Thou to Yards (thou to yd)

1 thou equals 0.00002777777778 yards (rounded).

1 thou = 0.00002777777778 yards

How to convert thou to yards

To convert thou to yards, multiply the number of thou by 0.00002777777778. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply yards by 36,000.

yards = thou × 0.00002777777778

Example: 10 thou = 0.0002777777778 yards.

About these units

Thou (thou)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

One thousandth of an inch (0.0254 mm), also called a mil. Used in machining, plastics and the thickness of films and wire.

Machinists say a part is out by a few thou, and the word is a clipping of thousandth, keeping only the first syllable. In North America the same length is often called a mil, which is easy to confuse with a millimetre in international drawings. One thou is a thousandth of an inch, which is exactly 0.0254 mm or 25.4 micrometres, so about 39 of them fit in a millimetre. The word is both singular and plural.

Joseph Whitworth pressed in 1857 for engineers to think in decimal thousandths instead of fractions of an inch, a habit that needed vernier calipers and micrometers to put into practice. Today the unit describes the thickness of paper, foil, wire, plastic sheet and paint films, with a plastic ID card about 30 thou thick. It also appears in older spark-plug gaps, gasket thicknesses and circuit-board geometry. For finer work, a tenth, meaning 0.0001 inch or 2.54 micrometres, is common, and gauge blocks are often given in millionths or in micrometres.

1 thou = 0.0000254 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Thou (unit); Wiktionary: thou

Yard (yd)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

3 feet or 36 inches, exactly 0.9144 meters. Used for sports fields, fabric and short distances in the US and UK.

Yard descends from the Old English gerd or gyrd, meaning a branch, stave or measuring rod. It first appears in the late seventh-century laws of Ine of Wessex, though there it names a tax unit, the yardland. Around 959 to 963 King Edgar ordered that the measure held at Winchester be used throughout his realm, the earliest record of a prototype. A story that Henry I fixed the yard as the distance from his nose to his thumb is later folklore, and the true origin, whether pace, cubit or waist, remains speculative.

Britain defined the Imperial Standard Yard in 1824 as the distance between two marks on a brass rod at 62 degrees Fahrenheit. A fire in 1834 damaged the standard, a replacement was made in 1845, and the Weights and Measures Act 1855 recognized it. The 1959 international agreement then fixed the yard at exactly 0.9144 meter. Today it measures American and Canadian football fields, association football pitches and cricket pitches, appears on UK road signs for short distances, and is still used to sell fabric in the US and UK.

1 yard = 0.9144 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Yard; Wikipedia: Inch; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Related conversions

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