A metric unit of volume equal to one hundred steres, used to measure large quantities of wood or other materials.
From French 'hectostère,' combining 'hecto-' (hundred) and 'stère' (a unit of volume equal to one cubic meter). The stère was adopted in France for timber measurement in the early 19th century.
The hectostere shows how the metric system tried to revolutionize measurement—including weird-sounding units for specific industries. You'll rarely hear it now because forestry switched to simpler measurements, but it's a fossil of 19th-century standardization efforts.
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