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A nautical mile is a unit of length used in air, marine, and space navigation, and for the definition of territorial waters. [2] [3] [4] Historically, it was defined as the meridian arc length corresponding to one minute ( 1 / 60 of a degree) of latitude at the equator, so that Earth's polar circumference is very near to 21,600 nautical miles (that is 60 minutes × 360 degrees).
The length of the internationally agreed nautical mile is 1 852 m. The US adopted the international definition in 1954, having previously used the US nautical mile (1 853.248 m). [6] The UK adopted the international nautical mile definition in 1970, having previously used the UK Admiralty nautical mile (6 080 ft or 1 853.184 m).
In the United States, the term statute mile formally refers to the survey mile, [3] but for most purposes, the difference of less than 1 ⁄ 8 inch (3.2 mm) between the survey mile and the international mile (1609.344 metres exactly) is insignificant—one international mile is 0.999 998 US survey miles—so statute mile can be used for either.
Legua nautica (nautical league): Between 1400 and 1600 the Spanish nautical league was equal to four Roman miles of 4,842 feet, making it 19,368 feet (5,903 metres or 3.1876 modern nautical miles). However, the accepted number of Spanish nautical leagues to a degree varied between 14 1/6 to 16 2/3, so in actual practice the length of a Spanish ...
Nautical mile: Length: Rhumb: Angle: The angle between two successive points of the thirty-two point compass (11 degrees 15 minutes) (rare) [1] Shackle: Length: Before 1949, 12.5 fathoms; later 15 fathoms. [2] Toise: Length: Toise was also used for measures of area and volume Twenty-foot equivalent unit or TEU: Volume: Used in connection with ...
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology notes that "The international nautical mile of 1,852 meters (6,076.115 49... feet) was adopted effective July 1, 1954, for use in the United States. The value formerly used in the United States was 6,080.20 feet = 1 nautical (geographical or sea) mile."
Historically, a wide range of units was used for the same type of quantity. In different contexts length was measured in inches, feet, yards, fathoms, rods, chains, furlongs, miles, nautical miles, stadia, leagues, with conversion factors that were not based on power of ten.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology formerly contended that customary area units are defined in terms of the square survey foot, not the square international foot, [17] but from 2023 it states that "although historically defined using the U.S. survey foot, the statute mile can be defined using either definition of the foot, as is ...