In article <200112181854.NAA26392@chelseamsl.com>, Donald H Locker
<dhl@chelseamsl.com> writes
>Two notes: Roman Legionaires had regular legs -- a pace is two steps
>(left foot to left foot) so each step was 0.8 yards long.
Ah, very *short* legs!
> The
>calibration procedure involved using a lot of soldiers and taking the
>average pace as the official pace. In any measurement, the error is
>reduced by a factor of the square root of the number of inidividual
>measurements made -- 100 soldiers reduces the error to 10% of the
>error of using one soldier. And Rome had plenty of soldiers to work
>into their average.
Many thanks for a serious answer to a facetious question.
ATB
--
Mike
Michael Hargreave Mawson, author of "Eyewitness in the Crimea"
http://www.greenhillbooks.com/booksheets/eyewitness_in_the_crimea.html
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