Arshins to Kilometers (arshin to km)

1 arshin equals 0.0007112 kilometers exactly.

1 arshin = 0.0007112 kilometers

How to convert arshins to kilometers

To convert arshins to kilometers, multiply the number of arshins by 0.0007112. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply kilometers by 1,406.074241 (rounded).

kilometers = arshins × 0.0007112

Example: 10 arshins = 0.007112 kilometers.

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

Kilometer (km)

Metric (SI)Current unit

1,000 meters. The standard unit for road distances in most countries.

A name for 1,000 meters took a while to settle. In 1793 France's National Convention made the metre the sole French unit of length, and the first proposed name for the thousand-metre multiple was millaire. Everyday French usage then leaned on the myriametre, 10,000 meters, well into the 1800s. The Netherlands adopted the kilometre in 1817, under the local name mijl, and made it the only official unit of that size in 1867. In 1935 the CIPM dropped the myria- prefix, which left the kilometre as the standard unit for road-scale distances.

Kilo- is the SI prefix for a thousand, and the kilometre is now the preferred unit for land distances in most of the world, with the United States, the United Kingdom and Liberia among those that still use the mile. One kilometre is about 0.621 mile. The main span of Lisbon's 25 de Abril Bridge, at 1.013 km, gives a sense of the scale. Even its pronunciation has been argued over: in 1970 Australia's Metric Conversion Board made stress on the first syllable official, although Prime Minister Gough Whitlam argued for stress on the second. Military slang in several countries calls it a klick.

1 kilometer = 1,000 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Kilometre; Wikipedia: Metric prefix; BIPM: history of the metre

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