During the next few centuries it was often not clearly among experts if the barleycorn or the inch should be taken as the standard and which unit should be preferred.
We think this topic needs its own post so we wrote this article that covers all aspects.
That means that light need for one centimeter exactly 3.
Yard by yard, life is hard.
The reason why the anglo-american system is so relevant is because countries like the United States, Canada, Great Britain, etc.
Inch in common language is often used to express that there was just a tiny little bit missing in order to fulfill something.