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Length/Distance | Convert from palmo [Spanish] to gry |
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Common Length Conversions Metric Length Conversions Unit Definition (palmo [Spanish]) The palmo is a traditional unit of distance in Spain and Portugal. The traditional Spanish palmo equals 9 pulgadas or 1/4 vara: this is about 20.9 centimeters in Spain and a little more than that in Spanish Latin America. Under the metric system in Spain, the palmo is an informal unit equal to 20 centimeters. These units are based on the width of a person's outstretched hand, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger, a definition identical to that of the English span. Unit Definition (gry) The gry is a proposed unit of distance in the English traditional system. The name was first used in June 1679 by the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) as a unit equal to 0.001 foot, 0.01 inch, or 0.1 line in a decimalized distance system. (Thomas Jefferson, who was very familiar with Locke's writings, later proposed a similar system in the U.S., but he called 0.001 foot a point rather than a gry.) In 1813, the gry was revived in another decimal measurement scheme in Britain. All these ideas failed, but the gry had some limited use in the nineteenth century as a unit equal to 0.1 line or 1/120 inch (0.211 667 millimeter). Long forgotten, the gry recently came back into the limelight in connection with a puzzle, circulating on the Internet, which asked for three English words ending in -gry. The word "gry" is from the ancient Greek, where it meant "a trifling amount".
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