Centimeters to Hectometers (cm to hm)

1 centimeter equals 0.0001 hectometers exactly.

1 centimeter = 0.0001 hectometers

How to convert centimeters to hectometers

To convert centimeters to hectometers, multiply the number of centimeters by 0.0001. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply hectometers by 10,000.

hectometers = centimeters × 0.0001

Example: 10 centimeters = 0.001 hectometers.

About these units

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

Hectometer (hm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

100 meters. An official SI unit, rarely used.

Hecto, the prefix for one hundred, dates to 1795 in Wikipedia's table of metric prefixes, which makes the hectometer (hm) a contemporary of the original French system. It equals 100 meters, one tenth of a kilometer, or about 328 feet. English speakers rarely use it, and the Wikipedia article flags even that claim as lacking a citation.

Its best-known appearance is hidden in another word. The hectare is a square hectometer, 10,000 square meters, so every land listing in hectares quietly rests on this length. A football pitch is about one hectometer long, and the Great Pyramid of Giza, at 137.7 m, stands about 1.377 hm high. Military writers have occasionally given target ranges in hectometers, with Wikipedia citing a 1927 Field Artillery Journal among its examples. The unit sits between the decameter at 10 m and the kilometer at 1,000 m.

1 hectometer = 100 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Hectometre; Wikipedia: Metric prefix; NIST: metric (SI) prefixes

Related conversions

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