Menu
Home
People
Places
Arts
History
Plants & Animals
Science
Life & Culture
Technology
Reference.org
Unified Code for Units of Measure
open-in-new
<p>The Unified Code for Units of Measure (UCUM) is a system of codes for unambiguously representing measurement units. Its primary purpose is machine-to-machine communication rather than communication between humans. UCUM is used by different organizations like <a href="/facts/IEEE/UddC4pUW">IEEE</a>, and standards like <a href="/facts/DICOM/BsEVLh79">DICOM</a>, <a href="/facts/LOINC/EnBoRUWS">LOINC</a>, <a href="/facts/HL7/B4QPUQP0">HL7</a>, and ISO 11240:2012. </p><p>The code set includes all units defined in <a href="/facts/ISO_1000/d8qIgL2Q">ISO 1000</a>, ISO 2955-1983, ANSI X3.50-1986, <a href="/facts/HL7/B4QPUQP0">HL7</a> and ENV 12435, and explicitly and verifiably addresses the naming conflicts and ambiguities in those standards to resolve them. It provides for representations of units in 7 bit <a href="/facts/ASCII/vGUI33Qu">ASCII</a> for machine-to-machine communication, with unambiguous mapping between <a href="/facts/Case-sensitive/VS2eGDmY">case-sensitive</a> and case-insensitive representations. </p><p>A reference <a href="/facts/Open-source/7X9rCdz4">open-source</a> implementation is available as a <a href="/facts/Java_applet/oulP2dyy">Java applet</a>. There is also an <a href="/facts/OSGi/qh2yzbsu">OSGi</a>-based implementation at <a href="/facts/Eclipse_Foundation/dq96nh6j">Eclipse Foundation</a>. </p>