Cable Lengths to Kilometers (cb to km)

1 cable length equals 0.1852 kilometers exactly.

1 cable length = 0.1852 kilometers

How to convert cable lengths to kilometers

To convert cable lengths to kilometers, multiply the number of cable lengths by 0.1852. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply kilometers by 5.399568035 (rounded).

kilometers = cable lengths × 0.1852

Example: 10 cable lengths = 1.852 kilometers.

About these units

Cable Length (cb)

NauticalTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

One tenth of a nautical mile (185.2 m). A traditional nautical measure for short distances between ships.

Before it became a figure on a chart, a cable was simply the thick rope that held a ship at anchor. Ropemakers worked on long covered ropewalks, and the length of the walk limited the longest rope they could lay. By the mid-sixteenth century the usual anchor cable was about 100 fathoms, or 600 feet, so the word turned into a measure of distance. The ropewalk at Chatham Dockyard is a quarter of a mile long, built to turn out standard coils of 120 fathoms.

Mariners found a cable handy for judging short gaps, such as the space between two ships in formation or the distance to a hazard. Because a nautical mile of 6,080 feet divides neatly by ten, the Admiralty tied the cable to a tenth of a sea mile, about 608 feet. The figure used here follows the international nautical mile of 1,852 m, giving 185.2 m. Other definitions differ: a traditional British cable of 100 fathoms is 182.9 m, while the older US Navy cable of 120 fathoms is about 219.5 m. Sources therefore span roughly 169 to 220 m.

1 cable length = 185.2 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Cable length; Wikipedia: Nautical mile

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

Related conversions

See all length units.