Centimeter (cm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

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

1 centimeter = 0.01 meters (exactly).

About the centimeter

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.

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

Centimeter conversion chart

1 centimeter expressed in every other length unit:

More Metric (SI) units

• meter (length)
• kilometer (length)
• millimeter (length)
• micrometer (length)
• nanometer (length)
• picometer (length)
• decimeter (length)
• hectometer (length)
• decameter (length)
• kilogram (weight & mass)
• gram (weight & mass)
• milligram (weight & mass)
• microgram (weight & mass)
• metric ton (weight & mass)
• quintal (weight & mass)
• carat (weight & mass)

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