With the establishment of the National Bureau of Standards, NIST s predecessor, in 1901, the United States began the practice of standardizing all the units used in the English system. The second system is the international system of units, commonly called the metric system. The metric system was originally developed in France in 1791. All metric units are calculated in multiples of ten, unlike the English system which has numerous divisions depending on what unit is being used. Below are some common conversion factors and definitions that may be useful.
All numbers appearing in bold type are exact equivalents.
Table of Metric Measurement Prefixes Metric measures are all based on units of ten. The following table shows the various metric measurement prefixes found in the metric system of measurement. Value Prefix Abbrev. To determine how many zeros follow the first digit of a number, use the superscript number. Using these prefixes, one can determine one kilogram is equal to 1,000 grams and 1 decigram equals 100 milligrams.