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A tape measure or measuring tape is a flexible
ruler A ruler, sometimes called a rule, line gauge, or scale, is a device used in geometry and technical drawing, as well as the engineering and construction industries, to measure distances or draw straight lines. Variants Rulers have long ...
used to measure
length Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Interna ...
or
distance Distance is a numerical or occasionally qualitative measurement of how far apart objects or points are. In physics or everyday usage, distance may refer to a physical length or an estimation based on other criteria (e.g. "two counties over"). ...
. It consists of a ribbon of cloth, plastic, fibre glass, or metal strip with linear measurement markings. It is a common measuring tool. Its design allows for a measure of great length to be easily carried in pocket or toolkit and permits one to measure around curves or corners. Today it is ubiquitous, even appearing in miniature form as a
keychain fob A keychain (also key fob or keyring) is a small ring or chain of metal to which several keys can be attached. The length of a keychain allows an item to be used more easily than if connected directly to a keyring. Some keychains allow one or b ...
, or
novelty item A novelty item or simply novelty is an object which is specifically designed to serve no practical purpose, and is sold for its uniqueness, humor, or simply as something new (hence "novelty", or newness). The term also applies to practical items wi ...
.
Surveyors Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is c ...
use tape measures in lengths of over 100 m.


Types

There are two basic types of tape measures with cases: spring return pocket tape measures and long tape measures. Spring return pocket tape measures will generally fit in a pocket. They are small; the case is up to about three inches across. The tape is returned to the case by a spring mechanism. Pocket tape measures have a tape in length and across. A second tape measure design is what is called the long tape. These are cased tape measures with tapes of 25, 50, 75, 100, 200, 300, and even 500 feet in length, designed for engineers and builders. Because surveying was usually done in rods, surveyors use long tapes of 33 feet (2 rods), and 66 feet (4 rods). Surveyors also used feet of a 50-foot tape for 3 rods and 99 feet of a 100-foot tape measure for 6 rods. Long tapes, instead of being returned by a spring, were usually returned by hand crank. Tape measures are often designed for specific uses or trades. Tapes may have different scales, be made of different materials, and be of different lengths depending on the intended use. Tape measures that were intended for use in
tailoring A tailor is a person who makes or alters clothing, particularly in men's clothing. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the term to the thirteenth century. History Although clothing construction goes back to prehistory, there is evidence of ...
or dressmaking were made from flexible cloth or plastic. They are named "sewing tape". These types of tape measures were mainly used for the measuring of the subject's waist line. Today, measuring tapes made for sewing are made of fiberglass, which does not tear or stretch as easily. Measuring tapes designed for
carpentry Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. Carpenters tr ...
or construction often use a stiff, curved metallic ribbon that can remain stiff and straight when extended, but retracts into a coil for convenient storage. This type of tape measure will have a floating tang or hook on the end to aid measuring. The tang is connected to the tape with loose rivets through oval holes, and can move a distance equal to its thickness, to provide both inside and outside measurements that are accurate. A tape measure of 25 or even 100 feet can wind into a relatively small container. The self-marking tape measure allows the user an accurate one hand measure.


History

The first record of people using a measuring device was by the
Romans Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...
using marked strips of leather, but this was more like a regular ruler than a tape measure. On 6 December 1864 patent #45,372 was issued to William H. Bangs of West Meriden, Connecticut. Bang's rule was the first attempt in the United States to make a spring return pocket tape measure. The tape could be stopped at any point and held by the mechanism. The tape could be returned to the case by sliding a button on the side of the case which then allowed the spring to pull the tape back into the case. The first patented long tape measure in the United States was granted U.S. patent #29,096 issued 10 July 1860 to William H. Paine of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and produced by George M. Eddy and Company of Brooklyn, New York. This tape had no increments on it. It accurately measured only a distance equal to the total length of the tape from beginning to end marker, a brass piece attached to the tape at a measured distance. The measured length was marked on the case or crank. Later, by the early 1870s, Justus Roe of
Patchogue, New York Patchogue (, ) is a village in Suffolk County, New York. The population was 11,798 at the time of the 2010 census. Patchogue is part of the town of Brookhaven, on the south shore of Long Island, adjoining Great South Bay. It is officially known ...
added rivets attaching small brass washers to the tape to mark inches and feet. They were attached every inch in the first and last foot and every foot from one to the end of the last foot. A small brass tag, marked with a number indicating the number of feet to that point, was attached every five feet. This feature was never patented, but Justus Roe and Sons produced tape measures, "Roe Electric Reel Tape Measures", with this feature during the 1890s and early 1900s when they started etching or stamping increments and numbers on the tapes. (The "electric" part of the name was purely an affectation; there was nothing electrical about it.) On 3 January 1922, Hiram A. Farrand received patent #1,402,589 for his concave-convex tape, a major improvement for spring pocket tape measures. Between 1922 and December 1926, Farrand experimented with the help of The Brown Company in
Berlin, New Hampshire Berlin ( ) is a city along the Androscoggin River in Coös County in northern New Hampshire, United States. It is the northernmost city in New Hampshire. The population was 9,425 at the 2020 census, down from 10,051 at the 2010 census. It ...
. It is there Farrand and William Wentworth Brown began mass-producing the tape measure. Their product was later sold to
Stanley Works Stanley Black & Decker, Inc., formerly known as The Stanley Works, is a Fortune 500 American manufacturer of industrial tools and household hardware and provider of security products. Headquartered in the greater Hartford city of New Britain, ...
. It was Farrand's concave-convex tape that went on to become the standard for the majority of pocket tape measure tapes today. In the 1900's certain manufacturers started selling novelty tape measurers with prophecies and fortunes instead of numbers: users could check friends' heights and receive a fortune instead of their number. In 1947, the Swedish engineer Ture Anders Ljungberg began developing an improved version and in 1954 the ''TALmeter'' was introduced. It features edges at both the end of the tape and the mouth to cut marks so measures (including arcs) can be transferred without reading the scale, as well as a fold-out metal tongue at the rear, also with an edge, to be used when taking internal measures. The tape has three scales: the normal metric, the internal scale and a diameter scale used for instance to measure sheet metal to be rolled into a cylinder of a certain diameter. It was produced by his own company T A Ljungberg AB until 2005, when it was bought by Hultafors in 2005, who retained the name "Talmeter" for the product they now refer to as a ''märkmeter'' (marker-meter).


