unit of pressure in the metre-kilogram-second system. (See the International System of Units.) It was named in honour of the French mathematician-physicist Blaise Pascal (Pascal, Blaise) (1623–62). A pascal is a pressure of one newton per square metre; this unit is inconveniently small for many purposes, and the kilopascal (kPa) of 1,000 newtons per square metre is more commonly used in engineering work. (For comparison, one pound per square inch equals 6.895 kPa.)