Re: Changing KB, MB, and GB to KiB, MiB, and GiB in Configure.help.

H. Peter Anvin
2002-01-08T21:31:37Z

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