The early yard was divided by the binary method into 2, 4, 8, and 16 parts called the half-yard, span, finger, and nail.
The yard derives its name from the word for a straight branch or rod, although the precise origin of the measure itself is not definitely known.
One postulate was that the yard was derived from the girth of a person's waist, while another claim held that the measure was invented by Henry I of England as being the distance between the tip of his nose and the end of his thumb.
It is based on a unit of length, called the meter (m), and a unit of mass, called the kilogram (kg).
For a long time the yard was held to equal 3600/3937 of a meter; it has since been recalculated so that 1 yd equals 0.9144 m.
In the United States results of geodetic surveys are still expressed in feet based on the former definition of the yard; this is known as the U.S. Survey Foot, defined as 1200/3937 of a meter.
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