HUMAN DIMENSIONS | Meten met Menselijke Maten

Around 1630, the Heer-Huygen-Waert polder was reclaimed, and from the outset, Middenweg formed the central axis of Heerhugowaard. This straight line in the polder served as a ruler and measuring stick for 17th-century surveyors to measure plots, ditches and properties, always in “rods”, “feet” and “mornings”.

From classical antiquity until the introduction of the metre, kilometre and hectare in 1816, the human body was the “measure of all things”. Distances and areas were expressed in “feet”, “cubits”, “inches” and “rods”. One “foot” measured approximately 30 cm and a “rod” was 12 feet. A “morning” was a piece of land that a farmer could plough in one morning, and a distance was expressed in “so many hours of walking”.

Purely physical experiences of space and time in the landscape.

We still use the “foot” as a unit of measurement when we “try something on”. We are hardly familiar with the “rod” as a unit of measurement anymore, but by a happy coincidence, a cyclist covers approximately 12 feet, or one rod, or 3.70 metres, with one turn of the bicycle pedal.

Because Middenweg has become a cycle street, it is very fitting to rename the “rod” as an obsolete unit to the 21st-century “pedal”, a new standard especially for cyclists using Middenweg-Zuid.