Nautical mile favour of the international nautical mile in 1954. The Imperial nautical mile, often called an Admiralty mile, or more correctly, an Admiralty measured mile, was defined by its relation to the Admiralty knot, 6,080 imperial feet per hour, so 1 imperial nautical mile is about 1,853.181 metres. It was abandoned in 1970 and, legally, references to the obsolete unit are now converted to 1,853 metres. Despite the existence of precise modern definitions, in the early 21st century the old definitions are still in use. The Royal Yachting Association says in its manual for day skippers: "1 (minute) of Latitude =
History of longitude 2nd century BC Hipparchus was the first to use such a system to uniquely specify places on Earth. He also proposed a system of determining longitude by comparing the local time of a place with an absolute time. This is the first recognition that longitude can be determined by accurate knowledge of time. In the 11th century Al-Biruni believed the earth rotated on its axis and this forms our modern notion of how time and longitude are related. Determining latitude was relatively easy in that it could be found from the altitude of the sun at noon (i.e. at its