Lignes to Feet (ligne to ft)
1 ligne equals 0.007401013984 feet (rounded).
How to convert lignes to feet
To convert lignes to feet, multiply the number of lignes by 0.007401013984. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply feet by 135.1166208.
feet = lignes × 0.007401013984
Example: 10 lignes = 0.07401013984 feet.
About these units
Ligne (ligne)
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
Foot (ft)
12 inches. Defined as exactly 0.3048 meters. Still the standard unit for height, altitude in aviation and room dimensions in the US and UK.
Human anatomy supplied the idea: an adult foot is roughly 15 percent of body height. Ancient cultures turned that into standards, but not the same one. The Greek pous was about 302 mm, the standard Roman pes about 295.7 mm, and a Harappan foot of about 335 mm has been reported from the Indus Valley. Historically, a foot fell somewhere between about 250 and 335 mm. Charlemagne tried to standardize units around 790 with little lasting success, and in 1593 English law fixed the statute mile at 5,280 feet.
The modern foot dates from the 1959 International Yard and Pound Agreement, which defined the yard as exactly 0.9144 meter and so the foot as exactly 0.3048 meter; the UK adopted it on 1 January 1964. The US survey foot, defined in 1893 as 1200/3937 meter, was deprecated on 31 December 2022. Feet remain in everyday use for height and rooms in the US, and ISO shipping containers are defined in them. Aviation altitudes use them too: flight level 330 means 33,000 feet.
1 foot = 0.3048 meters (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Foot (unit); Wikipedia: Mile; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors
Related conversions
- Feet to lignes (reverse)
- Lignes to meters
- Lignes to kilometers
- Lignes to centimeters
- Lignes to millimeters
- Lignes to inches
- Lignes to yards
- Lignes to miles
- Meters to feet
- Kilometers to feet
- Centimeters to feet
- Millimeters to feet
- Inches to feet
- Yards to feet
- Miles to feet
- Micrometers to feet
- Nanometers to feet
- Nautical miles to feet
- Pixels (CSS) to feet
- Light-years to feet
See all length units.