How many kilometers in a mile? This question 250-300 years ago would have baffled not only an experienced traveler, but also a scientist. What mile? And what is a kilometer?
The word "mile" comes from the Roman milia passum, that is, a thousand steps. The Romans denoted the distance as a thousand double steps of a legionnaire. The need to measure the length, and not only of the road, but also of individual objects, has always been with people. The distance was tied to the flight of an arrow, and to a daytime march, and even to pipes - that is, while walking, you smoke a certain number of pipes.
The names of measures of length associated with the name of body parts were especially popular. This, for example, is an elbow - 0.5 meters, a span - about 20 cm, a foot - about 30 cm. The latter is translated from English as "step, leg." Obviously, such a system is rather inconvenient. After all, the legs, arms, and steps of all people are of different lengths.
By the end of the nineteenth century, there were over forty different miles in Europe to measure distance on land. The answer to the question of how muchkilometers per mile varied greatly even in neighboring countries.
The Roman mile, according to various sources, was 1483 or 1598 meters. Neighboring England and Scotland had different miles. The English one was shorter, there were 1609 meters in it, in the Scottish - 1808 m. The German mile was much longer - 7420 meters. The situation was similar in Russia. Here, the mile was rarely used as a land measure of length, it was mainly used to solve metric problems. The Russian mile consisted of seven versts, and it was 7468 meters.
But all distance records were beaten by miles of Scandinavian countries. The Swedish mile had a length of 10688 m, and the Norwegian mile could claim the title of the longest - it was 11298 m.
Naturally, this situation did not suit many people. And in 1875 in Paris, XVII countries signed the metric convention, which was later joined by other states. Meters, kilometers, kilograms came into use. Now all economically developed countries adhere to the decimal metric system. Now answer the question: "How many kilometers in 1 mile?" much easier, despite the fact that miles are out of use. The reverse problem is also easily solved. Suppose we read that the objects were separated by 1 mile. How many kilometers will the traveler have to walk? There is an exact answer. How many kilometers in a mile is now known exactly. A land mile is 1.608 km and a nautical mile is 1.853 km.
With the nautical mile, everything was initially somewhat simpler. After all, in the sea you can not measure the distance with steps. To answer the question of how many kilometers in a mile, sailors had to rely on astronomical calculations. A nautical mile was conditionally equal to one minute of latitude, or 1853 meters, that is, if a ship sails one nautical mile along the meridian, its location will change by exactly one minute of geographical latitude.
True, there is a little catch here. Our Earth is not exactly a sphere, it is flattened from the poles. And it turns out that at the equator the distance separating one minute of latitude from another is a little more. Therefore, there is another unit of distance measurement - the equatorial nautical mile. It is 1855 meters.
