PASCAL

abbreviation Pa, unit of pressure in the metre-kilogram-second (SI) system. It was named in honour of Blaise Pascal, 17th-century mathematician and physicist. A pascal is a pressure of one newton per square metre; this unit is inconveniently small for many purposes, and the kilopascal (kPa) of 1000 newtons per square metre is more commonly used in engineering work (one pound per square inch equals 6.895 kPa).