You have seen button cards with the sizes indicated in inches and millimeters. No doubt you have seen the letter L followed by a number or the word Ligne. What in the world is a ligne?
In French or German, Ligne means line. It is a unit of measurement applied to the diameter of buttons that predates metric, which was installed in the 18th century as the universal standard of measurement in Europe. In the 9th century, German button makers used ligne to represent a measurement of 1/40th of an inch, more or less. Today, Ligne, a term probably brought over to the US from German immigrants, is the standard measurement for buttons. Strict and precise, a ligne equals exactly 1/40th of an inch of the diameter of a button or a snap.
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