Links to Meters (li to m)

1 link equals 0.201168 meters exactly.

1 link = 0.201168 meters

How to convert links to meters

To convert links to meters, multiply the number of links by 0.201168. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply meters by 4.970969538 (rounded).

meters = links × 0.201168

Example: 10 links = 2.01168 meters.

About these units

Link (li)

US & ImperialTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

One hundredth of a chain, 7.92 inches (0.201168 m). A surveying unit, one link of Gunter's chain.

Each link is the small piece that makes up a surveyor's chain, and the chain's hundred links gave decimal fractions to a system built on feet and yards. A single link measures 7.92 inches, or exactly 0.201168 m, because it is one hundredth of a 66-foot chain. Because of that, distances could be recorded in whole chains and links without fractions.

Edmund Gunter introduced the 100-link chain in England in 1620, and the link spread across the English-speaking world with it. Twenty-five links make a rod, 1,000 make a furlong and 8,000 make a mile. The exact size depends on which foot is used: the pre-1959 imperial foot gives about 201.1677 mm, the US survey foot about 201.1684 mm, and the international foot exactly 201.168 mm. Since the US survey foot was retired after 2022, the international value applies there too. Metric and electronic surveying replaced links in the twentieth century, though old deeds still use them.

1 link = 0.201168 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Link (unit); Wikipedia: Chain (unit)

Meter (m)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI base unit of length. Since 1983 it is defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

Meter comes from the Greek metron, a measure. In 1791 the French National Assembly defined it as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle through Paris, after rejecting the length of a seconds pendulum because that length changes with local gravity. The surveyors Delambre and Méchain measured the meridian arc, and in 1799 a platinum bar known as the Mètre des Archives became the physical standard. NIST notes that this Earth-based meter turned out to be about 0.2 mm shorter than the true pole-to-equator fraction it was meant to represent.

The 1875 Treaty of the Meter created the CGPM and the BIPM to look after common standards, and in 1889 a platinum-iridium prototype bar took over; the original is still kept at the BIPM. In 1960 the meter was tied to 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of an orange-red krypton-86 line, and in 1983 to the speed of light, which made length a quantity derived from the time standard. The 2018 revision reworded that definition without changing the meter's size. NIST offers a handy yardstick for scale: a pace, meaning two steps, is roughly a meter or a yard.

The meter is the reference unit for length on this site.

Sources: BIPM: history of the metre; NIST: the meter and the SI redefinition; Wikipedia: Metre

Related conversions

See all length units.