Cubits to Centimeters (cbt to cm)

1 cubit equals 45.72 centimeters exactly.

1 cubit = 45.72 centimeters

How to convert cubits to centimeters

To convert cubits to centimeters, multiply the number of cubits by 45.72. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 0.02187226597 (rounded).

centimeters = cubits × 45.72

Example: 10 cubits = 457.2 centimeters.

Approximate value. Standards for the cubit varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.

About these units

Cubit (cbt)

Medieval EnglishHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)Approximate value

Traditionally the length from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. The common English cubit is taken as 18 inches (45.72 cm); ancient cubits ranged from about 44 to 53 cm.

From the Latin cubitum, meaning elbow, the cubit was the forearm measured from the elbow to the fingertips. English use tied it to roughly 18 inches, or 45.72 cm. Such a hand-and-arm measure is the same idea that produced the ell, which Wikipedia describes as originally a cubit.

No single value ever governed it. Wikipedia lists most ancient cubits between 44.4 and 52.92 cm, from the Roman cubitus of about 444 mm, which Vitruvius set at one and a half Roman feet, to the Egyptian royal cubit near 523 to 529 mm. Medieval Islamic cubits ranged far wider still.

The English ell eventually settled at 45 inches, one and a quarter yards, while the cubit faded from commerce. A trace survives in hedgelaying, where a forearm of about 18 inches sets the spacing of stakes. The figure used here is the 18 inch English cubit.

1 cubit = 0.4572 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Cubit; Wikipedia: Ell

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

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