In 1884 the British Association for the Advancement of Science adopted a thread form and series, primarily for use in precision equipment. It was inspired by one used in the Swiss watch and clock industry, and was formerly sometimes called the Swiss Small Screw Thread System; but is now just referred to as the BA series. Like the Whitworth thread, it has a rounded root and crest, but the included angle is 47.5° and the radius was originally 2/11 (0.1818…) times the pitch, but at some later point was changed to 0.18083.


Despite the date of origin and the British sponsorship, the BA is a metric series. Not only is it based on the meter, but the thread frequency is specified in terms of round numbers in the pitch sequence, with threads per meter allowed to fall where it may.

The British Association thread played a role similar to that of the ASME series in the United States, that is, it filled in sizes below a quarter-inch. The sizes most used were the even-numbered ones between 0 and 10, inclusive. The very small sizes, from 17 up, were rarely used. The British Standards Institution (BSI) discouraged the use of #0 BA in favor of the 7⁄32″ BSF.

The BSI recommended this series replace the BSW and BSF series for all screws smaller than ¼ inch, and deprecated the use of the odd-numbered gages. The ¼ inch BSF was retained and the 0 gage BA discontinued (the two were too easily confused).

In 1966 the BSI declared the BA screw thread obsolete; its place was taken by ISO screw threads.