About the Cabinet of Weird Units
The Cabinet of Weird Units is an independent hobby project: a free converter and reference for 223 unusual units of measure, from the furlong and the Royal Egyptian cubit to joke units such as the smoot and the beard-second. It has no sponsor and no connection to any standards body. It is supported by advertising.
Why it exists
Odd units are a good way into history and science. The smoot tells a story about MIT students and a bridge; the barn tells one about wartime physicists; the gas mark tells one about ovens without thermostats. Each unit here gets a page with its value, its history, a few strange facts and the sources behind them, and the converter lets you compare any two units that measure the same thing.
How the units are researched
- Every unit lists its sources on its page: 446 links in total, including 83 to NIST, 8 to the BIPM and 252 to Wikipedia articles, plus agencies such as NASA, dictionaries and research papers.
- 136 of the 223 units have exact definitions, such as the international foot (exactly 0.3048 m). The rest are marked "approximate".
- Units whose size varied by time or place, such as the cubit, the li or the medieval moment, use one stated convention, explained in that unit's history.
- Joke and informal units, such as the smoot, the microcentury or Wales as a unit of area, are described as jokes or informal comparisons in their history.
- The illustrations are artistic impressions, not technical drawings.
How conversions work
Each unit is stored once, as its size in the SI base unit for its category: metres for length, kilograms for mass, seconds for time, and so on. A conversion goes from the first unit to the SI unit and then to the second. Temperature scales also store an offset, because 0 °F is not 0 K. Results are shown to six significant figures, and whole numbers are shown in full. The same code runs the converter and builds every unit page, so the two always agree.
Corrections
If a value or a historical claim looks wrong, check the sources linked on that unit's page first: they are the basis for what the page says. Corrections are made by updating the unit's entry, and the page's "Last updated" date changes when its content does.
Browse all 223 weird units · Open the converter · Privacy policy
Last updated