This item is the latest and greatest. They've only been around since the early nineties, but there are predecessors to this model that were around longer. Not nearly as reliable and not working on the same principle either, which also made them not as trustworthy.
There are instruments/objects out there that can sense individually what this item can sense both of, and people do look at those, but they do not perform my particular item's function. Those items do have "meter" in their names.
OK, here. It looks like no one has gotten what I originally thought I should have smudged out.
The display you see that says; 0' That's read zero feet. Now this item is also used around the world, but zero means zero whether we are talking feet, yards or meters.