Kilometres Per Hour - History

History

Although the metre was formally defined in 1799, the term "kilometres per hour" did not come into immediate use - the myriametre (10,000 metres) and myriametre per hour were preferred to kilometres and kilmetres per hour. In 1802 the term "myriametrés par heure" had appeared in French literature and many French maps printed in the first half of the nineteenth century had scales in leagues and myriametres, but not in kilometres. The Dutch on the other hand adopted the kilometre in 1817 but gave it the local name of the mijl.

Read more about this topic:  Kilometres Per Hour

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    ... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.
    Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)

    The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)