Arshins to Inches (arshin to in)

1 arshin equals 28 inches exactly.

1 arshin = 28 inches

How to convert arshins to inches

To convert arshins to inches, multiply the number of arshins by 28. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply inches by 0.03571428571 (rounded).

inches = arshins × 28

Example: 10 arshins = 280 inches.

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

Inch (in)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

1/12 of a foot. Defined as exactly 25.4 millimeters since 1959, when the US and Commonwealth countries agreed a common international inch.

Latin uncia, meaning one-twelfth, is the root of both inch and ounce, and it passed into Old English as ynce. Roman measurers divided their foot into twelve unciae, and the English inch kept that twelfth. After 1066 an inch was reckoned as three barleycorns, and a 1324 statute attributed to Edward II spelled out the definition as three grains of barley, dry and round, placed end to end lengthwise. For centuries the inch was simply a twelfth of a foot, or a thirty-sixth of a yard, and the US and UK each kept their own copy of the standard yard.

Those copies differed slightly until the 1959 international agreement fixed the yard at exactly 0.9144 meter, which made the inch exactly 25.4 millimeters. The US adopted it in 1959 and the UK ratified it in 1963, effective 1964. Today the inch is still the customary unit in the United States and Canada, and the UK keeps it on road signs. Worldwide it also names display diagonals, wheel rims, tire codes and pipe sizes.

1 inch = 0.0254 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Inch; Wikipedia: Yard; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

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