Why does the prime meridian cross England?
Carlos O’s quote is accurate but doesn’t really explain why Greenwich became a base for the prime meridian in the first place. It was an Englishman (a Yorkshire clockmaker named John Harrison) who, in the 18th century, cracked the problem of how to track longitude at any point in the world. He had essentially solved it by 1735, but it took him the rest of his life to have his work acknowledged. Greenwich, home of the Royal Observatory and office of the Astronomer Royal, was where all such inventions and theories were evaluated. So it was from Greenwich that news finally spread to maritime nations around the world of Harrison’s invention which enabled longitude to be accurately charted. If you ever go there, the chronometers are still on display at the National Maritime Museum.
