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66-414: Geographical features include: [REDACTED]  This article incorporates public domain material from "Marble Hills" . Geographic Names Information System . United States Geological Survey . This Ellsworth Land location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Geographic Names Information System The Geographic Names Information System ( GNIS )

132-491: A "Concise" subset of the NGNDB that listed "major features", and a "Historical" subset that included the features that no longer exist. There is no differentiation amongst different types of populated places. In the words of the aforementioned 1986 USACE report, "[a] subdivision having one inhabitant is as significant as a major metropolitan center such as New York City ". In comparing GNIS populated place records with data from

198-568: A 1962 replacement of the "Nigger" racial pejorative for African Americans with "Negro" and a 1974 replacement of the "Jap" racial pejorative for Japanese Americans with "Japanese". In 2015, a cross-reference of the GNIS database against the Racial Slur Database had found 1441 racial slur placenames, every state of the United States having them, with California having 159 and the state with

264-668: A 2008 book on ethnic slurs in U.S. placenames Mark Monmonier of Syracuse University discovered "Niger Hill" in Potter County, Pennsylvania , an erroneous transcription of "Nigger Hill" from a 1938 map, and persuaded the USBGN to change it to "Negro Hill". In November 2021, the United States Secretary of the Interior issued an order instructing that "Squaw" be removed from usage by the U.S. federal government. Prior efforts had included

330-467: A circumference divisible as a whole number into ten long feet. The measures of Iron Age Britain are uncertain and proposed reconstructions such as the Megalithic Yard are controversial. Later Welsh legend credited Dyfnwal Moelmud with the establishment of their units , including a foot of 9 inches. The Belgic or North German foot of 335 mm (13.2 in) was introduced to England either by

396-451: A feature, are also recorded. Each feature receives a permanent, unique feature record identifier, sometimes called the GNIS identifier. The database never removes an entry, "except in cases of obvious duplication." The GNIS was originally designed for four major purposes: to eliminate duplication of effort at various other levels of government that were already compiling geographic data, to provide standardized datasets of geographic data for

462-422: A later phase). Generic designations were given after specific names, so (for examples) Mount Saint Helens was recorded as "Saint Helens, Mount", although cities named Mount Olive , not actually being mountains, would not take "Mount" to be a generic part and would retain their order "Mount Olive". The primary geographic coordinates of features which occupy an area, rather than being a single point feature, were

528-429: A length of ⁠ 1 / 600 ⁠ of a stadion , one stadion being about 181.2 m (594 ft); therefore a foot was, at the time, about 302 mm (11.9 in). Its exact size varied from city to city and could range between 270 mm (10.6 in) and 350 mm (13.8 in), but lengths used for temple construction appear to have been about 295 mm (11.6 in) to 325 mm (12.8 in);

594-618: A measurement of the previous Indian standard of the yard. However, it is now obsolete as the current National Topographic Database of the Survey of India is based on the metric WGS-84 datum , which is also used by the Global Positioning System . An ISO 2848 measure of 3 basic modules (30 cm) is called a " metric foot ", but there were earlier distinct definitions of a metric foot during metrication in France and Germany. In 1799

660-412: A second Alaska file) data from the 1:100000 and 1:250000 scale USGS maps. Map names were recorded exactly as on the maps themselves, with the exceptions for diacritics as with the NGNDB. Unlike the NGNDB, locations were the geographic coördinates of the south-east corner of the given map, except for American Samoa and Guam maps where they were of the north-east cornder. The TMNDB was later renamed

726-453: A small parcel, but becomes significant for mapping, or when the state plane coordinate system (SPCS) is used in the US, because the origin of the system may be hundreds of thousands of feet (hundreds of miles) from the point of interest. Hence the previous definitions continued to be used for surveying in the United States and India for many years, and are denoted survey feet to distinguish them from

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792-449: Is feet . However, the singular form may be used like a plural when it is preceded by a number, as in "he is six foot tall." Historically, the human body has been used to provide the basis for units of length. The foot of an adult European-American male is typically about 15.3% of his height, giving a person of 175 cm (5 ft 9 in) a foot-length of about 268 mm (10.6 in), on average. Archaeologists believe that, in

