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Date: Tue, 08 Jan 2002 13:29:46 -0800
From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Organization: Zytor Communications
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To: "Dr. Kelsey Hudson" <kernel@blackhole.compendium-tech.com>
CC: "J.A. Magallon" <jamagallon@able.es>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Changing KB, MB, and GB to KiB, MiB, and GiB =?iso-8859-1?q?in Configure=2Ehelp=2E?=
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Dr. Kelsey Hudson wrote:

> On Sat, 22 Dec 2001, J.A. Magallon wrote:
> 
>>And different length for sea and land 'miles'. Very natural...
>>
> 
> nautical miles are defined as 1852 meters, the exact length of one second 
> of longitude at the equator :)
> 


YM "minute" HTH.


FWIW, from the units database:

nauticalmile            1852 m   # Supposed to be one minute of latitude at
                                 # the equator.  That value is about 1855 m.
                                 # Early estimates of the earth's
circumference
                                 # were a bit off.  The value of 1852 m was
                                 # made the international standard in 1929.
                                 # The US did not accept this value until
                                 # 1954.  The UK switched in 1970.


Of course, the number 21600 is also such a nice round number.

	-hpa


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