Encyclopedia > Geographical mile

  Article Content

Geographical mile

The geographical mile is a unit of length determined by 1 minute of arc along the Earth's equator, approximately equal to 1855 metres (6087.15 international feet).

The unit is not used much; it is closely related to the nautical mile, which was originally determined as 1 minute of arc along a great circle of the Earth and is nowadays defined to be exactly 1852 metres.

The Danish and German geograpical mile (mil and Meile) is 4 minutes of arc, and was defined as 7421.5 metres by the astronomer Ole Rømer of Denmark. In Norway and Sweden, this geograpical mile was only used at sea. See also historical weights and measures.

In France there was also a geographical league, see historical weights and measures.

See mile for the various other miles in use, and also conversion of units.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Indian reservation

... Indian Reservation[?] Gila River Indian Reservation[?] Ak-Chin Indian Community[?] Gila Bend Indian Reservation[?] Havasupai Indian Reservation[?] Hualapai ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 21.7 ms