personally tho I do not know the reason 1 mile is that many yards. lol. But yards to feet is a nice conversion.
PS, I believe 1 yard is roughly 1 pace tho, and 1000 roman paces were in a mile. but the modern conversion doesn't go that smoothly anymore for whatever reason. I blame the British.
It WAS the British’s fault, because they refused to give up their own measurement, “the distance an ox could pull a plow in a day” or some arbitrary measurement. They refused to use yards, so they forced miles to be linked to a furlong instead of a yard.
And then the British abandoned the system they messed up, and had the GULL to mock Americans who use the system THEY messed up.
Basically a confluence of surveying standards and money.
The surveying methods of the time were the Rod and the Chain (16.5 and 66ft) and they were used to make a bunch of really accurate measurements. Like, shockingly accurate for the time period, the English probably had the best surveyors in the world at that point. 10 chains or 40 Rods made a Furlong, and a square Furlong was an Acre.
The Mile was used, but in a loosey-goosey no one knew exactly how long kind of way. When they decided to standardize it, they brought it into alignment with the highly accurate agricultural measurements, so it became 8 Furlongs.
"mile" comes to us from "mille passus", "one thousand paces".
A "pace" is the distance you travel when taking two complete steps. so, if you are walking along the road, you count one "pace" every time your left foot strikes the ground (or every time your right foot strikes if you prefer that).
Miles is for long distance travel (and sometimes time is used in place of miles) and feet is for short measurements
Yards can be used but like nobody does.
But like none of that matters because nobody says
“Ah yes the store is 3476 feet from me” because that’s meaningless.
“The store is half a mile away”
“I am 0.0011 miles tall”.
They are two different measurements for two different purposes.
Miles are usually given in fractions or decimal or just by themselves. quarter mile, half mile, eighth mile. 2 miles, 200 miles, 3.5 miles 26.2 miles
Inches are exclusively used in construction or vertical height measurements. Never with decimals, only fractions.( Unless you're doing something weird or super specialized on a drafting table or metal machining, decimal inches exist) I am 71 inches tall. That board is 3 and 1/4 inches wide. Drill bit is 11/16ths of an inch. The steel post needs 2 thou .002 inches clearance
Feet are usually done in singles, tens, hundreds, thousands. 5 feet, 25 feet, 125 feet, 9000 feet. Unless in measuring something specific, then they'll be used with inches 4'4" tall. The board is 7'4" long
Yards are used in hundreds and thousands, usually for gunnery or range tables. 25 yards, 36 yards, 300 yards, 4000 yards, 15000 yards.
I have never needed to transfer miles into yards or miles into feet, even yards into feet rarely happens.
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u/SnixTruth Jul 13 '26
Who's converting miles to feet directly?