CHAIN (UNIT)

A 'chain' is a unit of length; it measures 66 feet, which equates to 20.1168 metres). There are therefore 80 chains in one statute mile. The chain has been used for several centuries in England and in other countries influenced by British practice.
It should not be confused with Gunter's chain which is an item of surveying equipment.

Contents

Origin

Contemporary use

North American Usage

Ramsden's chain

Hispanic chain

Australian and New Zealand Use

Cricket Pitches

References

External links

Origin

The chain was commonly used with the mile to indicate land distances and in particular in surveying land for legal and commercial purposes. In medieval times, local measures were commonly used, and many units were adopted that gave manageable units; for example the distance from London to York could be quoted in inches, but the resulting huge number would be unmemorable. The locally used units were often inconsistent from place to place.
The clergyman Edmund Gunter developed a method of surveying land accurately with low technology equipment, using what became known as Gunter's chain; this was 66 feet long and from the practice of using his chain, the word transferred to the actual measured unit. His chain had 100 links, and the link is used as a subdivision of the chain as a unit of length.
In countries influenced by English practice, land plans prepared before about 1960 associated with the sale of land usually have lengths marked in chains and links, and the areas of land parcels is indicated in acres. A rectangle of land one furlong in length and one chain in width has an area of one acre. It is sometimes suggested that this was a medieval parcel of land capable of being worked by one man and supporting one family, but there is no documentary support for this assertion, and it would in any case have predated Gunter's work.

Contemporary use

The chain is no longer used for practical survey work. However it survives on the railways of the United Kingdom as a location identifier. When railways were designed the location of features such as bridges and stations was indicated by a cumulative longitudinal "mileage", using miles and chains, from a zero point at the origin or headquarters of the railway, or the originating junction of a new branch line. Since railways are entirely linear in topography, the "mileage" is sufficient to identify a place uniquely on any given route. Thus a certain bridge may be said to be "at" 112m 63c, meaning that it is at the location 112 miles and 63 chains from the origin. In the case of the photograph the bridge is near Keynsham, that distance from Paddington station. The indication "MLN" after the mileage describes the route, so that a visiting engineer can uniquely describe the bridge he may be inspecting -- there may be bridges at 112m 63c on other routes, of course.
The chain is of course not taught in British schools, but the chain has survived for two reasons:

★ Railways need to keep permanent records of as-built drawings of structures, and of the topography of routes and junctions; for historical reasons these are all set out in miles and chains; the labour and cost of converting all the documents to metric values is not repaid by any tangible benefit; and

★ Miles and chains remain, for the time being, values easy for human beings to use and remember; there have been instances of using miles and yards (on the former London Midland Region of British Railways) and more recently kilometres and metres, but both of these generate large and unmemorable numbers.

It is important to remember that the miles and chains are used to identify locations, not as an actual measurement of distance. Yet the diagram (right) shows a fragment from the railway's Sectional Appendix, a manual giving traincrews and others information about the topography of the routes they may work on; the second column gives locations in miles and chains. We can see that Keynsham station is at 113m 63c so the bridge in the photograph must be exactly 1 mile (coincidentally) from Keynsham station.
Railways were required originally to set posts at quarter mile intervals indicating the route mileage, and the mile and quarter mile posts can still be seen.

North American Usage

In North America the 'chain' is still used in agriculture, measuring wheels with a circumference of 0.1 chain are still common and readily available in the United States and Canada, at least. For a rectangular tract, multiply the number of turns of one of these wheels for each of two adjacent sides, then divide by 1000 to get the area in acres.
Also in North America a modern variant of the 'chain' as a tool is used in 'forestry' for 'traverse surveys'. This modern chain is a static cord (thin rope), 50 metres long, marked with a small tag at each metre, and also marked in the first metre every 'decimetre'. When working in dense bush, a short 'axe' or 'hatchet' is commonly tied to the end of the chain, and thrown through the bush in the direction of the traverse, to ease working in dense forest.
Also in United States the 'chain' is normally used as the measure of the rate of spread of wildfires (Chains per hour), both in the predictive National Fire Danger Rating Systems as well as in after-action reports. http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr090/psw_gtr090.pdf
Under the U.S. Public Land Survey System, rural parcels of land are often described in terms of the section (640 acres), quarter-section (160 acres), and quarter-quarter-section (40 acres). Respectively, these square divisions of land are 80 chains (one mile), 40 chains (one half-mile), and 20 chains (one quarter-mile) on a side.
The use of the chain was once very common in laying out townships and mapping the U.S. along the train routes in the 19th century. In the U.S. a federal law was passed in 1785 (the Public Land Survey Ordinance) that all official government surveys must be done with a Gunter's chain (also referred to as the "surveyor's chain").

Ramsden's chain

American surveyors sometimes used a longer 'chain of 100 feet' (30.48 m), known as the '''engineer's chain''' or '''Ramsden's chain'''.

Hispanic chain

In Texas, the 'vara chain' of 20 varas was used in surveying Spanish land grants.

Australian and New Zealand Use

In Australia and New Zealand, most building lots in the past were a quarter of an acre, measuring one chain by two and a half chains, and other lots would be multiples or fractions of a chain. The city of Melbourne is a classic example: surveyor Robert Hoddle divided the city into 24 ten-chain blocks, which still serve as the basic grid of the city. The street frontages of many houses in these countries are one chain wide—roads were almost always one chain wide (20.117 m) in urban areas, sometimes one and a half or two chains (30.2 m or 40.2 m). Laneways would be half a chain (10.1 m). In rural areas the roads were wider, up to 10 chains (201 m) where a stock route was required.

Cricket Pitches

The chain also survives as the length of a cricket pitch

References

External links

★ Math Words

★ Online Chain Conversion

★ How Many? A Dictionary of Units of Measurement, Russ Rowlett