• keepthepace@tarte.nuage-libre.fr
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      2 days ago

      Imagine using nautical kilometers, road kilometers, space kilometers, imperial kilometers, protestant kilometers…

      Now please tell me there are no nautical feet, yards, inches and furlongs

      • Kornblumenratte@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 day ago

        There is the imperial/customary/international foot defined as 0.3048 m, and the surveyor’s foot defined as 1200/3937 m (aka .304800609601219202438404 m)

        source

        Well, to be fair, there has been, the surveyor’s foot was deprecated in 2023.

      • zaphod@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        2 days ago

        I think the most insane combination of units can be found in aviation. They use feet for altitude but nautical miles for distance, then they use knots (nautical miles per hour) for horizontal velocity, but for vertical velocity they use feet per minute.

      • leftascenter@jlai.lu
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        2 days ago

        The nautical mile comes from the measure of 1 second of arc (°,mn,s) of longitude over the earth. Hence British nautical and French nautical mile conversion were slightly different as they were not defined at the same latitude.

        • keepthepace@tarte.nuage-libre.fr
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          21 hours ago

          I did not know their origin, that’s hilarious.

          That explains why the people who designed the meter found it logical for it to represent a portion of Earth’s circumference (1/10 000 000 of the equator-pole distance)