Survey Distance Units: A Better Way

The conventional units of surveying distance, the chain and the link, have been in use for about 200 years. Yet, for an important class of survey operations, halving distances, the units become fractional after very few bisections, so that it is impossible to reckon small distances in whole numbers of units. Furthermore, it is recognized that people are loath to adopt new systems of measurements if their units differ conspicuously from the old, familiar ones. The present paper suggests a new system of two units, the new link and the new chain, that are compatible with the old units' magnitudes and that allow much higher accuracy to be expressed solely in terms of integral numbers of units. An additional feature of the new system is a useful binary representation. With the considerable interest in geographic databases and information systems, the ability to compute rapidly with such units is important. The easy binary representation of distance in the new units satisfies this requirement.