Liter (L) Conversions
The litre (British and Commonwealth spelling) or liter (American spelling), (SI symbols L) is a metric unit of volume. The original French metric system used the litre as a base unit. The word litre is derived from an older French unit, the litron, whose name came from Greek—where it was a unit of weight, not volume.
One litre of liquid water has a mass of almost exactly one kilogram, because the kilogram was originally defined in 1795 as the mass of one cubic decimetre of water at the temperature of melting ice (0 °C). Subsequent redefinitions of the metre and kilogram mean that this relationship is no longer exact.
History
The first name of the litre was "cadil"; standards are shown at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris.
The litre was introduced in France in 1795 as one of the new "republican units of measurement" and defined as one cubic decimetre. One litre of liquid water has a mass of almost exactly one kilogram, due to the gram being defined in 1795 as one cubic centimetre of water at the temperature of melting ice. The original decimetre length was 44.344 lignes, which was revised in 1798 to 44.3296 lignes. This made the original litre 1.000974 of today's cubic decimetre. It was against this litre that the kilogram was constructed.