Often in fiction, and in any specialized publications you can find the size of the measurement of length - feet. This is how many meters and centimeters we are used to? It is difficult to give a definite answer to this question. The thing is that it (the answer) depends on what kind of foot is meant - English, Roman, Russian or Hamburg.
See how many of these quantities. In general, every more or less advanced country had its own foot.
In order to understand why such a mess occurs, let's just try to figure out what this word means, and then we will find out how many centimeters are in foot.
So, from English this word is translated as a foot, everyone knows it. And what is your foot length? You will say that everyone has different legs, and you will be right. But in ancient times, people did not have at hand anything specific to measure. So they had to use their own body. They measured the length in inches (thumbs), feet (feet), yards.
An interesting story came out with the latter. He was introduced into use by the English king Edgar, who ruled the foggy Albion in 959-975. Without further ado, this monarch decided that one yard equals the distance from the tip of the royal nose to the middle finger of His Royal Majesty's outstretched arm. The will of the king is the law, and so the whole country has moved to a new standard. But Edgar was eternal, and the next monarch had different proportions. I had to change the measure of length. Why are we talking about yards now, if we were talking about how many feet there are? So they are very closely related. One yard contains exactly 3 feet. In turn, the latter contains 12 inches.
Why exactly 12, and not the usual 10? After all, dozens are considered much easier. We have exactly 10 fingers, not twelve.
This, of course, is a completely different story, but also not without its originality. The fact is that 10 is divisible by 2 and 5 only, not counting the unit and itself, of course. But you can divide 12 into 2, and 3, and 4, and 6. Do you feel the difference? That is why the question of whether a foot is how many inches can be confidently answered: "12". And all these divisions and bindings were needed only for one thing - for international trade. If merchants brought Chinese silk to London , they sold it in English feet. And when they brought English cloth to Russia, they were forced to make calculations in Russian length measures.
And foot - how many arshins or even sazhens? But it is necessary to measure.
Today, in connection with general globalization, almost all countries have long switched to SI. Only England opposes of the major powers, but she also unified her favorite foot a little. How much effort was spent to draw a parallel between the metric system and English length measures? A lot, but whether it was worth it, or was it easier to switch to SI for everyone, is a separate issue.
As a result of long disputes and numerous measurements, it is now customary to consider one international foot equal to 0.3048 m. If you need to know the length of the yard, then simply multiply this number by three.
If we take shoe sizes, then the foot length of one foot corresponds to approximately 45.5 Russian size and 47 European.