Metre

This giraffe is nearly five metres tall.

The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling) (symbol: m) is the basic unit of length in the SI measurement system. The symbol for the metre is m. The first meaning (in the French Revolution) was one ten-millionth of the distance between the Earth's equator and the North Pole along the Paris meridian. The metre is now defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

In the imperial system of measurement, one yard is 0.9144 metres (after international agreement in 1959), so a metre is very near to 39.37 inches: about 3.281 feet, or 1.0936 yards.

The bar (made of platinum and iridium) that defined the length of a metre until 1960.

Units multiples

References

  1. 1 2 "Historical context of the SI". US Government - National Institute of Standards and Technology.