Leagues to Centimeters (lea to cm)

1 league equals 482,803.2 centimeters exactly.

1 league = 482,803.2 centimeters

How to convert leagues to centimeters

To convert leagues to centimeters, multiply the number of leagues by 482,803.2. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 0.000002071237307 (rounded).

centimeters = leagues × 482,803.2

Example: 10 leagues = 4,828,032 centimeters.

About these units

League (lea)

US & ImperialHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

Three statute miles (4.828 km). Said to be roughly the distance a person could walk in an hour; the length varied widely across Europe.

How far can a person walk in an hour? Roughly that question lies behind the league, which may once have approximated the answer. The Romans borrowed the idea from Gaul, calling it the leuga Gallica and fixing it at one and a half Roman miles, about 2.2 km. The word survives in several languages, yet the length it names has been anything from about 2.2 km to nearly 7.9 km depending on the country and the century.

In England the land league was most often three statute miles, which gives 4.83 km, or exactly 4,828.032 m, the figure used here. A medieval chronicle from Battle Abbey instead defined the English leuga as 7,680 feet. French lieues ranged from about 3.25 to 4.68 km, and a metric lieue of 4,000 m was legal from 1812 to 1840. The Spanish legua of about 5.57 km lasted in Latin America, where it also measured land area in early grants in Texas and New Mexico. No country defines it officially today.

1 league = 4,828.032 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: League (unit); Wikipedia: Mile

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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