nine spans tall?

Wikipedia had a diagram to compare several hand derived units of length

THE HAND=this is the unit shown as 2 on the diagram. Its the width across the palm and includes the thumb (this has been standardized for horse measure at 4 English inches)

THE SPAN=This is the unit shown as 4 on the diagram and is measured as the length across the outstretched hand from the tip of the little finger to th tip of the thumb. This too has been standardized to be (I believe) 9 inches and is used much for wooden boat construction.

Thanks.
But "enormous heigh = nine spans tall" cannot hold water according to this.

If a span is 9 inches, that would make his height 81 inches, oristar.

12 inches in a foot. 2.54 centimetres in an inch.

So what's that?

(Gets pen) More than 205 centimetres?

I need a calculator how embarrassing.

(Finds a conversion table)

So that's 2.05740 metres.

That's pretty tall to me,

Joe (less than 5 feet 4 inches) Blow.

A man nine spans tall, if a span were nine inches, would be six feet, nine inches tall. That's enough to qualify as enormous.

If you play your cards right, and work really hard, it's enough to get a career as a forward in the NBA, too.

Thank you.
And thank Set, too.