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Historical definition – 1 nautical mile

Visual comparison of a kilometre, statute mile, and nautical mile

A nautical mile is a unit of measurement used in both air and marine navigation,^[2] and for the definition of territorial waters.^[3] Historically, it was defined as one minute (1/60) of a degree of latitude. Today it is defined as exactly 1852 metres. The derived unit of speed is the knot, one nautical mile per hour.

Unit symbol

There is no single internationally agreed symbol.^[1]

• 
  M is used as the abbreviation for the nautical mile by the International Hydrographic Organization^[4] and by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures.^[1]
  


• 
  NM is used by the International Civil Aviation Organization.^[5][6]
  


• 
  nm (the SI symbol for the nanometre) is used by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.^[7]
  


• 
  nmi is used by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers^[8] and the United States Government Publishing Office.^[9]
  


• 
  nq (from the French word nautique) is used by the French Navy in the ship's logs.

While using M itself, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures recognises that NM, Nm and nmi are also in use.^[1]

History

The word mile is from the Latin word for a thousand paces: mille passus. Navigation at sea was done by eye^[10] until around 1500 when navigational instruments were developed and cartographers began using a coordinate system with parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude.

In 1617 the Dutch scientist Willebrord Snell assessed the circumference of the Earth at 24,630 Roman miles (24,024 statute miles). Around that time British mathematician Edmund Gunter improved navigational tools including a new quadrant to determine latitude at sea. He reasoned that the lines of latitude could be used as the basis for a unit of measurement for distance and proposed the nautical mile as one minute or one-sixtieth (1/60) of one degree of latitude. As one degree is 1/360 of a circle, one minute of arc is 1/21600 of a circle (or, in radians, π/10800). These sexagesimal (base 60) units originated in Babylonian astronomy. Gunter used Snell's circumference to define a nautical mile as 6,080 feet, the length of one minute of arc at 48 degrees latitude. Since the earth is not a perfect sphere but is an oblate spheroid with slightly flattened poles, a minute of latitude is not constant, but about 1861 metres at the poles and 1843 metres at the Equator,^[1] with a mean value of 1852.3 metres. France^[11] and other countries measured the minute of arc at 45 degrees latitude, making the nautical mile 1852 metres.^[10]

The Admiralty measured mile, or British nautical mile, 6,080 feet, was derived from the Admiralty knot, 6,080 imperial feet per hour. The U.S. nautical mile was 6,080.20 feet, based in the Mendenhall Order foot of 1893.

In 1929, the international nautical mile was defined by the First International Extraordinary Hydrographic Conference in Monaco as exactly 1,852 metres.^[1] The United States did not adopt the international nautical mile until 1954.^[12] Britain adopted it in 1970, and references to the obsolete unit are converted to 1853 metres.^[13]

Similar definitions

The metre was originally defined as ​¹⁄_10000000 of the meridian arc from the North pole to the equator passing through Dunkirk. The Earth's circumference is therefore approximately 40,000 km. The equatorial circumference is slightly longer than the polar circumference – the measurement based on this (40,075.017 km × 1/60 × 1/360 = 1855.3 metres is known as the geographical mile.

See also

• Conversion of units


• Orders of magnitude (length)

References