858-698: Is a database of name and location information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories; the associated states of the Marshall Islands , Federated States of Micronesia , and Palau ; and Antarctica . It is a type of gazetteer . It was developed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) to promote

924-415: Is based upon calculations from surveys of Phase 1 elements at Stonehenge . They found that the underlying diameters of the stone circles had been consistently laid out using multiples of a base unit amounting to 30 long feet , which they calculated to be 1.056 of a modern international foot (thus 12.672 inches or 0.3219 m). Furthermore, this unit is identifiable in the dimensions of some stone lintels at

990-467: Is of no practical significance given the precision of normal surveying measurements over short distances (usually much less than a mile). Out of 50 states and six other jurisdictions, 40 have legislated that surveying measures should be based on the US survey foot, six have legislated that they be made on the basis of the international foot, and ten have not specified. The Indian survey foot is defined as exactly 0.304 7996  m , presumably derived from

1056-443: Is or was human activity" not covered by a more specific feature class), "populated place" (a "place or area with clustered or scattered buildings"), "spring" (a spring ), "lava" (a lava flow , kepula , or other such feature), and "well" (a well ). Mountain features would fall into "ridge", "range", or "summit" classes. A feature class "tank" was sometimes used for lakes, which was problematic in several ways. This feature class

1122-478: Is the only industrialized country that uses the (international) foot in preference to the meter in its commercial, engineering, and standards activities. The foot is legally recognized in the United Kingdom; road distance signs must use imperial units (however, distances on road signs are always marked in miles or yards, not feet; bridge clearances are given in meters as well as feet and inches), while its usage

1188-624: Is widespread among the British public as a measurement of height. The foot is recognized as an alternative expression of length in Canada. Both the UK and Canada have partially metricated their units of measurement. The measurement of altitude in international aviation (the flight level unit) is one of the few areas where the foot is used outside the English-speaking world. The most common plural of foot

1254-481: The toise and in particular the toise de l'Écritoire , the distance between the fingertips of the outstretched arms of a man. The toise has 6 pieds (feet) each of 326.6 mm (12.9 in). He was unsuccessful in introducing a standard unit of length throughout his realm: an analysis of the measurements of Charlieu Abbey shows that during the 9th century the Roman foot of 296.1 mm (11.66 in)

1320-782: The Belgic Celts during their invasions prior to the Romans or by the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th and 6th century. Roman units were introduced following their invasion in AD ;43. Following the Roman withdrawal and Saxon invasions , the Roman foot continued to be used in the construction crafts while the Belgic foot was used for land measurement. Both the Welsh and Belgic feet seem to have been based on multiples of

1386-515: The British Standards Institution 's adoption of a scientific standard inch of 25.4 millimeters in 1930. The IEEE standard symbol for a foot is "ft". In some cases, the foot is denoted by a prime , often approximated by an apostrophe , and the inch by a double prime; for example, 2   feet 4 inches is sometimes denoted 2′   4″. In Imperial units , the foot was defined as ⁠ 1 / 3 ⁠  yard, with

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1452-663: The Confederation of the Rhine was founded and three different reformed feet were defined, all of which were based on the metric system: Prior to the introduction of the metric system, many European cities and countries used the foot, but it varied considerably in length: the voet in Ypres , Belgium, was 273.8 millimeters (10.78   in) while the piede in Venice was 347.73 millimeters (13.690   in). Lists of conversion factors between

1518-543: The Geographic Cell Names database (GCNDB hereafter) in the 1990s. The Generic database was in essence a machine-readable glossary of terms and abbreviations taken from the map sources, with their definitions, grouped into collections of related terms. The National Atlas database was an abridged version of the NGNDB that contained only those entries that were in the index to the USGS National Atlas of

1584-667: The National Institute of Standards and Technology , the National Geodetic Survey , and the United States Department of Commerce deprecated use of the US survey foot and recommended conversion to either the meter or the international foot (0.3048 m). However, the historic relevance of the US survey foot persists, as the Federal Register notes: The date of December 31, 2022, was selected to accompany

