Inches to Barleycorns (in to bc)

1 inch equals 3 barleycorns exactly.

1 inch = 3 barleycorns

How to convert inches to barleycorns

To convert inches to barleycorns, multiply the number of inches by 3. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply barleycorns by 0.3333333333 (rounded).

barleycorns = inches × 3

Example: 10 inches = 30 barleycorns.

About these units

Inch (in)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

1/12 of a foot. Defined as exactly 25.4 millimeters since 1959, when the US and Commonwealth countries agreed a common international inch.

Latin uncia, meaning one-twelfth, is the root of both inch and ounce, and it passed into Old English as ynce. Roman measurers divided their foot into twelve unciae, and the English inch kept that twelfth. After 1066 an inch was reckoned as three barleycorns, and a 1324 statute attributed to Edward II spelled out the definition as three grains of barley, dry and round, placed end to end lengthwise. For centuries the inch was simply a twelfth of a foot, or a thirty-sixth of a yard, and the US and UK each kept their own copy of the standard yard.

Those copies differed slightly until the 1959 international agreement fixed the yard at exactly 0.9144 meter, which made the inch exactly 25.4 millimeters. The US adopted it in 1959 and the UK ratified it in 1963, effective 1964. Today the inch is still the customary unit in the United States and Canada, and the UK keeps it on road signs. Worldwide it also names display diagonals, wheel rims, tire codes and pipe sizes.

1 inch = 0.0254 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Inch; Wikipedia: Yard; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Barleycorn (bc)

Medieval EnglishHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

One third of an inch. A medieval English unit defined as the length of a grain of barley; the origin of the shoe-size increment.

Three dry, round grains of barley laid end to end made an inch, according to an English statute known as the Composition of Yards and Perches, dated about 1300. The idea is older still, since the Welsh Laws of Hywel Dda in the 10th century used a similar rule. A barleycorn is therefore one third of an inch, about 8.47 mm, although Wikipedia's infobox rounds it to 8.46 mm. Wiktionary describes the word simply as a compound of barley and corn, meaning grain.

Real barley kernels range from roughly 4 to 15 mm depending on the cultivar, and older sources put the average near 8.8 mm, so the grain gave a notion of size, not a precise standard. Formal standards were later set by comparison with a reference yard bar, with the barleycorn taken as 1/108 of its length. A line is a quarter of a barleycorn and a poppyseed a quarter or fifth. The unit lives on mainly in shoe sizing in some English-speaking countries, where each size step is one barleycorn.

1 barleycorn = 0.008466666667 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Barleycorn (unit); Wiktionary: barleycorn

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