Yards to Chains (yd to ch)

1 yard equals 0.04545454545 chains (rounded).

1 yard = 0.04545454545 chains

How to convert yards to chains

To convert yards to chains, multiply the number of yards by 0.04545454545. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply chains by 22.

chains = yards × 0.04545454545

Example: 10 yards = 0.4545454545 chains.

About these units

Yard (yd)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

3 feet or 36 inches, exactly 0.9144 meters. Used for sports fields, fabric and short distances in the US and UK.

Yard descends from the Old English gerd or gyrd, meaning a branch, stave or measuring rod. It first appears in the late seventh-century laws of Ine of Wessex, though there it names a tax unit, the yardland. Around 959 to 963 King Edgar ordered that the measure held at Winchester be used throughout his realm, the earliest record of a prototype. A story that Henry I fixed the yard as the distance from his nose to his thumb is later folklore, and the true origin, whether pace, cubit or waist, remains speculative.

Britain defined the Imperial Standard Yard in 1824 as the distance between two marks on a brass rod at 62 degrees Fahrenheit. A fire in 1834 damaged the standard, a replacement was made in 1845, and the Weights and Measures Act 1855 recognized it. The 1959 international agreement then fixed the yard at exactly 0.9144 meter. Today it measures American and Canadian football fields, association football pitches and cricket pitches, appears on UK road signs for short distances, and is still used to sell fabric in the US and UK.

1 yard = 0.9144 meters (exactly).

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

Chain (ch)

US & ImperialTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

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)

Related conversions

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