Why do we need Nautical Miles?

Question

Can’t we just use the metric or imperial system? why is there a need to use this measurement that is seemingly coming from chopping the earth into half and dividing its circumference by 360 degrees, and then calculating a minute of arc of it?

Also what did I just say? The way this measurement is made makes no sense

In: 0

Answer 1

Imagine a map of the world.
you’re basically trying to unwrap a globe onto a piece of paper.
So that’s going to require you distort the thing.
But if it’s distorted you will get the distances between things wrong.
So you draw lines that distort with the map to keep it right.
Now you have to draw the lines at regular intervals.
You know from school that a circle has 360 degrees.
And back then the people working with degrees didn’t do the whole decimal thing.
They were thought like time, the degrees had minutes and seconds. In fact you’re already dealing with an even division of 60, why the hell would you want to add in 10 to the equation?
There are 3600 seconds per degree like there are 360 degrees in a circle.

So now you got lines drawn at regular intervals.
And as we stated, the lines are distorted because of you unwrapping the globe, so you can’t just take a ruler and measure distances.
So now you just count the number of minute lines between two places.
That’s a nice long distance, but not too long that you miss big things.
That count of minute lines? That’s the count of nautical miles.
The whole setup is done to make it easier to navigate really far using maps.
Something that’s really important if you can’t always just look at a land mark, such as if you’re sailing or flying over an ocean.

Answer 2

Imagine a map of the world.
you’re basically trying to unwrap a globe onto a piece of paper.
So that’s going to require you distort the thing.
But if it’s distorted you will get the distances between things wrong.
So you draw lines that distort with the map to keep it right.
Now you have to draw the lines at regular intervals.
You know from school that a circle has 360 degrees.
And back then the people working with degrees didn’t do the whole decimal thing.
They were thought like time, the degrees had minutes and seconds. In fact you’re already dealing with an even division of 60, why the hell would you want to add in 10 to the equation?
There are 3600 seconds per degree like there are 360 degrees in a circle.

So now you got lines drawn at regular intervals.
And as we stated, the lines are distorted because of you unwrapping the globe, so you can’t just take a ruler and measure distances.
So now you just count the number of minute lines between two places.
That’s a nice long distance, but not too long that you miss big things.
That count of minute lines? That’s the count of nautical miles.
The whole setup is done to make it easier to navigate really far using maps.
Something that’s really important if you can’t always just look at a land mark, such as if you’re sailing or flying over an ocean.