Why is 'C' one foot long?

I've been making penny whistles. One thing I noticed is that a C whistle has a resonating length of almost exactly one foot. I wonder if our chosen pitch for C came from this relationship. Looking around online, all I can find is a small reference on the wikipedia page for organ that says 'a foot here means "sonic-foot", a measure quite close to the English measurement unit'. Hmm.

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