Geographical mile longitude at the equator is thus exactly 60 geographical miles. It was closely related to the nautical mile, which was originally determined as 1 minute of arc along a great circle of the Earth, but is nowadays defined as exactly 1852 metres. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) notes that: "The international nautical mile of 1 852 meters (6 076.115 49...feet) was adopted effective July 1, 1954, for use in the United States. The value formerly used in the United States was 6 080.20 feet = 1 nautical (geographical or sea) mile." (6080.2 feet is 1853.24496 meters.)
Coherence (units of measurement) Units (1960) was designed around the principle of coherence. In SI, which is a coherent system, the unit of power is the watt, which is defined as one joule per second. In the US customary system of measurement, which is non-coherent, the unit of power is the horsepower, which is defined as 550 foot-pounds per second (the pound in this context being the pound-force); similarly the gallon is not equal to a cubic yard (nor is it the cube of any length unit of the system). The earliest units of measure devised by humanity bore no relationship to each other.