1650-690: The Thematic Mapper of the Landsat program , researchers from the University of Connecticut in 2001 discovered that "a significant number" of populated places in Connecticut had no identifiable human settlement in the land use data and were at road intersections. They found that such populated places with no actual settlement often had "Corner" in their names, and hypothesized that either these were historical records or were "cartographic locators". In surveying in

1716-506: The barleycorn , but by as early as 950 the English kings seem to have (ineffectually) ordered measures to be based upon an iron yardstick at Winchester and then London . Henry I was said to have ordered a new standard to be based upon the length of his own arm and, by the c.  1300 Act concerning the Composition of Yards and Perches traditionally credited to Edward I or II ,

1782-540: The 1990s (still including tape and paper) to floppy disc , over FTP , and on CD-ROM . The CD-ROM edition only included the NGNDB, the AGNDB, the GCNDB, and a bibliographic reference database (RDB); but came with database search software that ran on PC DOS (or compatible) version 3.0 or later. The FTP site included extra topical databases: a subset of the NGNDB that only included the records with feature classes for populated places,

1848-450: The City of London and Westminster , which codified the statute mile as comprising 5,280 feet. The differences among the various physical standard yards around the world, revealed by increasingly powerful microscopes , eventually led to the 1959 adoption of the international foot defined in terms of the meter. The international yard and pound agreement of July 1959 defined the length of

1914-561: The GNIS web site and can review the justifications and supporters of the proposals. The usual sources of name change requests are an individual state's board on geographic names, or a county board of governors. This does not always succeed, the State Library of Montana having submitted three large sets of name changes that have not been incorporated into the GNIS database. Conversely, a group of middle school students in Alaska succeeded, with

1980-532: The Greeks and the Romans subdivided the foot into 16 digits , but in later years, the Romans also subdivided the foot into 12 unciae (from which both the English words "inch" and " ounce " are derived). After the fall of the Roman Empire, some Roman traditions were continued but others fell into disuse. In AD 790 Charlemagne attempted to reform the units of measure in his domains. His units of length were based on

2046-464: The NSRS where it is used now and in the past [emphasis added]. In other words, to minimize disruption in the use of U.S. survey foot for existing NSRS coordinate systems, the change will apply only to the modernized NSRS. State legislation is also important for determining the conversion factor to be used for everyday land surveying and real estate transactions, although the difference (two parts per million )

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2112-404: The U.S. Impacts related to the change to international feet will be minimized if a transition occurs concurrently with others [ sic ] changes in the NSRS. ... The difference in timelines will have no effect on users of the existing NSRS (National Spatial Reference System), because NGS ( NOAA 's National Geodetic Survey) will continue to support the U.S. survey foot for components of

2178-460: The United States , with the coördinates published in the latter substituted for the coördinates from the former. The Board on Geographic Names database was a record of investigative work of the USGS Board on Geographic Names ' Domestic Names Committee, and decisions that it had made from 1890 onwards, as well as names that were enshrined by Acts of Congress . Elevation and location data followed

2244-905: The United States, a "Corner" is a corner of the surveyed polygon enclosing an area of land, whose location is, or was (since corners can become "lost" or "obliterated" ), marked in various ways including with trees known as "bearing trees" ("witness trees" in older terminology ) or "corner monuments". From analysing Native American names in the database in order to compile a dictionary, professor William Bright of UCLA observed in 2004 that some GNIS entries are "erroneous; or refer to long-vanished railroad sidings where no one ever lived". Such false classifications have propagated to other geographical information sources, such as incorrectly classified train stations appearing as towns or neighborhoods on Google Maps. The GNIS accepts proposals for new or changed names for U.S. geographical features through The National Map Corps . The general public can make proposals at

2310-570: The broadcasting masts for radio and television stations, civil divisions, regional and historic names, individual buildings, roads, and triangulation station names. The databases were initially available on paper (2 to 3 spiral-bound volumes per state), on microfiche , and on magnetic tape encoded (unless otherwise requested) in EBCDIC with 248-byte fixed-length records in 4960-byte blocks . The feature classes for association with each name included (for examples) "locale" (a "place at which there

