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For us young ones: How do sea navigators measure their ships speed? http://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae400.cfm

Another interesting word is 'log' which we use daily in a digital sense but it has a very physical nautical origin:

log: "from log (n.1) which is so called because a wooden float at the end of a line was cast out to measure a ship's speed. General sense by 1913."

That's interesting. I just assumed it was a sound-alike for "nautical miles per hour", spelled "knots" instead of "nauts" for some arbitrary reason.