Editing Furlong (section)

==History==
The name ''furlong'' derives from the [[Old English]] words ''{{lang|ang|furh}}'' ([[furrow]]) and ''{{lang|ang|lang}}'' (long).<ref>{{Cite EB1911 |wstitle=Furlong |volume=11 |page=358}}</ref> Dating back at least to early [[Anglo-Saxon]] times, it originally referred to the length of the furrow in one [[acre]] of a ploughed [[open-field system|open field]] (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&nbsp;rods or 10&nbsp;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 (unit)|chain]] (66&nbsp;feet or 22&nbsp;yards) wide. For this reason, the furlong was once also called an '''acre's length''',<ref>{{cite book |title=[[The Winter's Tale]] |first=William |last=Shakespeare |author-link=William Shakespeare |edition=unabridged|publisher=Courier Dover|year=2000 |isbn=9780486411187| page=5|quotation=footnote 17: ''heat an acre''; run a heat or course of an acre's length, "acre" being used as a lineal measure, equivalent to a furlong.}} {{Folger inline|WT|1|2|123|bare=true}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1tgk_UNST2kC&q=furlong%20shot%20strip%20field&pg=PR28 |title=The English Village Community Examined in Its Relation to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common Or Open Field System of Husbandry: An Essay in Economic History|first=Frederic |last=Seebohm |publisher=Cambridge University Press |date=8 December 2011|page=4|isbn=9781108036344}}</ref>

Among the early Anglo-Saxons, the rod was the fundamental unit of land measurement. A furlong was 40&nbsp;rods; an acre 4 by 40&nbsp;rods, or 4&nbsp;rods by 1&nbsp;furlong, and thus 160&nbsp;square rods; there are 10&nbsp;acres in a square furlong. At the time, the Saxons used the [[Foot_(unit)#England|North German foot]], which was about 10&nbsp;percent longer than the foot of the [[International yard and pound|international 1959 agreement]]. When England [[Composition of Yards and Perches|changed to a shorter foot]] in the late 13th&nbsp;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&nbsp;old feet to {{frac|16|1|2}}&nbsp;new feet, or from 5&nbsp;old yards to {{frac|5|1|2}}&nbsp;new yards. The furlong went from 600 old feet to 660 new feet, or from 200&nbsp;old yards to 220&nbsp;new yards. The acre went from 36,000&nbsp;old square feet to 43,560&nbsp;new square feet, or from 4,000&nbsp;old square yards to 4,840&nbsp;new square yards.<ref>{{cite book|last=Zupko|first=Ronald Edward|author-link=Ronald Edward Zupko|title=British weights & measures: a history from antiquity to the seventeenth century|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pWUgAQAAIAAJ|year=1977|publisher=University of Wisconsin Press|isbn=978-0-299-07340-4|pages=10–11, 20–21}}</ref>  

The furlong was historically viewed as being equivalent to the [[Stadion (unit)|Roman stade (''stadium'')]],<ref>Compare [[Josephus]], ''[[Antiquities of the Jews|Antiquities]]'' (15.11.3), who writes of the [[Temple Mount]] in Jerusalem that it was encompassed by a wall which measured one ''stadion'' ([[Greek language|Gr.]] στάδιον) to each angle, a word translated in English as "furlong".</ref> which in turn derived from the [[Ancient Greek units of measurement|Greek system]]. For example, the [[King James Version|King James Bible]] 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&nbsp;feet to the ''stadium'', eight ''stadia'' to the mile, and 1½&nbsp;miles to the [[league (unit)|league]]. 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&nbsp;''passus'' (paces, five&nbsp;feet, or double-step).

After the fall of the [[Western Roman Empire]], 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 (unit)|foot]], [[yard]], [[rod (unit)|rod]] (or pole), furlong, and the [[mile]]. The rod was defined as {{frac|5|1|2}}&nbsp;yards or {{frac|16|1|2}}&nbsp;feet, and the mile was eight furlongs, so the definition of the furlong became 40&nbsp;rods and that of the mile became 5,280&nbsp;feet (eight furlongs/mile times 40&nbsp;rods/furlong times {{frac|16|1|2}}&nbsp;feet/rod). The invention of the [[Gunter's chain|measuring chain]] in the 1620s led to the introduction of an intermediate unit of length, the chain of 22&nbsp;yards, being equal to four rods, and to one-tenth of a furlong.

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&nbsp;square Acres." —John Ogilby, Britannia, 1675

The official use of the furlong was abolished in the United Kingdom under the [[Weights and Measures Acts (UK)|Weights and Measures Act]] 1985, an act that also abolished the official use of many other traditional units of measurement.