2376-426: The coordinates were taken to be those of a primary civic feature such as the city hall or town hall , main public library , main highway intersection, main post office, or central business district regardless of changes over time; these coordinates are called the "primary point". Secondary coordinates were only an aid to locating which topographic map(s) the feature extended across, and were "simply anywhere on

2442-465: The door of a church on a Sunday and bid 16 men to stop, tall ones and small ones, as they happen to pass out when the service is finished; then make them put their left feet one behind the other, and the length thus obtained shall be a right and lawful rood to measure and survey the land with, and the 16th part of it shall be the right and lawful foot. The Neolithic long foot , first proposed by archeologists Mike Parker Pearson and Andrew Chamberlain,

2508-424: The entire United States and that were abridged versions of the data in the other 57: one for the 50,000 most well known populated places and features, and one for most of the populated places. The files were compiled from all of the names to be found on USGS topographic maps, plus data from various state map sources. In phase 1, elevations were recorded in feet only, with no conversion to metric, and only if there

2574-423: The feature and on the topographic map with which it is associated". River sources were determined by the shortest drain, subject to the proximities of other features that were clearly related to the river by their names. The USGS Topographic Map Names database (TMNDB hereafter) was also 57 computer files containing the names of maps: 56 for 1:24000 scale USGS maps as with the NGNDB, the 57th being (rather than

2640-514: The foot is defined as equal to exactly 0.3048 meters. Historically, the "foot" was a part of many local systems of units, including the Greek , Roman , Chinese , French , and English systems. It varied in length from country to country, from city to city, and sometimes from trade to trade. Its length was usually between 250 mm and 335 mm and was generally, but not always, subdivided into 12 inches or 16  digits . The United States

2706-425: The former was close to the size of the Roman foot. The standard Roman foot ( pes ) was normally about 295.7 mm (11.6 in) (97% of today's measurement), but in some provinces, particularly Germania Inferior , the so-called pes Drusianus (foot of Nero Claudius Drusus ) was sometimes used, with a length of about 334 mm (13.1 in). (In reality, this foot predated Drusus.) Originally both

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2772-439: The government and others, to index all of the names found on official U.S. government federal and state maps, and to ensure uniform geographic names for the federal government. Phase 1 lasted from 1978 to 1981, with a precursor pilot project run over the states of Kansas and Colorado in 1976, and produced 5 databases. It excluded several classes of feature because they were better documented in non-USGS maps, including airports,

2838-579: The help of their teachers, a professor of linguistics, and a man who had been conducting a years-long project to collect Native American placenames in the area, in changing the names of several places that they had spotted in class one day and challenged for being racist, including renaming "Negrohead Creek" to an Athabascan name Lochenyatth Creek and "Negrohead Mountain" to Tl'oo Khanishyah Mountain, both of which translate to "grassy tussocks" in Lower Tanana and Gwichʼin respectively. Likewise, in researching

2904-515: The international foot. The United Kingdom was unaffected by this problem, as the retriangulation of Great Britain (1936–62) had been done in meters. In the United States, the foot was defined as 12 inches, with the inch being defined by the Mendenhall Order of 1893 via 39.37 inches = 1 m (making a US foot exactly ⁠ 1200 / 3937 ⁠   meters, approximately 0.304 800 61  m ). On December 31, 2022,

2970-501: The international yard for all purposes through the Weights and Measures Act 1963 , effective January 1, 1964. When the international foot was defined in 1959, a great deal of survey data was already available based on the former definitions, especially in the United States and in India . The small difference between the survey foot and the international foot would not be detectable on a survey of

3036-509: The international yard in the United States and countries of the Commonwealth of Nations as exactly 0.9144 meters . Consequently, since a foot is one third of a yard, the international foot is defined to be equal to exactly 0.3048 meters. This was 2  ppm shorter than the previous US definition and 1.7 ppm longer than the previous British definition. The 1959 agreement concluded a series of step-by-step events, set off in particular by

