Sthène (sn)

French (Ancien Régime)Historical unit (no longer in standard use)

Exactly 1,000 newtons. The force unit of the old French meter-tonne-second (MTS) system, in use from 1919 until the SI.

1 sthène = 1,000 newtons (exactly).

About the sthène

The word sthène comes from the Ancient Greek sthenos, meaning force or strength. A British Association committee proposed the unit in 1876 under the name funal, and by 1914 it was being called the sthène. France made it legal in 1919 as the force unit of the metre-tonne-second (MTS) system, and a 1920 report in Scientific American Monthly noted the adoption.

One sthène is the force that gives a mass of one tonne an acceleration of one metre per second squared, so it equals exactly 1,000 newtons, or one kilonewton. In older units that is about 101.97 kilograms-force or 224.8 pounds-force. It was meant for engineering work where the newton, or its CGS predecessor the dyne, gave awkwardly small or large numbers.

The Soviet Union also used the MTS system between 1933 and 1955. It was later abandoned in favour of the metre-kilogram-second system and superseded by the SI, in which the same force is simply written as a kilonewton. Related MTS units include the pièze for pressure and the sthène-metre for energy.

Sources: Wikipedia: Sthène; Wikipedia: Metre-tonne-second system of units

Sthène conversion chart

1 sthène expressed in every other force unit:

More French (Ancien Régime) units

• ligne (length)
• pouce (length)
• pied du roi (length)
• toise (length)
• lieue (Paris league) (length)
• arpent (North American) (area)
• degree Réaumur (temperature)
• degree Delisle (temperature)
• poncelet (power)
• pièze (pressure)

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