Nautical Mile - History

History

The nautical mile was historically defined as a minute of arc along a meridian of the Earth (north-south), making a meridian exactly 180×60 = 10,800 historical nautical miles. It can therefore be used for approximate measures on a meridian as change of latitude on a nautical chart. The originally intended definition of the metre as 10−7 of a half-meridian arc makes the mean historical nautical mile exactly (2×107)/10,800 = 1,851.851851… historical metres. Based on the current IUGG meridian of 20,003,931.4585 (standard) metres the mean historical nautical mile is 1,852.216 m.

The historical definition differs from the length-based standard in that a minute of arc, and hence a nautical mile, is not a constant length at the surface of the Earth but gradually lengthens in the north-south direction with increasing distance from the equator, as a corollary of the Earth's oblateness, hence the need for "mean" in the last sentence of the previous paragraph. This length equals about 1,861 metres at the poles and 1,843 metres at the Equator.

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was the first to divide the surface of the earth into lines of latitude and longitude. His theory was first applied by medieval Arabic geographers, who extended the Roman mile to 1.04 nautical miles.

Other nations had different definitions of the nautical mile. This variety, in combination with the complexity of angular measure described above and the intrinsic uncertainty of geodetically derived units, mitigated against the extant definitions in favor of a simple unit of pure length. International agreement was achieved in 1929 when the International Extraordinary Hydrographic Conference held in Monaco adopted a definition of one international nautical mile as being equal to 1,852 metres exactly, in excellent agreement (for an integer) with both the above-mentioned values of 1,851.851 historical metres and 1,852.216 standard metres.

The use of an angle-based length was first suggested by Edmund Gunter (of Gunter's chain fame). During the 18th century, the relation of a mile of, 6000 (geometric) feet, or a minute of arc on the earth surface, had been advanced as a universal measure for land and sea. The metric kilometre was selected to represent a centisimal minute of arc, on the same basis, with the circle divided into 400 degrees of 100 minutes.