3102-425: The location of the feature's mouth, or of the approximate center of the area of the feature. Such approximate centers were "eye-balled" estimates by the people performing the digitization, subject to the constraint that centers of areal features were not placed within other features that are inside them. alluvial fans and river deltas counted as mouths for this purpose. For cities and other large populated places,

3168-462: The meter became the official unit of length in France . This was not fully enforced, and in 1812 Napoleon introduced the system of mesures usuelles which restored the traditional French measurements in the retail trade, but redefined them in terms of metric units. The foot, or pied métrique , was defined as one third of a meter. This unit continued in use until 1837. In southwestern Germany in 1806,

3234-484: The modernization of the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS) by NOAA 's National Geodetic Survey (NGS). The reason for associating the deprecation of the U.S. survey foot with the modernization of the NSRS is that the biggest impact of the uniform adoption of the international foot will be for users of the NSRS, due to very large coordinate values currently given in U.S. survey feet in many areas of

3300-708: The most such names being Arizona. One of the two standard reference works for placenames in Arizona is Byrd Howell Granger's 1983 book Arizona's Names: X Marks the Place , which contains many additional names with racial slurs not in the GNIS database. Despite "Nigger" having been removed from federal government use by Stewart Udall , its replacement "Negro" still remained in GNIS names in 2015, as did " Pickaninny ", " Uncle Tom ", and " Jim Crow " and 33 places named "Niggerhead". There were 828 names containing "squaw", including 11 variations on "Squaw Tit" and "Squaw Teat", contrasting with

3366-620: The past, the people of Egypt , India , and Mesopotamia preferred the cubit , while the people of Rome , Greece , and China preferred the foot. Under the Harappan linear measures, Indus cities during the Bronze Age used a foot of 13.2 inches (335 mm) and a cubit of 20.8 inches (528 mm). The Egyptian equivalent of the foot—a measure of four palms or 16 digits—was known as the djeser and has been reconstructed as about 30 cm (11.8 in). The Greek foot ( πούς , pous ) had

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3432-589: The point where a dam is thought to be". The National Geographic Names database (NGNDB hereafter) was originally 57 computer files, one for each state and territory of the United States (except Alaska which got two) plus one for the District of Columbia. The second Alaska file was an earlier database, the Dictionary of Alaska Place Names that had been compiled by the USGS in 1967. A further two files were later added, covering

3498-412: The same rules as for the NGNDB. So too did names with diacritic characters. Phase 2 was broader in scope than phase 1, extending the scope to a much larger set of data sources. It ran from the end of phase 1 and had managed to completely process data from 42 states by 2003, with 4 still underway and the remaining 4 (Alaska, Kentucky, Michigan, and New York) awaiting the initial systematic compilation of

3564-511: The site and in the diameter of the "southern circle" at nearby Durrington Walls . Evidence that this unit was in widespread use across southern Britain is available from the Folkton Drums from Yorkshire ( neolithic artifacts, made from chalk, with circumferences that exactly divide as integers into ten long feet) and a similar object, the Lavant drum , excavated at Lavant , Sussex, again with

3630-455: The sources to use. Many more feature classes were included, including abandoned Native American settlements, ghost towns , railway stations on railway lines that no longer existed, housing developments , shopping centers , and highway rest areas . The actual compilation was outsourced by the U.S. government, state by state, to private entities such as university researchers. The Antarctica Geographic Names database (AGNDB hereafter)

3696-458: The standardization of feature names. Data were collected in two phases. Although a third phase was considered, which would have handled name changes where local usages differed from maps, it was never begun. The database is part of a system that includes topographic map names and bibliographic references. The names of books and historic maps that confirm the feature or place name are cited. Variant names, alternatives to official federal names for

3762-413: The statute foot was a different measure, exactly ⁠ 10 / 11 ⁠ of the old (Belgic) foot. The barleycorn , inch , ell , and yard were likewise shrunk, while rods and furlongs remained the same. The ambiguity over the state of the mile was resolved by the 1593 Act against Converting of Great Houses into Several Tenements and for Restraint of Inmates and Inclosures in and near about

