Furlong

A is a shortened version of the term “furrow long.” A parcel of land in an open field of roughly ten s, the amount that can be conveniently ploughed in one day. This was standardized to be exactly 40 s or 10 s. This works out to be 660 ft in linear length. Furlongs are planted with a single and subdivided into s.

History
The name furlong derives from the words furh (furrow) and lang (long). Dating back at least to early times, it originally referred to the length of the furrow in one  of a ploughed  (a medieval communal field which was divided into strips). The furlong (meaning furrow length) was the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting. This was standardised to be exactly 40 rods or 10 chains. The system of long furrows arose because turning a team of oxen pulling a heavy plough was difficult. This offset the drainage advantages of short furrows and meant furrows were made as long as possible. An acre is an area that is one furlong long and one chain (66 feet or 22 yards) wide. For this reason, the furlong was once also called an acre’s length, though in modern usage an area of one acre can be of any shape. The term furlong, or shot, was also used to describe a grouping of adjacent strips within an open field.

Among the early Anglo-Saxons, the rod was the fundamental unit of land measurement. A furlong was 40 rods; an acre 4 by 40 rods, or 4 rods by 1 furlong, and thus 160 square rods; there are 10 acres in a square furlong. At the time, the Saxons used the North German foot, which was about 10 percent longer than the foot of the. When England in the late 13th century, rods and furlongs remained unchanged, since property boundaries were already defined in rods and furlongs. The only thing that changed was the number of feet and yards in a rod or a furlong, and the number of square feet and square yards in an acre. The definition of the rod went from 15 old feet to $16 1/2$ new feet, or from 5 old yards to $5 1/2$ new yards. The furlong went from 600 old feet to 660 new feet, or from 200 old yards to 220 new yards. The acre went from 36,000 old square feet to 43,560 new square feet, or from 4,000 old square yards to 4,840 new square yards.

The furlong was historically viewed as being equivalent to the, which in turn derived from the. For example, the uses the term “furlong” in place of the Greek stadion, although more recent translations often use miles or kilometres in the main text and give the original numbers in footnotes.

In the Roman system, there were 625 feet to the stadium, eight stadia to the mile, and three miles to the. A league was considered to be the distance a man could walk in one hour, and the mile (from mille, meaning “thousand”) consisted of 1,000 passus (paces, five feet, or double-step).

After the fall of the, medieval Europe continued with the Roman system, which the people proceeded to diversify, leading to serious complications in trade, taxation, etc. Around the year 1300, by royal decree England standardized a long list of measures. Among the important units of distance and length at the time were the foot, yard, rod (or pole), furlong, and the mile. The rod was defined as $5 1/2$ yards or $16 1/2$ feet, and the mile was eight furlongs, so the definition of the furlong became 40 rods and that of the mile became 5,280 feet (eight furlongs/mile times 40 rods/furlong times $16 1/2$ feet/rod).

A description from 1675 states, “Dimensurator or Measuring Instrument whereof the mosts usual has been the Chain, and the common length for English Measures four Poles, as answering indifferently to the Englishs Mile and Acre, 10 such Chains in length making a Furlong, and 10 single square Chains an Acre, so that a square Mile contains 640 square Acres.” —John Ogilby, Britannia, 1675

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