Arshins to Centimeters (arshin to cm)

1 arshin equals 71.12 centimeters exactly.

1 arshin = 71.12 centimeters

How to convert arshins to centimeters

To convert arshins to centimeters, multiply the number of arshins by 71.12. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 0.01406074241 (rounded).

centimeters = arshins × 71.12

Example: 10 arshins = 711.2 centimeters.

About these units

Arshin (arshin)

Russian (Imperial)Historical unit (no longer in standard use)

Exactly 28 inches (71.12 cm). The standard Russian cloth and trade measure until metrication in 1918.

Arshin was the working yardstick of Russian trade, used above all for cloth, ribbon and timber. The word reached Russian from the Turkish world, where a similar unit, the arşın, was the distance from the shoulder to the fingertips, and the Russian version was originally reckoned the same way, as the length of a man's arm. The name also came to mean the measuring rod itself.

Sources from the 16th century describe a Russian arshin of about 27 inches. Under Peter the Great in the 18th century it was fixed at exactly 28 English inches, which is the 71.12 cm used here. Because that definition is tied to the inch, the metric value follows from the 2.54 cm inch and carries no real uncertainty.

Sixteen vershoks make one arshin, and three arshins make a sazhen. Shopkeepers across the empire kept to it until metric weights and measures became compulsory in 1918, and a metre today is a little over 1.4 arshins.

1 arshin = 0.7112 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Arshin (length); Wikipedia: Obsolete Russian units of measurement

Centimeter (cm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One hundredth of a meter. Used for body measurements, clothing and everyday objects.

Scientists, rather than shopkeepers, gave the centimeter its place. In 1832 Carl Friedrich Gauss proposed a system of absolute units built on length, mass and time, choosing the millimeter, milligram and second. In 1873 a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, whose members included James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), recommended the centimeter, gram and second instead. That CGS system dominated physics for decades, until the metre-kilogram-second system replaced it in the mid-twentieth century and led to SI.

CGS units proved awkward for rooms and buildings, which run to hundreds of centimeters, but the centimeter itself never went away. It is still the everyday unit for height, clothing and small objects, and it appears in map scales and rainfall reports. An adult fingernail is roughly one centimeter wide, and a milliliter is defined as exactly one cubic centimeter. An inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters. The CGS system itself survives mainly in theoretical physics and astrophysics, where Gaussian units are still common.

1 centimeter = 0.01 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units; Wikipedia: Centimetre; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

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