Tuesday 20 October 2009

Where Has That Meridian Gone?

Now this is what I call good reporting! Well not 'good' as in accurate, but 'good' as in geodesy hitting the news in a way that most non-geodesists can relate to it.

As you know, Greenwich is a lure for me. Of course I know that its placement is arbitrary; but there is still that historical buzz around the place that will never go away.

I was most interested to read that it was the prevalence of sea charts that swayed the vote towards Greenwich and, as many people know, the Admiralty (set up in 1795) had been producing them for a while.

It's funny to think what would have happened if, say, Turkey (random country here) won the meridian then we in the UK would all be used to being 2 hours behind Turkish time. If most of world's population can cope with not being on the meridian then it can't be that hard eh?

We have a forum at work and somebody put on a lovely geeky post today about BST going back an hour next Sunday. The post was along the lines of "this Sunday, 25 Nov, we move to Central Universal Time which is near enough identical to Greenwich Mean Time". I love geeks that stoop as low as explaining what it means for mere mortals!

1 comment:

Don V said...

I always try and make the most of that leap second by ensuring I'm always doing something different when it comes along.