Varas to Millimeters (vara to mm)

1 vara (Castilian) equals 835.9 millimeters exactly.

1 vara (Castilian) = 835.9 millimeters

How to convert varas to millimeters

To convert varas to millimeters, multiply the number of varas by 835.9. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply millimeters by 0.001196315349 (rounded).

millimeters = varas × 835.9

Example: 10 varas = 8,359 millimeters.

Approximate value. Standards for the vara (Castilian) varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.

About these units

Vara (Castilian) (vara)

Spanish & PortugueseHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)Approximate value

The Castilian vara, about 83.59 cm (3 pies). Regional varas differed; the Texas vara of 33⅓ inches (84.67 cm) is still found in old land grants.

Vara means rod or staff. The Texas State Historical Association traces the word to a Latin term for a long, straight branch, which became a lance and then the staff of office carried by mayors and judges. Because that staff was used for checking cloth and land, the name passed to the measuring stick and then to the unit itself.

Across Spain the vara varied from city to city, from about 0.77 m in Huesca to roughly 1.56 m in Barcelona. The Castilian standard, fixed by law in 1801 at three pies, is about 835.9 mm, and the figure used here is 0.8359 m. The pie of about 278.6 mm was the base, with the paso equal to five pies and the league defined as 6,666 and two thirds varas.

Spanish settlers carried the unit overseas. California commonly treated the vara as 33 inches, Argentina used about 866 mm, and Texas defined it as 33 and one third inches, or 846.67 mm. Land grants in Texas were surveyed in varas, so deeds from the nineteenth and even the twentieth century still quote them. A vara is a little shorter than a modern yard.

1 vara (Castilian) = 0.8359 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Vara (unit); Texas State Historical Association: Vara; Wikipedia: Spanish customary units

Millimeter (mm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One thousandth of a meter. Used in engineering, manufacturing and rainfall measurement.

Carl Friedrich Gauss put the millimeter at the base of his 1832 proposal for absolute units, pairing it with the milligram and the second, although the centimeter-based CGS system later won out among scientists. The name combines the metric prefix milli-, from the Latin for one thousand, with the meter. Since 1983 a millimeter has been tied to the speed of light: it is the distance light covers in 1/299,792,458,000 of a second.

Millimeters are the language of fine mechanical work. Standard rulers are divided into them, digital calipers commonly read to 0.01 mm, and mechanical pencil leads come in 0.5 and 0.7 mm. Copy paper is about 0.1 mm thick, and a thin hair, at 0.02 to 0.04 mm across, is close to the smallest thing the naked eye can see. A wave with a frequency of 300 GHz has a wavelength of 1 mm. An inch is exactly 25.4 mm. One trap for readers in the United States is that mil there traditionally means a thousandth of an inch, not a millimeter.

1 millimeter = 0.001 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Millimetre; Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

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