Technical Atmospheres to Pascals (at to Pa)

1 technical atmosphere equals 98,066.5 pascals exactly.

How to convert technical atmospheres to pascals

To convert technical atmospheres to pascals, multiply the number of technical atmospheres by 98,066.5. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply pascals by 0.00001019716213 (rounded).

pascals = technical atmospheres × 98,066.5

Example: 10 technical atmospheres = 980,665 pascals.

About these units

Technical Atmosphere (at)

CGS & old metricHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

Exactly 98,066.5 pascals: one kilogram-force per square centimeter. Still seen on gauges in older equipment.

Pressure given as kilograms-force per square centimeter is the technical atmosphere, symbol at. It is fixed by arithmetic rather than by any air measurement: one kilogram-force is 9.80665 newtons and a square centimeter is one ten-thousandth of a square meter, so the unit is exactly 98,066.5 pascals, or 98.0665 kilopascals. Shop-floor shorthand includes kg/cm2, kp/cm2 and, in some older publications, ksc.

It is close to, but not the same as, other familiar pressures. It is about 0.981 bar, roughly 2 percent below a bar, and about 0.9678 of a standard atmosphere. In pounds per square inch it comes to about 14.22. The unit is deprecated and outside SI, yet it lingers because older pressure gauges and equipment, including Soviet-made instruments, are still in service with dials marked in kgf/cm2. NIST conversion tables list it with an exact factor to the pascal.

1 technical atmosphere = 98,066.5 pascals (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Technical atmosphere; NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8 conversion factors; Wikipedia: Kilogram-force

Pascal (Pa)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI unit of pressure: one newton per square meter. A very small unit; atmospheric pressure is about 101,325 Pa.

Blaise Pascal never saw a pascal, because the name was adopted by the 14th CGPM in 1971 for the newton per square meter. He did, however, earn the honor. In 1647 he published experiments on the vacuum, and on 19 September 1648 his brother-in-law Florin Périer carried a mercury barometer up the Puy de Dôme near Clermont, where the column stood at about 23 inches against about 26 at the base. Pascal had reasoned that air pressure should fall with altitude, and the result confirmed it.

One pascal is a tiny pressure, so the unit is mostly met with prefixes. Standard atmospheric pressure is 101,325 Pa, a typical sea-level reading is about 1,013 hPa, and the threshold of hearing in air is taken as a reference pressure of 20 micropascals. Building airtightness tests, in contrast, are run at 50 Pa.

Pascal is also remembered for hydrostatics, where he showed that pressure depends on height difference rather than the weight of the fluid, and for the hydraulic press.

The pascal is the reference unit for pressure on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Pascal (unit); Wikipedia: Blaise Pascal

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