theoldlegend
22-12-2007, 04:25 PM
Hello everybody,
I'm not too sure if this is the correct section to post this, but here goes anyway.
In my day, the stuff was in Imperial measurements, as in degrees, minutes and seconds. It was no problem for me to read maps and find coordinates. Military maps were a breeze. When I was in primary school, we even used to set up a sundial, which was a hoot, as you had to get things worked out to do it properly.
We recently visited some relatives near Warwick and I was given the coordinates of where they live. One of the coordinates reads " E152.11.383 min.
Now I guess we've moved into the metric age, where one degree which used to be a nautical mile equals 1.1515 statute miles which equals 1.8 something kilometres. The frustrating thing for me is that I can't seem to find anything on Google that can steer me in the right direction. Maybe I'm too old, or maybe I'm just too stupid to work it out for myself.
To get back to my question, is the reading I've given above, calculated to three decimal places of a minute, is in fractions of a kilometre? Does for example, 11.383 minutes mean 11.383 kilometres and what fraction of one degree is that.? How many minutes has to happen before you move up to say 153 degrees?
What's happened to the minutes and seconds where one used to be 1/60th of the other?? Have they disappeared?
Any advice would be appreciated. Please bear with me. I'm old. I'm tired.
Many thanks,
TOL
I'm not too sure if this is the correct section to post this, but here goes anyway.
In my day, the stuff was in Imperial measurements, as in degrees, minutes and seconds. It was no problem for me to read maps and find coordinates. Military maps were a breeze. When I was in primary school, we even used to set up a sundial, which was a hoot, as you had to get things worked out to do it properly.
We recently visited some relatives near Warwick and I was given the coordinates of where they live. One of the coordinates reads " E152.11.383 min.
Now I guess we've moved into the metric age, where one degree which used to be a nautical mile equals 1.1515 statute miles which equals 1.8 something kilometres. The frustrating thing for me is that I can't seem to find anything on Google that can steer me in the right direction. Maybe I'm too old, or maybe I'm just too stupid to work it out for myself.
To get back to my question, is the reading I've given above, calculated to three decimal places of a minute, is in fractions of a kilometre? Does for example, 11.383 minutes mean 11.383 kilometres and what fraction of one degree is that.? How many minutes has to happen before you move up to say 153 degrees?
What's happened to the minutes and seconds where one used to be 1/60th of the other?? Have they disappeared?
Any advice would be appreciated. Please bear with me. I'm old. I'm tired.
Many thanks,
TOL