How "Knots" originated

andrewblair · Joined: 12 Apr 2001 Posts: 10

I thought this was interesting. I accidently came across it:

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/apr99/923405643.Sh.r.html

radglad · Joined: 09 Jul 2000 Posts: 2

True, knots come from the knots in a line thrown overboard to guage speed. A knot in modern terms, however, is a nautical mile per hour. A nautical mile is the distance covered across the great circle of the earth by an arc of one minute (thus there are 60(minutes) x 360 (degrees) or 21,600 nautical miles to circle the earth).