Why did (and why do) people use measurements in fractions of an inch?

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As the title says really, I can work with many different measurements (full inches, feet, yards, metres, mm etc ) but I’ve always struggle when it comes to imperial measurements of fractions of an inch. Why did people use this measurement because to me it seems a crazy way to measure something!

In: Engineering

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because that’s what we have? There is, to my knowledge, not a proper imperial unit smaller than an inch, or at least not one that gets used regularly.

Rulers are broken up into sections as small as eighths generally. However again, I have no idea why we still use that system, but for a wide chunk of the population, that is just what is available. I’m sure there is a more concrete/historic reason for it.

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