Centimeters to Pouces (cm to pouce)

1 centimeter equals 0.3694133333 pouces (rounded).

1 centimeter = 0.3694133333 pouces

How to convert centimeters to pouces

To convert centimeters to pouces, multiply the number of centimeters by 0.3694133333. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply pouces by 2.706994875 (rounded).

pouces = centimeters × 0.3694133333

Example: 10 centimeters = 3.694133333 pouces.

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

Pouce (pouce)

French (Ancien Régime)Historical unit (no longer in standard use)

The old French inch, about 2.707 cm; slightly longer than the English inch.

Pouce means thumb in French, the same body-part logic found in many inch-like units. In the royal system it was one twelfth of the pied du roi, which gives about 27.07 millimetres, or roughly 1.066 English inches. Each pouce was in turn divided into twelve lignes.

Craftsmen, surveyors and builders across France quoted lengths in pieds, pouces and lignes until the metric reforms of the 1790s, and the pouce was the natural unit for small dimensions. Because the French inch was slightly longer than the English one, converting between the two traditions always needs the exact ratio and not a rough equivalence.

The pouce shared the history of the foot it came from. Its size depended on the royal standard, which was an iron toise bar kept in Paris, and that bar was replaced after it was found deformed in 1668. Under the metric law of 1799 it was fixed in relation to the metre, and the same ratio is quoted today.

1 pouce = 0.02706994875 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Pied du roi; Wikipedia: Traditional French units of measurement; Wikipedia: Toise

Related conversions

See all length units.