Furlong the fundamental unit of land measurement. A furlong was forty rods, an acre four by 40 rods, or four rods by one furlong, and thus 160 square rods. At the time, the Saxons used the North German foot, which was 10 percent longer than the foot of today. When England changed to the shorter foot in the late 13th century, rods and furlongs remained unchanged, since property boundaries were already defined in rods and furlongs. The only thing that changed was the number of feet and yards in a rod or a furlong, and the number of square feet and
Grant Furlong Grant Furlong Robert Grant Furlong (January 4, 1886 – March 19, 1973) was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. Furlong was born in Roscoe, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the State Teachers College in California, Pennsylvania, in 1904 and from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1909. He taught school at Roscoe, PA, in 1904 and 1905, and practiced medicine in Donora, Pennsylvania, from 1910 to 1968. During the First World War, Furlong served as a first lieutenant with the Two Hundred and Eightieth Ambulance Company, Twentieth Division. He served as a burgess of Donora