Picas to Centimeters (pc to cm)

1 pica equals 0.4233333333 centimeters (rounded).

1 pica = 0.4233333333 centimeters

How to convert picas to centimeters

To convert picas to centimeters, multiply the number of picas by 0.4233333333. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 2.362204724 (rounded).

centimeters = picas × 0.4233333333

Example: 10 picas = 4.233333333 centimeters.

About these units

Pica (pc)

Typography & screenCurrent unit

12 points, or one sixth of an inch (4.2333 mm). A printing measure, used in layout software.

Anyone who sets column widths in a layout program meets the pica, a printing measure divided into 12 points. Its size has varied by country. The French cicero equals 12 Didot points, about 4.512 mm. The American pica set by type founders in 1886 is about 4.217 mm (0.16604 inch), and the TeX pica is 400/2409 inch.

The figure used here is the desktop publishing pica, exactly one sixth of an inch or about 4.233 mm, which equals 12 of the 1/72 inch points. NIST lists the computer pica as an exact conversion. Six picas make an inch, and CSS uses the abbreviation pc for it. Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress write measurements as picas and points, so 5p6 means five and a half picas. Designers also count characters per pica to fit text: 11 point Helvetica has about 2.4, so a 30 pica line holds roughly 72 characters. The Wikipedia article does not explain where the name came from.

1 pica = 0.004233333333 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Pica (typography); Wikipedia: Point (typography); NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8

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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