Yards to Toises (yd to toise)

1 yard equals 0.4691549333 toises (rounded).

1 yard = 0.4691549333 toises

How to convert yards to toises

To convert yards to toises, multiply the number of yards by 0.4691549333. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply toises by 2.131492027 (rounded).

toises = yards × 0.4691549333

Example: 10 yards = 4.691549333 toises.

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

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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