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Posted by Peter Munn on September 12, 2007, 6:23 pm
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Leafing through alt.sci.planetary, I read David Williams's message of
Mon, 10 Sep 2007:
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>Greenwich isn't a tiny town. Nowadays, it's a suburb of London. Back
>then, it was far enough outside the city to allows good viewing
>conditions for astronomy, without light pollution and so on. The Royal
>Observatory was located there, and one of its telescopes was used to
>make measurements that could be applied by sailors for navigation. So
>the position of this telescope was used as the "zero" of longitude by
>British sailors. Since Britain was the dominant naval power, other
>countries followed suit and used the Greenwich meridian too
I wouldn't be surprised if it was because the Greenwich Observatory
tables were the best navigational tables, rather than because Britain
was the dominant naval power.
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>then, it was far enough outside the city to allows good viewing
>conditions for astronomy, without light pollution and so on. The Royal
>Observatory was located there, and one of its telescopes was used to
>make measurements that could be applied by sailors for navigation. So
>the position of this telescope was used as the "zero" of longitude by
>British sailors. Since Britain was the dominant naval power, other
>countries followed suit and used the Greenwich meridian too