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Books > Earth & environment > Geography > Human geography
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Zero Degrees - Geographies of the Prime Meridian (Hardcover)
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Zero Degrees - Geographies of the Prime Meridian (Hardcover)
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Space and time on earth are regulated by the prime meridian, 0
Degrees, which is, by convention, based at the Royal Observatory,
Greenwich. But the meridian's location in southeast London is not a
simple legacy of Britain's imperial past. Before the nineteenth
century, more than twenty-five different prime meridians were in
use around the world, including Paris, Beijing, Greenwich,
Washington, and the location traditional in Europe since Ptolemy,
the Canary Islands. Charles Withers explains how the choice of
Greenwich to mark 0 Degrees longitude solved complex problems of
global measurement that had engaged geographers, astronomers, and
mariners since ancient times. Withers guides readers through the
navigation and astronomy associated with diverse meridians and
explains the problems that these cartographic lines both solved and
created. He shows that as science and commerce became more global
and as railway and telegraph networks tied the world closer
together, the multiplicity of prime meridians led to ever greater
confusion in the coordination of time and the geographical division
of space. After a series of international scientific meetings,
notably the 1884 International Meridian Conference in Washington,
DC, Greenwich emerged as the most pragmatic choice for a global
prime meridian, though not unanimously or without acrimony. Even
after 1884, other prime meridians remained in use for decades. As
Zero Degrees shows, geographies of the prime meridian are a
testament to the power of maps, the challenges of accurate
measurement on a global scale, and the role of scientific authority
in creating the modern world.
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