Re: A weighty subject /nitpicking

[brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>]

At 20:56 10/14/99 -0600,Glenn Knapp wrote:
> ... Back in my old
> Navy days when I was a navigator (actually I got called a "naviguesser" far
> too often) we used nautical miles as our standard distance.  A nautical
> mile is 2 000 yards. .....
> It would have been ever so simple to define a meter as equal to 1 yard.
>
> Glenn

(nit-picking service, courtesy of brian whatcott incorporated)

"On July 1, 1959, the U.S adopted the relation 1 yard = 0.9144 meters...
The value for the nautical mile suggested by the International Hydrographic
Bureau (1929) is 1852 meters exactly. This has since been adopted by most
maritime nations...
It is often called the International Nautical Mile.
 The length of the N.M is consequently 6076.11549 ft approx"

  Bowditch Vol I.


I never noticed how handy an approximation, 2000 yds is.
 The Romans used a metric style of mile, one thousand paces,
but apparently represented a pace as about four feet.

This size of mile (=4000 feet) apparently crept higher as
mariners moved from plane-sailing to great circles with improved
navigational techniques.



brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
Altus OK