Feet to Chō (ft to chō)

1 foot equals 0.002794 chō exactly.

1 foot = 0.002794 chō

How to convert feet to chō

To convert feet to chō, multiply the number of feet by 0.002794. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply chō by 357.9098067 (rounded).

chō = feet × 0.002794

Example: 10 feet = 0.02794 chō.

About these units

Foot (ft)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

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

Chō (chō)

JapaneseTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

60 ken, about 109.09 m. A traditional measure of distance along roads and the length of a block.

Cho is written with a character that also means town or block, and the unit appears under the same name for area, which Japanese Wikipedia notes alongside the length meaning. As a length it equals 60 ken, or 360 shaku, putting it between the ken and the ri.

Under the 1891 law it is exactly 1200/11 meter, about 109.09 meters or 358 feet. Because the ken was longer in the 16th century than after the Tokugawa reduction around 1650, a cho measured in an older document may have been several percent longer, so such figures should be treated as approximate.

Thirty-six cho make one ri, so the cho worked as a convenient step for road distances and field layouts. Today it is a historical and place-name unit: the modern metric replacement is simply about 109 meters, roughly one city block.

1 chō = 109.0909091 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Japanese units of measurement; Japanese Wikipedia: Shakkanho (尺貫法); Wikipedia: Ken (unit)

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