Sazhens to Centimeters (sazhen to cm)

1 sazhen equals 213.36 centimeters exactly.

1 sazhen = 213.36 centimeters

How to convert sazhens to centimeters

To convert sazhens to centimeters, multiply the number of sazhens by 213.36. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 0.004686914136 (rounded).

centimeters = sazhens × 213.36

Example: 10 sazhens = 2,133.6 centimeters.

About these units

Sazhen (sazhen)

Russian (Imperial)Historical unit (no longer in standard use)

Exactly 7 feet (2.1336 m). The standard Russian fathom, defined by Peter the Great to match the English foot.

Russian builders, surveyors and rope makers measured with the sazhen, a word usually translated as fathom. In its Imperial form it was three arshins, or exactly seven English feet, giving the 2.1336 m used here. The English link comes from Peter the Great, who redefined the Russian units in terms of English inches and feet instead of replacing them.

Older and informal sazhens were looser. The swung sazhen was the span between the fingertips of outstretched arms, about 1.76 m, while the oblique sazhen, measured from a raised hand to the opposite foot, was 3.5 arshins or 2.4892 m. Land area was counted in square sazhens, and the treasury desyatina contained 2,400 of them.

Five hundred sazhens made a verst. Seven English feet is a convenient size to picture, since it is close to a tall doorway, and a sazhen equals about 2.13 m in metric terms.

1 sazhen = 2.1336 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Sazhen; Wikipedia: Obsolete Russian 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

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