3828-531: The use of "Nipple" in names with non- Native American allusions such as "Susies Nipple". Foot (unit) The foot (standard symbol: ft ) is a unit of length in the British imperial and United States customary systems of measurement . The prime symbol , ′ , is commonly used to represent the foot. In both customary and imperial units, one foot comprises 12  inches , and one yard comprises three feet. Since an international agreement in 1959 ,

3894-408: The various feet in this list ceased to be used when the countries adopted the metric system. The Netherlands and modern Belgium adopted the metric system in 1817, having used the mesures usuelles under Napoleon and the newly formed German Empire adopted the metric system in 1871. The palm (typically 200–280 mm, ie. 7 ⁠ 7 / 8 ⁠ to 11 ⁠ 1 / 32 ⁠ inches)

3960-598: The various units of measure were given in many European reference works including: Many of these standards were peculiar to a particular city, especially in Germany (which, before German unification in 1871, consisted of many kingdoms, principalities, free cities and so on). In many cases the length of the unit was not uniquely fixed: for example, the English foot was stated as 11 pouces 2.6 lignes ( French inches and lines ) by Picard , 11 pouces 3.11 lignes by Maskelyne , and 11 pouces 3 lignes by D'Alembert . Most of

4026-502: The yard being realized as a physical standard (separate from the standard meter). The yard standards of the different Commonwealth countries were periodically compared with one another. The value of the United Kingdom primary standard of the yard was determined in terms of the meter by the National Physical Laboratory in 1964 to be 0.914 3969  m , implying a pre-1959 UK foot of 0.304 7990  m . The UK adopted

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4092-715: Was added in the 1990s and comprised records for BGN-approved names in Antarctica and various off-lying islands such as the South Orkney Islands , the South Shetland Islands , the Balleny Islands , Heard Island , South Georgia , and the South Sandwich Islands . It only contained records for natural features, not for scientific outposts. The media on which one could obtain the databases were extended in

4158-449: Was an actual elevation recorded for the map feature. They were of either the lowest or highest point of the feature, as appropriate. Interpolated elevations, calculated by interpolation between contour lines , were added in phase 2. Names were the official name, except where the name contained diacritic characters that the computer file encodings of the time could not handle (which were in phase 1 marked with an asterisk for update in

4224-545: Was undocumented, and it was (in the words of a 1986 report from the Engineer Topographic Laboratories of the United States Army Corps of Engineers ) "an unreasonable determination", with the likes of Cayuga Lake being labelled a "tank". The USACE report assumed that "tank" meant "reservoir", and observed that often the coordinates of "tanks" were outside of their boundaries and were "possibly at

4290-1381: Was used in many Mediterranean cities instead of the foot. Horace Doursther, whose reference was published in Belgium which had the smallest foot measurements, grouped both units together, while J. F. G. Palaiseau devoted three chapters to units of length: one for linear measures (palms and feet); one for cloth measures (ells); and one for distances traveled (miles and leagues). In Belgium, the words pied (French) and voet (Dutch) would have been used interchangeably. International Standards Organisation (ISO)-defined intermodal containers for efficient global freight/cargo shipping, were defined using feet rather than meters for their leading outside (corner) dimensions. All ISO-standard containers to this day are eight feet wide, and their outer heights and lengths are also primarily defined in, or derived from feet. Quantities of global shipping containers are still primarily counted in Twenty-foot Equivalent Units , or TEUs. Everyday global (civilian) air traffic / aviation continues to be controlled in flight levels (flying altitudes) separated by thousands of feet (although typically read out in hundreds – e.g. flight level 330 actually means 33,000 feet, or about 10 kilometres in altitude). The length of

4356-461: Was used; when it was rebuilt in the 10th century, a foot of about 320 mm (12.6 in) was used. At the same time, monastic buildings used the Carolingian foot of 340 mm (13.4 in). The procedure for verification of the foot as described in the 16th century posthumously published work by Jacob Köbel in his book Geometrei. Von künstlichem Feldmessen und absehen is: Stand at

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