Despite the name, the foot isn’t measured by or named after anyone’s actual foot. Whether you think of it as 16 digits, 12 inches, 4 palms, two-thirds of a cubit, one-third of a yard, or one-sixth of a fathom, the foot has an interesting history, as do other strange Imperial units, such as the fathom and the furlong.

Here are some resources to learn more about the history of Imperial units of distance:

• Zupko, Ronald Edward (1977).  British Weights and Measures: A History from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century.  University of Wisconsin Press.
• An Antic Disposition.  The Right and Lawful Rood.  http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/12/right-and-lawful-rood.html.
• The Physics Hypertextbook.  British-American System of Units.  https://physics.info/system-english/.

Our intro and outro music is DriftMaster by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Please follow us on Twitter at @PrudentQPodcast, and contact us at [email protected].