Beats Per Minute to Revolutions Per Minute (bpm to rpm)

1 beat per minute equals 1 revolution per minute exactly.

How to convert beats per minute to revolutions per minute

To convert beats per minute to revolutions per minute, multiply the number of beats per minute by 1. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply revolutions per minute by 1.

revolutions per minute = beats per minute × 1

Example: 10 beats per minute = 10 revolutions per minute.

About these units

Beat Per Minute (bpm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One 60th of a hertz. Used for heart rate and music tempo.

Musicians counted beats long before they could count them by the minute. In the Renaissance, performers followed the tactus, a pulse roughly the speed of a heartbeat, and Italian words such as Allegro and Andante took over in the 17th and 18th centuries. Dietrich Winkel built a mechanical metronome in 1814, and Johann Maelzel added a numerical scale and began producing it in 1816. Beethoven was the first notable composer to write metronome markings into his music, doing so in December 1815.

Beats per minute, one sixtieth of a hertz, is now the language of both the concert hall and the clinic. Mechanical metronomes typically cover 40 to 208 bpm, and rough guides place Largo at 40 to 66 and Presto at 168 to 200. For hearts, the American Heart Association gives 60 to 100 bpm as a normal adult resting rate, though a source cited on Wikipedia argues that 50 to 90 fits the evidence better. Trained endurance athletes often sit lower, and the slowest healthy rate on record is listed as 26 bpm, set in 2014.

1 beat per minute = 0.01666666667 hertz (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Metronome; Wikipedia: Tempo; Wikipedia: Heart rate

Revolution Per Minute (rpm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One 60th of a hertz. The unit for engine, motor and turntable speeds.

Records gave rpm its fame. The 78 rpm speed was not chosen for a clear engineering reason; Wikipedia says it apparently happened to be the speed of one of the early machines, and the Gramophone Company formally set it as a recording standard in 1912. Columbia unveiled the 33 and a third rpm LP on 21 June 1948, and RCA Victor released the 45 rpm single in February 1949, starting a period called the War of the Speeds.

One rpm equals one sixtieth of a hertz, so a disc at 60 rpm turns at 1 Hz. The SI does not recognise rpm as a unit, preferring hertz or radians per second, and r/min is the usual symbol in standards. Typical examples are a modern car engine idling at about 750 to 900 rpm, consumer hard drives at 7,500 to 10,000 rpm, power-generation turbines at 3,000 or 3,600 rpm, and uranium centrifuges of the Zippe type at 100,000 rpm or more.

1 revolution per minute = 0.01666666667 hertz (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Revolutions per minute; Wikipedia: Phonograph record

Related conversions

See all frequency units.