How many kilometers are in a mile? Even 250-300 years ago this question would have perplexed 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 thus designated the distance of a thousand double steps of the legionnaire. People have always had a need to measure length, and not only roads, but also individual objects. The distance was tied to the flight of the arrow, to the daytime crossing, and even to the pipes - that is, while you go, you will smoke a certain number of pipes.
Names of length measures associated with the name of body parts were especially popular. This, for example, an elbow - 0.5 meters, a span - about 20 cm, a foot - about 30 cm. The latter is translated from English as "step, foot." Obviously,
such a system is quite 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 for measuring distance on land. The answer to the question of how many kilometers are in a mile varied greatly even in countries located in the neighborhood.
The Roman mile, according to various sources, was 1,483 or 1,598 meters. There were different miles in neighboring England and Scotland. The English was shorter, it totaled 1609 meters, in Scotland - 1808 meters. The German mile was much longer - 7420 meters. The situation was similar in Russia. Here, as a land measure, the mile length was rarely used, it was mainly used to solve metric problems. The Russian mile consisted of seven miles, and it was 7468 meters.
But all the records of the length beat miles of the countries of Scandinavia. The Swedish mile had a length of 10688 m, and the Norwegian one could claim the title of the longest - it was 11298 m.
Naturally, such a situation did not suit many. And in 1875, in Paris, XVII countries signed the metric convention, which other states then joined. Meters, kilometers, kilograms came into use. Now all economically developed countries adhere to the decimal metric system . Currently answer the question: "How many kilometers are 1 mile?" much easier, despite the fact that miles are out of use. The inverse problem is also easily solved. Suppose we read that objects were separated by 1 mile. How many kilometers will a traveler have to walk? The exact answer is. How many kilometers in a mile is now absolutely certain. The land mile is 1.608 km and the sea mile is 1.853 km.
With a nautical mile everything was initially somewhat simpler. Indeed, in the sea you cannot measure distance in steps. To answer the question of how many kilometers are in a mile, the sailors had to rely on astronomical calculations.
The nautical mile conditionally equaled one minute of latitude, or 1853 meters, that is, if a ship sails along a meridian one nautical mile, its location will change exactly one minute of
geographical latitude.True, there is a small catch. Our Earth is not quite a ball, 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 longer. Therefore, there is another unit of measurement of distance - the equatorial nautical mile. It is 1855 meters.