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by HighChaparral 638 days ago
The chain makes more sense as being one tenth of a furlong (as still used in horse racing in the US, Great Britain and Ireland!), which is of course one eighth of a mile.

Also, an acre is one furlong long by one chain wide.

Not coincidentally, a cricket pitch is one chain long.

My education was almost all in the metric system but a decent knowledge of the imperial system still makes the world a bit easier to understand.