lulu.com, 2008), p256
2. ^ ^{a b} H. Arthur Klein (1974). The world of measurements: masterpieces, mysteries and muddles of metrology. New York: Simon and Schuster.
3. ^ Jane Hawkes and Susan Mills (1999). Northumbria's Golden Age. Sutton. pp. 310. ISBN 0750916850.
4. ^ John Williams (1867). "The civil arts — mensuration". The Traditionary Annals of the Cymry. Tenby: R. Mason. pp. 243–245.
5. ^ ^{a b} Charles Butler (1814). An Easy Introduction to the Mathematics. Oxford: Bartlett and Newman. pp. 61.
6. ^ John Bouvier (1843). "Barleycorn". A Law Dictionary: With References to the Civil and Other Systems of Foreign Law. Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson. pp. 188.
7. ^ George Long (1842). "Weights & Measures, Standard". The Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. London: Charles Knight & Co.. p. 436.

See also

• Anthropic units
• English units
• Gry
• Guz
• Imperial unit
• Pyramid inch
• United States customary units

Categories: Units of length | Customary units in the United States | Human-based units of measure | Imperial units

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