Hand (unit) inches for the handsbreadth; Mortimer gives the same, three inches for the Hand's-breadth, and four for the "Handful, or simply, Hand", but adds "The hand among horse-dealers, &c. is four-fingers' breadth, being the fist clenched, whereby the height of a horse is measured", thus equating "hand" with both the palm and the fist. Similarly, Wright's 1831 translation of Buffon mentions "A hand breadth (palmus), the breadth of the four fingers of the hand, or three inches", but the "Encyclopædia Perthensis" of 1816 gives under Palm (4): "A hand, or measure of lengths comprising three inches". Today the hand is used
Link (unit) known remaining application of the link is in the service of some surveying in the United States, which relates then to the definition of the survey foot. During most of its useful life, a modern degree of precision in the link's measure was neither expected nor possible. For historical purpose, though, we can establish three highly accurate conversions to SI equivalents. Link (unit) The link (usually abbreviated as "l.", "li." or "lnk."), sometimes called a Gunter’s link, is a unit of length formerly used in many English-speaking countries. A link is exactly of a foot, or exactly 7.92 inches or