Egyptian Fingers to Centimeters (digit to cm)
1 Egyptian finger equals 1.875 centimeters exactly.
How to convert Egyptian fingers to centimeters
To convert Egyptian fingers to centimeters, multiply the number of Egyptian fingers by 1.875. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 0.5333333333 (rounded).
centimeters = Egyptian fingers × 1.875
Example: 10 Egyptian fingers = 18.75 centimeters.
Approximate value. Standards for the Egyptian finger varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.
About these units
Egyptian Finger (digit)
One 28th of a royal cubit, about 1.875 cm. The smallest standard division of Egyptian length.
Egyptian length units seem to have begun as parts of the body, and the finger, or digit, is the smallest of them: the width of a finger. Modern writers also call it a fingerbreadth, and the Egyptian word is given as tebā. It was the basic subdivision of the royal cubit, which held 28 fingers, and four fingers made one palm. The figure used here, 1.875 cm, is simply the royal cubit of about 52.5 cm divided by 28.
Because the finger depends on the cubit, it carries the same uncertainty. Surviving cubit rods run from roughly 52.35 to 52.92 cm, which puts a finger anywhere between about 1.87 and 1.89 cm, and Wikipedia's article on Egyptian units quotes about 1.875 cm. The rods themselves were marked in fingers, which let craftsmen and builders read off small distances directly. In modern terms a finger is a little under two centimetres, or about three quarters of an inch.
1 Egyptian finger = 0.01875 meters (approximately).
Sources: Wikipedia: Ancient Egyptian units of measurement; Wikipedia: Cubit
Centimeter (cm)
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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See all length units.