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(4) Origin of the meter and nautical mileNov 31, 2012

The origin of the meter originates from when France defined the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance between the Earth's equator and the North Pole in 1791. Later on, in 1983 the meter was officially redefined as the distance traveled by light in vacuum during 1/299,792,458th of a second. On the other hand, the origin of the nautical mile originates from the fact that for years it has been used for ship navigation as one minute of arc along any meridian. The length of one nautical mile is calculated as 10.000km/ (90x60) =1.85185km and it is almost equal to its current definition, 1852m. The knot is the unit of speed and is defined as one nautical mile per hour, which is convenient when working with marine charts.
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