Every compatriot at least once heard the following words: "arshin", "sazhen", "verst". Everyone knows from childhood that all of the above are measures of length that were used on the territory of the Russian state. But few people know what each of them is equal to and where exactly such names come from.
1. What is a milestone?
For a long time, a verst, or as it was also called - the field, did not have a fixed meaning. They tried to fix this only during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich Quiet, the father of Peter I. The tsar's order then established that one verst should correspond to 1 thousand state fathoms. The first Russian milestones appeared on the road from the Kremlin to the village of Kolomenskoye, where the monarch's summer residence was located. By the way, this is where the expression "Kolomenskaya verst" comes from. It was almost 2 times more than the versts that will be used in the empire later.
Thus, under Alexei Mikhailovich, a verst was 2 kilometers. However, in practice it turned out that the "old" verst is not very convenient in economic activities. Primarily due to the fact that land plots were measured in versts. Already under Alexei, in some regions of the country, the nobility set their own values of 700 and even 500 fathoms versts. This was done not out of malice, but out of practical necessity.
Only the great reformer Peter I finally figured out the mile, who during his reign decided that one mile should be 500 sazhens, which corresponds to 1067 meters.
2. What is a fathom?
Originally, the Russian unit for measuring the fathom was derived from the parameters of the human body. So, for a long time in Russia, there were the concepts of a swing fathom (the distance between the ends of the fingers of the hands apart in different directions - about 170 cm) and oblique fathom (the distance from the toe of the leg out to the side to the fingertips of the hand out to the side is about 2.5 meters). Such measures of measurement were quite suitable for simple measurements, but with the complication of social and economic life, more advanced parameters were required.
So, during the reign of the already mentioned Alexei Mikhailovich Tishaishy, the state fathom was established at the state level. This value had nothing to do with the human body, but was simply equated to the arshins that came into wide use. So, 1 state fathom was equal to 3 arshins.
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Another reform took place during the reign of Emperor Peter I. Then the fathom was equated to 84 English inches, amounting to 2 meters 13.5 centimeters. This happened after the reform of the yardstick.
3. What is an arshin?
The unit of measurement of arshin came to Russia from the east during the invasion of the Tatar-Mongols. In the Golden Horde, as well as in the lands under its control, the arshin was used as one of the units of measurement. In terms of centimeters, the first arshin (as a rule) was 70.9 cm. Of course, in different places the values could be very different. The first legally established arshin appeared in Russia only under Alexei Mikhailovich, who, by his decree, confirmed that 1 arshin should be equal to 16 vershoks, which is 72 cm. This was done to reduce the number of deceptions during trading. The only problem was that the tops were measured by the length of the phalanges of the index finger, and therefore different people got different yardsticks.
Emperor Peter I put an end to the question. In the course of his reforms, it was established that in one Russian arshine there should be 28 English inches, which in turn is 71.12 cm.
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Of course, all the old Russian units of measurement fell out of use with the proliferation of accurate measuring instruments. After the October Revolution of 1917, the new government carried out a reform, within the framework of which the transition to the metric system was carried out. Centimeters, meters, kilometers and much more, familiar to all modern residents of the republics of the former USSR, have appeared in the country.
It is noteworthy that in Europe at that time the metric system had been in use for almost a century, largely thanks to the efforts and reforms of Napoleon Bonaparte.
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A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/080720/55211/