The question now arises: What was the foot of 12·16 inches which the Hollanders reduced to 11/12 = 11·146 inches? Was it the Olympic foot?
The seafaring Netherlander, to whom the nautical mile and its 1/1000 part = the Olympic fathom, were familiar, would very possibly take its sixth part as their foot, just as the seafaring Greeks had taken it. But landfolk accustomed to the short Roman foot, which is still to be found in the land-measures of Holland, would reduce the longer foot to 11 inches for popular use.
Yet the longer foot has left traces in the Netherlands. The Amsterdam roede of 13 Amsterdam feet is = 12·07 feet, i.e. 12 feet of 12·07 inches. The Amsterdam Ell, = 27·08 inches at present (= 3 spans of 9·023 inches), was, in 1647, according to John Greaves, = 27·216 inches, giving a foot of 12·1 inches, and he gives the Antwerp Ell as = 27·396 inches, which gives an Antwerp foot 12·176 inches, a length very close to that of the Olympic foot of 12·16 inches. There appears to have been a slight shrinkage in the Amsterdam ell.
There are two standards of foot. While the ordinary foot, 1/6 of the Klafter or fathom, is = 12·441 inches, that of the ell (which is 2-1/2 feet) = 12·245 inches. It looks as if the one were increased, and the other equally decreased, from the Rhineland foot, = 12·356 inches.
Here every state, almost every city, had a different standard of length. The foot was generally of Roman type = 11·67 inches, or of a very short type, = about 10·3 inches, referable possibly to half an Egyptian royal cubit, = 20·64 inches, a measure still extant in Egypt. There was usually also a braccio or cloth-ell of 23 to 26 inches, probably of Eastern origin.
In Lombardy the standard was the Luitprandi foot (pié Aliprandi) = 20·28 inches, with a corresponding pertica or rod of 12 _piedi_, usually = 20·23 feet. Legend refers this measure to the foot-length of a giant Lombard king; but it is evidently a cubit, probably a variant of the Egyptian royal cubit, for 2/3 of it gave the Lombard foot, = 13·52 inches; and this, as also the Venetian foot, = 13·69 inches, seems referable to the Egyptian royal foot, = 13·76 inches.
But everywhere and always the people object to a long foot-standard. Whether in ancient Egypt or in modern Italy, they will take a more convenient length; they will halve the cubit so as to get a short foot, or take some span, or some ell divisible into spans. So in Italy there was generally a local foot and also a span. Sometimes the span was 3/4 of the foot, at other times it was a fraction of a braccio or ell; and both foot and span might be called a _palmo_. This term was equivalent to the L. _palmus major_ as distinguished from the ordinary _palmus_ of 4 digits. In Rome there is, or was till recently, a series the same as that of ancient Rome, on the basis of a foot = 11·72 inches, slightly longer than the ancient foot = 11·67 inches; 5 feet made a _passo_, and 1000 _passi_ a mile.