I think this is due to the French influence on the metric system: in French, the word "mille" means "1000".
> Unfortunately, one has to be cautious of common "technical slang" in an
> international community. Yes, common in US machinist's talk is for a
> 'mil' to equal 0.001 inch. I am not certain of the origin and even
> though I looked it up at Wikipedia, I still don't have any answer to why
> 'thou' is equal to 'mil' (even though I use and understand that unit
> myself).
>
> 73,
> Don W3FPR
>
> On 1/3/2012 12:05 AM, Matt Maguire wrote:
>> Here a "mil" is ovbiously not referring to a millimetre, otherwise the LEDs are sticking up 5cm! So, I did a google search, and discovered that in the Imperial measurement system, it can also refer to one thousandth of an inch (0.0254mm).
>>
>> That means 50 mils = 1.27mm, which makes much more sense. You learn something every day :-)
>>
>>
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