A woodcut of a long row of men standing close together, each foot placed against the next, with a church roof and a castle behind. — Sixteen men line up their feet to make a rod, from Jacob Köbel's book on land measuring.
Image: Unknown woodcutter, sixteen men setting the length of the rod, from Jacob Köbel, Geometrei. Von künstlichem Feldmessen (Frankfurt, 1535 and later editions) · Public domain

A Knaph story

The Story of Measurement

How people learned to say "how long" so that everyone means the same

c. 2560 BCE – today

A golden forearm, sixteen left feet, a metre cut from the Earth and a spacecraft lost at Mars. How people learned that to measure is to compare with something we all know.

A Knaph story

How people learned to say "how long" so that everyone means the same

c. 2560 BCE – today

A golden forearm, sixteen left feet, a metre cut from the Earth and a spacecraft lost at Mars. How people learned that to measure is to compare with something we all know.