Design

The basic design on which all modern spring tape measures are built can trace its origins back to an 1864 patent by a
Meriden, Connecticut Meriden is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States, located halfway between the regional cities of New Haven and Hartford. In 2020, the population of the city was 60,850.
resident named William H. Bangs Jr. According to the text of his patent, Bang's tape measure was an improvement on other versions previously designed. The spring tape measure has existed in the U.S. since Bang's patent in 1864, but its usage did not become very popular due to the difficulty in communication from one town to another and the expense of the tape measure. In the late 1920s, carpenters began slowly adopting H. A. Farrand's design as the one more commonly used. Farrand's new design was a concave/convex tape made of metal which would stand straight out a distance of four to six feet. This design is the basis for most modern pocket tape measures used today. With the mass production of the
integrated circuit An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny M ...
(IC) the tape measure has also entered into the digital age with the digital tape measure. Some incorporate a digital screen to give measurement readouts in multiple formats. An early patent for this type of measure was published in 1977. There are also other styles of tape measures that have incorporated
laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The firs ...
s and ultrasonic technology to measure the distance of an object with fairly reliable accuracy. Tape measures often have black and red measurements on a yellow background as this is the optimal color combination for readability.


United States

Justus Roe, a surveyor and tape-maker by trade, made the longest tape measure in 1956, at . The Northern Virginia Surveyors Association presented the 600-foot, gold-plated surveyor's tape measure to
Mickey Mantle Mickey Charles Mantle (October 20, 1931 – August 13, 1995), nicknamed "the Commerce Comet" and "the Mick", was an American professional baseball player. Mantle played his entire Major League Baseball (MLB) career (1951–1968) with the New York ...
in 1956. Some tapes sold in the United States have additional marks in the shape of small black diamonds, which appear every . These are used to mark out equal spacing for
joist A joist is a horizontal structural member used in framing to span an open space, often between beams that subsequently transfer loads to vertical members. When incorporated into a floor framing system, joists serve to provide stiffness to the su ...
s (five joists or
trusses A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure. In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so that the assembla ...
per US standard length of building material). Many US tapes also have special markings every , which is a US standard interval for studs in construction. Three spaces of 16 inches make exactly which is the US commercial width of a sheet of
plywood Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...
, gyprock or
particle board Particle board, also known as chipboard or low-density fiberboard, is an engineered wood product manufactured from wood chips and a synthetic resin or other suitable binder, which is pressed and extruded. Particle board is often confused with o ...
. The sale of dual Metric/US Customary scale measuring tapes is slowly becoming common in the United States. For example, in some Walmarts there are Hyper Tough brand tapes available in both US customary units and Metric units. Unlike US rules, of which an overwhelming majority contain both centimeter and inch scales, tape measures are longer and thus traditionally have had scales in both inches and feet & inches. So, the inclusion of a metric scale requires the measuring device either to contain 3 scales of measurement or the elimination of one of the US Customary scales. The use of millimeter only tape measures for housing construction is a part of the US metric building code. This code does not permit the use of centimeters. Millimeters produce whole (integer) numbers, reduce arithmetic errors, thus decreasing wastage due to such errors. The US made measuring tape shown on the right is interesting in that it is a "Reverse Measuring Tape", where the measurements can be read from right to left just as well as they can be read when the tape is used from left to right. Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, Cameroon, India, Kenya, Mauritius, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe all use millimeters only as their unit for building construction. In accord with ISO 2848, the separation between studs is 600 millimeters which has 24 different divisors easing calculation. The metric roll-up tape shown is a millimeter only tape measure. The dual scale tape measure is in both US Customary Inches and Centimeters.


