Furlong

In the Roman system, there were 625 feet to the stade, eight stade to the mile, and three miles to the league.

A furlong is a measure of distance in imperial units and U.S. customary units.

2: The furlong was the distance a team of oxen could plow without resting.

Dating back at least to the ninth century, it originally referred to the length of the furrow in one acre of a ploughed open field.

3: An acre was the amount of land tillable by one man behind one ox in one day.

Among the important units of distance and length at the time were foot, yard, rod, furlong and mile.

An acre is an area that is one furlong long and one chain wide.

The city of Chicago ’s street numbering system allots a measure of 800 address units to each mile.

4: A virgate was the amount of land tillable by two oxen in a plowing season.

The furlong was historically viewed as equivalent to the Roman stade , which in turn derived from the Greek system.

After the fall of Rome, Medieval Europe continued with the Roman system, which proceeded to “diversify” leading to serious complications in trade, taxation, etc.

The system of long furrows arose because turning a team of oxen pulling a heavy plough was difficult.

This could vary from village to village, but was typically around 15 acres.

3: An oxgang was the amount of land tillable by one ox in a plowing season.

A league was considered to be the distance a man could walk in one hour, and the mile consisted of 1000 passus.

Since the original definition of the metre was one-quarter of one ten-millionth of the circumference of the Earth , the circumference of the Earth is about 40,000 km or about 200,000 furlongs.

It is equal to one-eighth of a mile or 660 feet or 201.168 metres.

Salt Lake City ’s blocks are also each a square furlong in the downtown area.

… the blocks are irregular in shape as one moves further out from the centre, but the numbering system remains the same everywhere in Salt Lake County.

This means that every block in a typical Chicago neighborhood is approximately one furlong in length.