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Length/Distance | Convert from story to chain [Gunter, survey] |
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Common Length Conversions Metric Length Conversions Unit Definition (story) The story is an informal unit of distance equal to the average distance between floors of a building. In British English the spelling is "storey" and the plural is "storeys"; Americans write "story" and "stories." Typically a story equals 10 to 12 feet (3.0-3.6 meters). The origin of this use of the word "story" is not entirely clear, but in medieval times a tier of sculptures or stained glass windows on the front of a cathedral was called a stor(e)y because it usually told a story, and the number of stories was a measure of the size of the building. Unit Definition (chain [Gunter, survey]) The chain is a unit of distance formerly used by surveyors. The traditional British surveyor's chain, also called Gunter's chain because it was introduced by the English mathematician Edmund Gunter (1581-1626) in 1620, is 4 rods long: that's equal to exactly 1/80 mile, 1/10 furlong, 22 yards, or 66 feet (20.1168 meters). The traditional length of a cricket pitch is 1 chain. Gunter's chain has the useful property that an acre is exactly 10 square chains. The chain was divided into 100 links. American surveyors sometimes used a longer chain of 100 feet, known as the engineer's chain or Ramsden's chain. (However, Gunter's chain is also used in the U.S.; in fact, it is an important unit in the Public Lands Survey System.) In Texas, the vara chain of 2 varas (55.556 ft) was used in surveying Spanish land grants. In the metric world, surveyors often use a chain of 20 meters (65.617 ft).
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