Well, our English cousins across the pond still use the mile. And gauge their
speeds in miles per hour.
Here in the US, the military was early on the metric system, even back in my
day, which was closer to Continental Army days than to today’s army. Our M-14
rifles fired 7.62 mm NATO standard rounds. Now, I believe the M-16 fires a
5.something mm round. Distances were measured in meters and kilometers, also
known as “klicks”. I suspect we went metric way back then because of NATO.
I still tend to think in meters, but long since have given up klicks, except
when I’m in the unoccupied part of Canada. My rule of thumb for figuring
distances up there is divide klicks in half and add some back. <g>
--Bob Whitmire
Certified Neanderthal
On Jul 22, 2014, at 4:42 PM, Chris Crawford <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> A mile is a unit of measure used to measure large distances. Was used
> through the English-speaking world for centuries, but in the 20th Century
> it was abandoned in favor of the Metric Kilometer, except in the USA. The
> length of a mile has varied over the years and in different countries. An
> American mile is 5280 feet, or 1.6 km.
--
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