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The CSS Chamber of Measures

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CSS-023 · Angles and time

grad

The French Revolution's 400 gradians, kept in the standard out of metric loyalty.

One grad is 1/400 of a turn: the gradian, or gon, that French revolutionaries proposed to decimalize even the angle — one hundred to the right angle, like one hundred centimeters to the meter. It survived in surveyors' theodolites, on a key of scientific calculators and, solemnly, in CSS.

Legitimate uses, close to none — and that is what makes it a museum piece on active duty: every browser in the world accepts rotate: 100grad and turns the element an exact quarter turn, in involuntary homage to 1795.

.esquadro {
  rotate: 100grad;  /* = 90deg */
}
Live demonstration: two top-marked squares, one at 100grad and one at 90deg — the same rotation in two tongues.