Measuring Buttons: A Little Bit of History!

Did you know that buttons are traditionally measured in an archaic unit of measurement known as a ligne? My wholesale supplier still uses ligne, a fact which caused me much bemusement when I first started stocking them!

The ligne was used as a unit of measurement in France and elsewhere prior to the adoption of the metric system in the late 18th century, and remained in use in various sciences after that time. According to a French law passed in 1799 (The loi du 19 frimaire an VIII), one metre is equal to exactly 443.296 French lignes.

It was adopted as the unit of measurement of the diameter of buttons by German button makers in the 18th century. They, somewhat bizarrely, defined a ligne as the size of a round wick, folded flat. This was supposedly equivalent to ​1⁄40 of an inch, but since there were several definitions of the inch in the kingdoms and petty states of Germany at that time it was hardly exact!

Apart from its persistence in the world of button making, the ligne is still used today by French and Swiss watchmakers to measure the size of watch movements, and in ribbon manufacture. In hat making it is used to measure the width of men's hatbands and here 1 inch = 11.26 ligne. So now you know!