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.)
Units of measurement in France a sound basis for a system of measurement. Under the "décret impérial du 12 février 1812" (imperial decree of 12 February 1812), he introduced a revised system of measure – the "mesures uselles" or "customary measures" for use in small retail businesses. However, all government, legal and similar works still had to use the metric system and the metric system continued to be taught at all levels of education. The names of many pre-metric units were reintroduced, but were redefined in terms of metric units. Thus the "toise" (fathom) was defined as being two metres with six "pied" (feet) making