How do you convert feet to furlongs?
Divide by 660. A furlong is 220 yards, and with 3 feet to the yard that's 660 feet.
1,000 feet comes to about 1.52 furlongs. A mile is 5,280 feet, or 8 furlongs exactly, which is the easiest way to remember it.
The name comes from the length of a furrow in a ploughed field. These days you'll mostly hear it at a racecourse, where a horse is still said to win over 6 furlongs rather than 3,960 feet.
What is a foot?
The foot is an imperial and US unit of length equal to 12 inches, or exactly 30.48 centimeters. It is a third of a yard and 1/5,280 of a mile.
The foot began as the length of a human foot, and so differed from place to place and from person to person. The modern international foot was fixed at exactly 0.3048 meters by agreement in 1959.
People's height is given in feet and inches in the US and UK, and aircraft altitude is given in feet nearly everywhere, metric countries included.
What is a furlong?
A furlong is 220 yards or 660 feet, which is exactly 201.168 meters. It is an eighth of a mile.
The origin of the term "furlong" can be traced back to Old English, where "furh" meant "furrow" and "lang" meant "long." This reflects the historical use of furlongs in measuring the length of a furrow in agricultural fields. In horse racing, furlongs are used to measure the distance between the starting point and the finish line. A racecourse typically consists of multiple furlongs, with the most common distances being 5 furlongs (5/8 of a mile) and 8 furlongs (1 mile).
Outside the racecourse the furlong has almost gone. British racing still gives distances in miles and furlongs, so a mile and a quarter is written 1m 2f. Road signs don't use it – they give miles and, for short distances, yards.