Historic shoes sizes are measured in barleycorns. This is one third of an inch. But a barleycorn... the grain isn't a third of an inch long. It's just what they called the thing they used for shoe sizes because the fundamental rule of clothing sizes is that they must never ever make ANY sense at all. Not even a little.

@futurebird Ah yes, making sense, something that definitely goes on with the *other* imperial measuring units.

Historic shoes sizes are measured in barleycorns. This is one third of an inch. But a barleycorn... the grain isn't a third of an inch long. It's just what they called the thing they used for shoe sizes because the fundamental rule of clothing sizes is that they must never ever make ANY sense at all. Not even a little.

@futurebird and famously, 24 points are one barleycorn.

Points obviously are infinitely thin, so I can only assume that the imperial system ceased to exist.

Historic shoes sizes are measured in barleycorns. This is one third of an inch. But a barleycorn... the grain isn't a third of an inch long. It's just what they called the thing they used for shoe sizes because the fundamental rule of clothing sizes is that they must never ever make ANY sense at all. Not even a little.

Huh! I think of standard shoe sizes being industrial and therefore contemporary with the regularization of UK measurements into inches-feet-miles. No? Who started shoe sizes?

BUT ALSO

while I don’t happen to have any whole barley, I do have literally whole wheat, oats, and rye, and 1/3 of an inch is a reasonable average for the length of the grains.

@futurebird

@clew

where are you getting this massive over-sized barley?

@sophieschmieg @futurebird I thought you were talking about fonts for a moment, like a 12 point font is a half-barleycorn.

Historic shoes sizes are measured in barleycorns. This is one third of an inch. But a barleycorn... the grain isn't a third of an inch long. It's just what they called the thing they used for shoe sizes because the fundamental rule of clothing sizes is that they must never ever make ANY sense at all. Not even a little.

Why is your grain so pawky?

@futurebird

@adriano

When I first heard about barleycorns I thought the person was making it up to make fun of imperial measurements.

What's next? Doormice? Cat whiskers?

@mhoye @futurebird fun fact, it's the same unit. A 12 point font is half a barleycorn in size.

Historic shoes sizes are measured in barleycorns. This is one third of an inch. But a barleycorn... the grain isn't a third of an inch long. It's just what they called the thing they used for shoe sizes because the fundamental rule of clothing sizes is that they must never ever make ANY sense at all. Not even a little.

@futurebird I always like this diagram for explaining these old measurements. And also wondered if the foot ailment of having 'corns' was caused by shoes a barleycorn too small

@Paperposts

Who is Ramsden? WHO is GUNTER?

@futurebird I always like this diagram for explaining these old measurements. And also wondered if the foot ailment of having 'corns' was caused by shoes a barleycorn too small

@futurebird I always like this diagram for explaining these old measurements. And also wondered if the foot ailment of having 'corns' was caused by shoes a barleycorn too small

@Paperposts

If LLMs and AI images didn't exist I'd edit this to add ant themed units and post it about to cause trouble... but ... I don't find that as amusing as I once did.

@Paperposts @futurebird

USAnians and some (mostly older) UKians: that unholy mess covering 90% of the chart

Everyone else: that nice clean single vertical line with a bunch of evenly spaced units ending in “m”