Kilometers to Hectometers (km to hm)

1 kilometer equals 10 hectometers exactly.

1 kilometer = 10 hectometers

How to convert kilometers to hectometers

To convert kilometers to hectometers, multiply the number of kilometers by 10. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply hectometers by 0.1.

hectometers = kilometers × 10

Example: 10 kilometers = 100 hectometers.

About these units

Kilometer (km)

Metric (SI)Current unit

1,000 meters. The standard unit for road distances in most countries.

A name for 1,000 meters took a while to settle. In 1793 France's National Convention made the metre the sole French unit of length, and the first proposed name for the thousand-metre multiple was millaire. Everyday French usage then leaned on the myriametre, 10,000 meters, well into the 1800s. The Netherlands adopted the kilometre in 1817, under the local name mijl, and made it the only official unit of that size in 1867. In 1935 the CIPM dropped the myria- prefix, which left the kilometre as the standard unit for road-scale distances.

Kilo- is the SI prefix for a thousand, and the kilometre is now the preferred unit for land distances in most of the world, with the United States, the United Kingdom and Liberia among those that still use the mile. One kilometre is about 0.621 mile. The main span of Lisbon's 25 de Abril Bridge, at 1.013 km, gives a sense of the scale. Even its pronunciation has been argued over: in 1970 Australia's Metric Conversion Board made stress on the first syllable official, although Prime Minister Gough Whitlam argued for stress on the second. Military slang in several countries calls it a klick.

1 kilometer = 1,000 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Kilometre; Wikipedia: Metric prefix; BIPM: history of the metre

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

See all length units.