Lignes to Centimeters (ligne to cm)

1 ligne equals 0.2255829062 centimeters (rounded).

1 ligne = 0.2255829062 centimeters

How to convert lignes to centimeters

To convert lignes to centimeters, multiply the number of lignes by 0.2255829062. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 4.43296.

centimeters = lignes × 0.2255829062

Example: 10 lignes = 2.255829062 centimeters.

About these units

Ligne (ligne)

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

One twelfth of a pouce (about 2.256 mm). The old French line; watchmakers still quote movement sizes in lignes.

Ligne is simply the French word for line, and the unit sat at the bottom of the Paris measuring ladder: twelve lignes made one pouce, and 144 made one pied du roi. Using the figure adopted in the 1799 metric law, in which one metre equals 443.296 lignes, a ligne comes to about 2.2558 millimetres.

Tailors, cabinetmakers and instrument makers of the Ancien Régime used it for fine dimensions that an inch was too coarse to express. A British line of one twelfth of an English inch also existed until 1824, so the two were similar in spirit but not identical, since the French inch was the longer one.

The unit outlived the monarchy in a few trades. French and Swiss watchmakers still describe the size of a movement or case in lignes, written with a triple prime mark, and milliners measure hat ribbon in it. The button trade uses a different ligne of one fortieth of an inch, about 0.635 millimetres, so the context always has to be checked.

1 ligne = 0.002255829062 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Ligne (unit); Wikipedia: Pied du roi; Wikipedia: Traditional French units of measurement

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

Related conversions

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