San Domingo,1

The Greenwich Prime Meridian

The Royal Observatory in Greenwich is the home of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and the Prime Meridian of the world. Many years ago in the 1920′s my great Aunt Hilda traced our family tree back to the Kings and Queens of England from the 7th. Century. This basically means I am related to most of the British Royal Family going back 1500 years and this has made me a great fan of English and British Icons including the history of GMT.

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is a term originally referring to mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. It is commonly used in practice to refer to Co-ordinated Universal Time (UTC) when this is viewed as a time zone, especially by bodies connected with the United Kingdom, such as the BBC World Service, the Royal Navy, the Met Office and others, although strictly UTC is an atomic time scale which only approximates GMT with a tolerance of 0.9 second. It is also used to refer to Universal Time (UT), which is a standard astronomical concept used in many technical fields and is referred to by the phrase Zulu Time.

In the UK, GMT is the official time only during winter; during summer British Summer time ( BST ) is used. GMT is substantially equivalent to Western European Time.

In 1884 the Prime Meridian was defined by the position of the large “Transit Circle” telescope in the Observatory’s Meridian Building. The transit circle was built by Sir George Biddell Airy, the 7th Astronomer Royal, in 1850. The cross-hairs in the eyepiece of the Transit Circle precisely defined Longitude 0° for the world. As the earth’s crust is moving very slightly all the time the exact position of the Prime Meridian is now moving very slightly too, but the original reference for the prime meridian of the world remains the Airy Transit Circle in the Royal Observatory, even if the exact location of the line may move to either side of Airy’s meridian.

The line in Greenwich represents the Prime Meridian of the World – Longitude 0º. Every place on Earth is measured in terms of its distance east or west from this line. The line itself divides the eastern and western hemispheres of the Earth – just as the Equator divides the northern and southern hemispheres.

The Greenwich Meridian was chosen as the Prime Meridian of the World in 1884. There were Forty-one delegates from 25 nations who met in Washington DC for the International Meridian Conference. By the end of the conference, Greenwich had won the prize of Longitude 0º by a vote of 22 to 1 against (San Domingo), with 2 abstentions ( France and Brazil – what a surprise the French was against us Brits.!! ). There were two main reasons for choosing Greenwich as the Prime meridian:

• The first was the fact that the USA had already chosen Greenwich as the basis for its own national time zone system.

• The second was that in the late 19th century, 72% of the world’s commerce depended on sea-charts which used Greenwich as the Prime Meridian.

The decision, essentially, was based on the argument that by naming Greenwich as Longitude 0º, it would be advantageous to the largest number of people. Therefore the Prime Meridian at Greenwich became the centre of world time, and was the official starting point for the new Millennium.

In the future, when we Earthlings set out to explore the solar system GMT will still be used as the Point Of Earth time. As an example the Earth GMT will be called: E-GMT.

Please visit my Funny Animal Art Prints Collection @ http://www.fabprints.com

My other website is called Directory of British Icons: http://fabprints.webs.com

The Chinese call Britain ‘The Island of Hero’s’ which I think sums up what we British are all about. We British are inquisitive and competitive and are always looking over the horizon to the next adventure and discovery.

Copyright © 2010 Paul Hussey. All Rights Reserved.

About the Author

My family tree has been traced back to the early Kings of England from the 7th Century AD. I am also a direct descendent of Sir Christopher Wren which has given me an interest in English History which is great fun to research.

I have recently decided to write articles on my favourite subjects: English Sports, English History, English Icons, English Discoveries and English Inventions. At present I have written over 100 articles which I call “An Englishman’s Favourite Bits Of England” in various Volumes. Please visit my Blogs page http://Bloggs.Resourcez.Com where I have listed all my articles to date.

Copyright © 2010 Paul Hussey. All Rights Reserved.

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