3 ms·
Also the average of one minute of arc on a great circle route, which was the real handy thing about it at sea.
by danaliv 6y ago
Also the average of one minute of arc on a great circle route, which was the real handy thing about it at sea.
- killjoywashere 6y agoYes, meridians (on which latitude is measured) being a special case of great circle routes that happen to pass through the poles. That said, as a practical matter, you are more frequently contemplating a chart of smaller scale than "globe" so you're usually counting up distance between fixes, or distance to next turn in a harbor, or some such thing, where you have a compass in hand and just need to set the compass to the length of a mile. The nearest latitude tick marks are quite handy for that.