Feet to Toises (ft to toise)

1 foot equals 0.1563849778 toises (rounded).

1 foot = 0.1563849778 toises

How to convert feet to toises

To convert feet to toises, multiply the number of feet by 0.1563849778. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply toises by 6.394476082 (rounded).

toises = feet × 0.1563849778

Example: 10 feet = 1.563849778 toises.

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

Toise (toise)

French (Ancien Régime)Historical unit (no longer in standard use)

Six pieds du roi, about 1.949 m. Used to define the length of the meter: the first metric standard was based on a ratio to the toise.

Latin tensa brachia, meaning outstretched arms, is the root of toise, and the unit began as a fathom-like span of a man's reach. Under the Ancien Régime it was fixed at six pieds du roi, 72 pouces or 864 lignes, which equals about 1.949 metres by the 1799 definition.

Its physical standard was an iron bar set into a wall of the Grand Châtelet in Paris, in place before 1394. After the bar bent, a replacement made in 1667 was about half a percent shorter. In 1735 two new geodetic standards were calibrated against it, and one of them, the Toise of Peru, took part in the Spanish-French Geodesic Mission and became the official standard in 1766.

The toise also shaped the metre. The 1799 metre was defined as 443.296 lignes, or 3 pieds and 11.296 lignes of the Toise of Peru, which matches 13,853 parts of 27,000 of a toise. Later French usage varied: from 1812 to 1840 the customary toise was set to exactly 2 metres, and other countries had their own toises, such as about 1.8 metres in Switzerland.

1 toise = 1.94903631 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Toise; Wikipedia: Pied du roi; Wikipedia: Traditional French units of measurement

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