Information AboutMile |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT MILE | |
| units of length | |
| imperial units | |
| customary units in the united states | |
| ancient roman geography | |
A mile is a Unit of Length , usually used to measure Distance , in a number of different systems, including Imperial Unit s, United States Customary Units and Norwegian/Swedish Mil . Its size can vary from system to system, but in each is between 1 and 10 Kilometer s. In contemporary English contexts ''mile'' refers to either:
There have been several abbreviations for mile, with and without trailing period: mi, ml, m, M. NIST now uses and recommends "mi", but Miles Per Hour are usually shortened to "mph", "m.p.h." or "MPH" instead of "mi/h". THE ORIGINAL MILE A unit of distance called a ''mile'' was first used by the Romans and denoted a distance of 1000 paces (1 pace is 2 steps, 1000 paces being, in Latin, ''mille passus'') or 5000 Roman feet, and corresponded to about 1480 meters, or 1618 modern yards.Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, page 762 The current definition of a mile as 5,280 feet (as opposed to 5000) dates to the 13th century, and was confirmed by statute in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I ; the change was needed to accommodate the Rod which (as opposed to the mile) was a measure ensconced in legal documents (see the discussion about Furlong s). TYPES OF MILE In modern usage, various distances are referred to as ''miles''. Statute miles The Statute Mile is the distance typically meant when the word ''mile'' is used without other qualifying words (e.g. Nautical Mile, see below). It originates from a Statute of the English parliament in 1592 during the reign of Elizabeth I . This defined the Statute Mile as 5,280 Feet or 1,760 yards; or 63,360 Inch es. The reason for these rather irregular numbers is that 5280 feet is made up of eight Furlong s (the length generally that a furrow was plowed before the horses were turned, furlong = furrow-long). In turn a furlong is 10 chains (a surveyor's chain, used as such until laser rangefinders took over); a chain is 22 yards and a yard is three feet, making up 5280 ft. 22 yards is also the length of a Cricket pitch, a game originating in England and played today particularly in countries that were once part of the British Empire. Before the statute of the English parliament, there was confusion on the length of the "mile". The Irish mile was 2240 yards (6720 ft) and the Scottish mile was the length of the so-called Royal Mile in Edinburgh, from the Castle to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, and was 1976 yards (5928 ft). In England the Roman mile of 5,000 feet was often used, a length not divisible without fractions into furlongs or yards (5000 ft = 1666 2/3 yards). For other "miles" see the list below. In the late 1500s, accurate ground mapping was becoming commonly available, such as Saxton's maps of the English Counties. Therefore, a standard mile became more important than before, hence the Parliamentary Statute. It may also have been related to the potential for taxation, for which a standard measure across the country would be required to prevent regional arguments about length and area.
Nautical miles – the analog of a line in spherical trigonometry – and hence the shortest path connecting two points on the globular surface.]] See Also: Nautical mile The nautical mile was originally defined as 1 Minute of Arc along a Meridian (or in some instances any Great Circle ) of the Earth. Although this distance varies depending on the latitude of the meridian (or great circle) where it is used, on average it is about 6,076 feet (about 1852 M or 1.15 Statute Miles ). The nautical mile per hour is known as the Knot . Navigators use dividers to step off the distance between two points on the map, then place the open dividers against the minutes-of-latitude scale at the edge of the map, and read off the distance in Nautical Miles. Since it is now known that the earth is an ellipsoid ( Spheroid ), not a sphere, the distance of Nautical Miles derived from this method varies from the equator to the poles. For instance, using the WGS84 Ellipsoid, the commonly accepted Earth model for many purposes today, 1 minute of latitude at the WGS84 equator is 6,087 feet and at the poles is 6,067 feet In the United States, the nautical mile was defined in the nineteenth century as 6,080.2 feet (1,853.249 m), whereas in Britain the Admiralty Nautical Mile was defined as 6,080 feet (1,853.184 m) and was approximately one minute of latitude in the latitudes of the south of the UK. Other nations had different definitions of the nautical mile, but it is now internationally defined to be exactly 1,852 metres.
OTHER MILES
SEE ALSO
REFERENCES 'Of Divers Measures' , in ) EXTERNAL LINKS
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