Australia

The building industry was the first major industry grouping in Australia to complete its change to metric, being completed by January 1976. In this the industry was grateful to the SAA (now
Standards Australia Standards Australia is a standards organisation established in 1922 and is recognised through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Australian government as the primary non-government standards development body in Australia. It is a co ...
) for the early production of the Standard AS 1155-1974 "Metric Units for Use in the Construction Industry", which specified the use of millimetres as the small unit for the metrication upgrade. In the adoption of the millimetre as the "small" unit of length for metrication (instead of the centimetre) the Metric Conversion Board leaned heavily on experience in the UK and within the
ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Is ...
, where this decision had already been taken. This was formally stated as follows: "The metric units for linear measurement in building and construction will be the metre (m) and the millimetre (mm), with the kilometre (km) being used where required. This will apply to all sectors of the industry, and the centimetre (cm) shall not be used. … the centimetre should not be used in any calculation and it should never be written down". The logic of using the millimetre in this context was that the metric system had been so designed that there would exist a multiple or submultiple for every use. Decimal fractions would not have to be used. Since the tolerances on building components and building practice would rarely be less than one millimetre, the millimetre became the sub-unit most appropriate to this industry. Because of this, those in the building/construction industry mainly use millimetre only tapes. While dual scale tapes showing both inches and centimetres are sold, these are mainly imported low-cost items (since it would be a restriction of trade to not allow their importation).


United Kingdom

Tape measures sold in the UK often have dual scales for metric and imperial units. Like the American tape measures described above, they also have markings every and .


Canada

Tape measures sold in Canada often have dual scales for metric and imperial units. All tapes in imperial units have markings every , but not at every .
Home construction Home construction or residential construction is the process of constructing a house, apartment building, or similar residential building generally referred to as a ' home' when giving consideration to the people who might now or someday resid ...
in Canada is largely, if not entirely, in imperial measure.


In surveying

Tapes are used in
surveying Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ...
for measuring horizontal, vertical or slope distances. Tapes are issued in various lengths and widths and graduated in a variety of ways. The measuring tapes used for surveying purposes are classified in 4 types according to the material from which they are manufactured: # ''Linen or Cloth Tape'' is made of linen cloth with
brass Brass is an alloy of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn), in proportions which can be varied to achieve different mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties. It is a substitutional alloy: atoms of the two constituents may replace each other wit ...
handle at zero end whose length is included in the tape length. It is very light and handy, but cannot withstand much wear and tear. So it cannot be used for accurate work. It is little used in surveying except for taking subsidiary measurements like offsets. # ''Metallic Tape'' is reinforced with copper wires to prevent stretching or twisting of fibers. They are available in many lengths but tapes of 20 m and 30 m are more commonly used. # ''Steel Tape'' is made of steel ribbon varying in width from 6 mm to 16 mm. It is available in lengths of 1, 2, 10, 30 and 50 meters. It cannot withstand rough usage and should therefore be used with great care. # ''Invar Tape'' is made of
invar Invar, also known generically as FeNi36 (64FeNi in the US), is a nickel– iron alloy notable for its uniquely low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE or α). The name ''Invar'' comes from the word ''invariable'', referring to its relative l ...
, an alloy of
steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant t ...
(64%) and
nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow to ...
(36%). It is 6 mm wide and is available in lengths of 30 m, 50 m and 100 m. It is costly and delicate and should be thus handled with great care.


Accuracy and standardisation

The accuracy of a tape measure is dependent on the ends of the tape and the markings printed onto the tape. The accuracy for the end of a retractable tape measure is dependent on the hook's sliding mechanism and thickness. The
European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...
(EC) has standardised a non-compulsory classification system for certifying tape measure accuracy, with certified tapes falling into one of three classes of accuracy: Classes I, II, and III. For example, under specific conditions the tolerances for 10m long tapes are: * Class I: accurate to ±1.10mm over 10m length * Class II: accurate to ±2.30mm over 10m length * Class III: accurate to ±4.60mm over 10m length If a tape measure has been certified then the class rating is printed onto the tape alongside other symbols including the nominal length of the tape, the year of manufacture, the country of manufacture, and the name of the manufacturer. For retractable tapes, Class I are the most accurate and tend to be the most expensive, while Class II tapes are the most common class available.


References


External links


Various types of measuring tapes and construction materials

Various types of measuring tapes

Commercial Types of measuring tapes
* {{Woodworking Length, distance, or range measuring devices Metalworking measuring instruments Woodworking measuring instruments Sewing equipment Surveying instruments