Convert CGS e.m. units to Milliamperes
CGS e.m. unit (CGS e.m.) to Milliampere (mA) electric current conversion — enter any value below to get an instant result, or use the table for common values.
Results from this calculator are estimates provided for general informational purposes only, based on formulas, rates, and standards commonly accepted as of 2026. Figures may differ slightly from other calculators or professional sources due to rounding methods, differing assumptions, or regional regulations, and rules may change over time. Always consult a qualified professional — such as a financial advisor, healthcare provider, or other relevant specialist — before making decisions based on these results.
Result
1 CGS e.m. = 10000 mA
1 CGS e.m. unit = 10000 Milliamperes
1 Milliampere = 0.0001 CGS e.m. units
1 CGS e.m. in every supported unit
Conversion chart: CGS e.m. unit to Milliamperes
Conversion table
| CGS e.m. unit (CGS e.m.) | Milliampere (mA) |
|---|---|
| 0.01 CGS e.m. | 100 mA |
| 0.1 CGS e.m. | 1000 mA |
| 1 CGS e.m. | 10000 mA |
| 2 CGS e.m. | 20000 mA |
| 3 CGS e.m. | 30000 mA |
| 5 CGS e.m. | 50000 mA |
| 10 CGS e.m. | 100000 mA |
| 20 CGS e.m. | 200000 mA |
| 50 CGS e.m. | 500000 mA |
| 100 CGS e.m. | 1000000 mA |
| 1000 CGS e.m. | 10000000 mA |
CGS e.m. unit (CGS e.m.)
Definition: The formal "CGS electromagnetic unit" designation for current, another name for the abampere and biot, equal to exactly 10 amperes.
History: Used in classic international tables of physical units to explicitly flag a quantity as belonging to the electromagnetic (rather than electrostatic) branch of the CGS system, reflecting the careful bookkeeping 19th- and early 20th-century physicists needed when two parallel CGS conventions coexisted.
Current use: Functionally identical to abampere and biot in every calculation; retained today mainly for interpreting older scientific tables and papers that use this explicit labeling convention.
Milliampere (mA)
Definition: The SI submultiple equal to one-thousandth of an ampere, giving electronics engineers a conveniently sized unit for the small currents typical of circuits and components.
History: Adopted alongside the rise of electronics and instrumentation, where currents in the ampere range were rare but currents in the thousandths of an ampere were the everyday norm — from early telegraph and telephone circuits through vacuum-tube electronics to modern integrated circuits.
Current use: The standard unit for battery capacity ratings (milliamp-hours, mAh), small electronic circuit and sensor currents, LED driver currents, and the current draw of low-power microcontrollers and IoT devices.
Supported Units
| Unit | Symbol | In Ampere |
|---|---|---|
| Ampere | A | 1 A |
| Kiloampere | kA | 1000 A |
| Milliampere | mA | 0.001 A |
| Biot | Bi | 10 A |
| Abampere | abA | 10 A |
| EMU of Current | EMU | 10 A |
| Statampere | stA | 3.33564E-10 A |
| ESU of Current | ESU | 3.33564E-10 A |
| CGS e.m. unit | CGS e.m. | 10 A |
| CGS e.s. unit | CGS e.s. | 3.33564E-10 A |
About These Parameters
- Value
- The current value you want to convert, expressed in the "From" unit. Accepts decimals, and can represent anything from a microcontroller's milliampere-level draw to a lightning strike's kiloampere-scale peak current.
- From Unit
- The unit your input value is currently measured in — a modern device spec's ampere or milliampere rating, or a historical figure quoted in biots, abamperes, or another CGS-Gaussian current unit.
- To Unit
- The unit you want the result converted into. Use the swap button to flip From and To instantly, which is handy when translating an older CGS-based figure into the modern SI ampere or vice versa.
How Current Conversion Works
The Formula
Every unit here is defined by a fixed multiplier relative to the ampere. To convert a value from one unit to another:
result = value × (factor of "From" unit ÷ factor of "To" unit)
For CGS e.m. unit → Milliampere: multiply by 10000. For example, 1 CGS e.m. × 10000 = 10000 mA.
From CGS to SI
Before the SI system unified electromagnetic measurement, 19th-century physicists worked with two parallel centimeter-gram-second (CGS) unit families: the electromagnetic system (CGS-EMU), whose current unit was the abampere (also called the biot or "EMU of current"), and the electrostatic system (CGS-ESU), whose current unit was the statampere (also called "ESU of current"). The two families differ enormously in scale — one abampere equals 10 amperes, while one statampere equals only about 3.336×10⁻¹⁰ amperes — because they were built from Coulomb's law and Ampère's force law using different fundamental scaling assumptions, with the ratio between the two systems tracing back to the speed of light. The modern ampere, formally adopted in 1948 and redefined in 2019 via the elementary charge, replaced both CGS conventions with a single coherent, exactly reproducible standard.
Why So Many Names for the Same Value?
Biot, abampere, "EMU of current," and "CGS e.m. unit" are four different historical names that all refer to the exact same 10-ampere quantity, just coined in different contexts — Biot honors the physicist Jean-Baptiste Biot, "abampere" reflects the CGS-EMU "ab-" naming convention shared with abvolt and abohm, and "EMU of current" / "CGS e.m. unit" are the generic labels used in international unit tables to flag the electromagnetic-system current unit explicitly. The same pattern repeats on the electrostatic side with statampere, "ESU of current," and "CGS e.s. unit." Keeping all these historical names in one converter makes it possible to convert any older scientific paper's current figure — however it happens to be labeled — into a modern SI ampere value.
Example
A current of 1 CGS e.m. equals 10000 mA. For scale, a typical USB port supplies around 0.5-3 amperes, a household circuit breaker might trip at 15-20 amperes, and a direct lightning strike can carry a peak current well over 30,000 amperes (30 kiloamperes) for a fraction of a second.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Milliamperes are in 1 CGS e.m. unit?
1 CGS e.m. unit (CGS e.m.) equals exactly 10000 Milliamperes (mA).
What is the difference between ampere and milliampere?
A milliampere is one-thousandth of an ampere (1 mA = 0.001 A). The ampere is the SI base unit used for everyday-scale currents like appliance draw or wiring capacity, while the milliampere is the practical unit for the much smaller currents typical of electronic circuits, sensors, and battery capacity ratings.
Are biot, abampere, and EMU of current really the same unit?
Yes — all three (plus "CGS e.m. unit") are different historical names for the identical CGS-electromagnetic current unit, equal to exactly 10 amperes. They arose from different naming conventions used in 19th- and early 20th-century physics literature rather than representing physically distinct quantities.
Why is the statampere such a tiny fraction of an ampere?
The statampere comes from the CGS electrostatic unit system, built directly from Coulomb's law without the ampere's scaling conventions. The huge size gap between it and the ampere — roughly a factor of 3×10⁹ — traces back to the speed of light, which relates the electrostatic and electromagnetic CGS unit families to each other.
How is the ampere defined today?
Since the 2019 redefinition of the SI, the ampere is defined by fixing the elementary charge at exactly 1.602176634×10⁻¹⁹ coulombs. One ampere is the current corresponding to a flow of exactly 1/(1.602176634×10⁻¹⁹) elementary charges per second — about 6.24×10¹⁸ charges per second — replacing the older force-between-parallel-wires definition used from 1948 to 2019.