Having a foot rule in his pocket, he quietly took the dimensions of the hat of the one immediately before him, and it was 16 ½ inches wide and nine ½ inches from the shoulder to the top, the other three being of a similar description.
‘It's the foot rule you want, Sir,’ said Nurse; ‘if I may make so bold.’
When purchasing modern devices across the counter, either foot rules, tape measures or metre sticks, the variations may be as much as .3%.
There runs through all these national systems a certain resemblance in the measures of length; and, if a bundle of rods were made of foot rules, one from every nation, ancient and modern, there would not be a very unreasonable difference in the lengths of the sticks.