Yards to Ken (yd to ken)

1 yard equals 0.50292 ken exactly.

1 yard = 0.50292 ken

How to convert yards to ken

To convert yards to ken, multiply the number of yards by 0.50292. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply ken by 1.988387815 (rounded).

ken = yards × 0.50292

Example: 10 yards = 5.0292 ken.

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

Ken (ken)

JapaneseTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

Six shaku, exactly 20/11 meter (about 1.818 m). The traditional spacing of pillars in Japanese buildings; a tatami mat is half a ken wide in the Nagoya size.

Ken is the Japanese reading of the Chinese character jian, which means room, gap or interval. The name fits its job: the distance between two pillars of a building became a unit of measure, and land surveyors then used it when assessing taxes.

Its size has not always been the same. Under Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the 16th century it was about 1.97 meters, but around 1650 the Tokugawa shogunate shortened it to 1.818 meters, which raised the tax take. Since 1891 it has been exactly six shaku, or 20/11 meter. The longer old measure lives on in the Kyoto room size called kyoma.

Floor plans still lean on the ken. A tatami mat measures one half ken by one ken in the common Nagoya size, and a square ken of floor is a tsubo, about 3.31 square meters. The ken also fixes the length of the bo staff in Japanese martial arts.

1 ken = 1.818181818 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Ken (unit); Wikipedia: Tatami; Wikipedia: Japanese units of measurement

Related conversions

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