Chains to Feet (ch to ft)
1 chain equals 66 feet exactly.
How to convert chains to feet
To convert chains to feet, multiply the number of chains by 66. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply feet by 0.01515151515 (rounded).
feet = chains × 66
Example: 10 chains = 660 feet.
About these units
Chain (ch)
22 yards or 66 feet (20.1168 m), also called Gunter's chain. A surveying unit; a cricket pitch is one chain long.
Edmund Gunter, an English mathematician, devised a surveying method in 1620 around a measuring chain of 100 links. Its length of 66 feet was chosen because ten square chains make exactly one acre, so land area could be worked out with simple decimal arithmetic. Surveyors' chains had appeared in Dutch and English sources a few years earlier, but his version gave the chain its standard length and its name. John Ogilby's road atlas Britannia, published in 1675, shows it was widely accepted by then.
The chain equals 22 yards, four rods or exactly 20.1168 m, and 80 chains make a mile. Earlier Scots and Irish chains were longer, at about 74 and 84 feet. American public land surveys from the 1785 Land Ordinance relied on it, and sections are 80 chains on a side. The chain also outlived the surveyor's tool itself: a cricket pitch is one chain between the wickets, British railways still give locations in miles and chains, and fire agencies measure spread in chains per hour.
1 chain = 20.1168 meters (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Chain (unit); NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8 (length conversion factors)
Foot (ft)
12 inches. Defined as exactly 0.3048 meters. Still the standard unit for height, altitude in aviation and room dimensions in the US and UK.
Human anatomy supplied the idea: an adult foot is roughly 15 percent of body height. Ancient cultures turned that into standards, but not the same one. The Greek pous was about 302 mm, the standard Roman pes about 295.7 mm, and a Harappan foot of about 335 mm has been reported from the Indus Valley. Historically, a foot fell somewhere between about 250 and 335 mm. Charlemagne tried to standardize units around 790 with little lasting success, and in 1593 English law fixed the statute mile at 5,280 feet.
The modern foot dates from the 1959 International Yard and Pound Agreement, which defined the yard as exactly 0.9144 meter and so the foot as exactly 0.3048 meter; the UK adopted it on 1 January 1964. The US survey foot, defined in 1893 as 1200/3937 meter, was deprecated on 31 December 2022. Feet remain in everyday use for height and rooms in the US, and ISO shipping containers are defined in them. Aviation altitudes use them too: flight level 330 means 33,000 feet.
1 foot = 0.3048 meters (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Foot (unit); Wikipedia: Mile; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors
Related conversions
- Feet to chains (reverse)
- Chains to meters
- Chains to kilometers
- Chains to centimeters
- Chains to millimeters
- Chains to inches
- Chains to yards
- Chains to miles
- Meters to feet
- Kilometers to feet
- Centimeters to feet
- Millimeters to feet
- Inches to feet
- Yards to feet
- Miles to feet
- Micrometers to feet
- Nanometers to feet
- Nautical miles to feet
- Pixels (CSS) to feet
- Light-years to feet
See all length units.