To convert meters to miles (m to mi), multiply by 0.00062137. 1 meter equals 0.00062137 mi, about 1.4 times as much as a tennis racket.
| meters | miles |
|---|---|
| 1 meter | 0.00062137 mi |
| 2 meters | 0.0012427 mi |
| 5 meters | 0.0031069 mi |
| 10 meters | 0.0062137 mi |
| 25 meters | 0.015534 mi |
| 50 meters | 0.031069 mi |
| 100 meters | 0.062137 mi |
| 250 meters | 0.15534 mi |
| 500 meters | 0.31069 mi |
| 1000 meters | 0.62137 mi |
Definition: The base unit of length in the metric system - every other metric length (km, cm, mm) is just meters multiplied or divided by a power of ten.
History: Born out of the French Revolution's push to replace a chaotic patchwork of local, often royally-defined units with something rational and universal. In 1793, French scientists defined the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator, measured along the meridian running through Paris - they actually sent surveyors out to physically measure the distance between Dunkirk and Barcelona to calculate it, a project that took years longer than planned. Today the meter is defined by something far more precise and impossible to argue with: the distance light travels in a tiny, fixed fraction of a second.
Current use: The foundation of virtually every length measurement outside the US - room dimensions, building heights, and race distances (measured in km) all build on it.
Definition: A mile is 5,280 feet, or exactly 1,609.344 meters.
History: It started as the Roman "mille passus" - literally a thousand paces, where a pace was a Roman soldier's double-step, about 5 Roman feet. That put the original Roman mile at 5,000 feet. Centuries later, English farmers were measuring land in furlongs (660 feet, the length of a furrow before an ox needed a rest), and in 1593 Queen Elizabeth I's Parliament decided a mile should equal exactly 8 furlongs - bumping the mile from 5,000 feet to 5,280, the number that's stuck ever since.
Current use: The US, UK, and a handful of other countries still measure road distances in miles. Aviation and shipping use a different mile entirely - the nautical mile, based on the Earth's circumference, not Roman soldiers' footsteps.