Units of measurement

[LarryFine]

One old measure that survives is the "ligne" pronounced as line, and sometimes written thus these days. It is used to denote the size of an oil lamp burner. "a two ligne burner is fine for a nightlight, but reading requires at least a 16 ligne burner. A ligne is one twelfth of an inch.

That makes sense: 12 lignes to the inch; 12 inches to the foot: magnitude of ten.

 

[drcampbell]

Unless you're a surveyor, in which case there are only ten inches to the foot.

 

[LarryFine]

Like there were originally only ten months?

 

[zbang]

I don't recall, did anyone mention the furlong–firkin–fortnight system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFF_system)? A microfortnight is rather close to one second and a millifurlong is almost 8" (or 20cm).

(see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement)