Building with hand and foot

Measuring tools are very important in construction if you want a house to be straight and stable. You probably use one of these measuring tools often: a ruler.

A ruler is usually 30 centimeters long. But the Romans, knights, and townspeople didn’t have centimeters and meters yet. People measured with their feet, arms, and hands when building houses. Try it out!

Where did the meter get its length from?

You will find the answer here:

The measurements of millimeter, centimeter, meter and kilometer have only existed in Germany since the year 1872. At the time Germany was newly founded and the emperor found the uniform measurements practical.

Before then different measurements existed. Objects and distances were measured against the lengths of hands, arms (ulna) and feet. Therefore, those ruling could determine how big, for example, a »normal« foot in their country should be.  

This caused great confusion: In Trier, a foot was 31.4 cm long, but in Munich only 29.2 cm. The measuring tools were also different sizes. A master builder from Munich couldn’t build a house in Trier with his Bavarian measuring stick. A „Trierer Elle“ as a unit of length is still embedded in the wall of the Steipe (a local landmark) on the main market square.

In other countries different units of measurement exist to this day: in America, for example, miles, inches and feet.

By the way: units of measurement play a big role in Lego® buildings. It is important for many Lego® builders that their models have the right measurements. This means: if you were to scale up the mini-houses, you would eventually have the building in front of you as it would be in real life.

A scale of 1:500 means that 1 cm of Lego corresponds to 500 cm of real wall.