Today I know we have the technology to position anything accurately within a few feet. But how would sailors in old times measure distance and have maps of the sea? Why is there a nautical mile and different from the land mile?
In: Technology
Dead Reckoning: speed, heading, and distance from a known starting point.
We know what direction we’re going because we have a compass. We know how long we were pointed in that direction because we keep accurate time. We know how fast we’re going because we can drop a float and count the knots over a minute.
A nautical mile is a mathematical construction from a spherical Earth. A circle is divided into 360 “degrees”, and each degree is divided into 60 “minutes”. A nautical mile is equal to 1 minute of latitude, so there are exactly 5400 nautical miles between any point on the equator and the north pole. This allows a navigator to chart a course without doing any dumb conversions.
Latest Answers