Just guessing, but it's probably just a result of historical convention.
It's much easier to determine latitude so probably that's why it was the first
number. When means of determining longitude came about much later it was simply
tacked on. The lunar distance method and of course the chronometer didn't show
up until about 2000 years after Eratosthenes first proposed lat/lon.
—
Sent from Mailbox
On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 6:17 AM, Jaak Laineste (Nutiteq) <[email protected]>
wrote:
> Hello geowankers,
> As old as the question to be or not to be, is whether ordinate order
> (latitude,longitude) is better than (longitude,latitude). Everyone has funny
> stories how they were mixed up in your code, how drones went to bomb wrong
> enemies etc. I get once and a while questions from geonovices “which comes
> first”.
> In the world domination of certain advertising company (latitude, longitude)
> seems to be preferred, also OSM URL uses same order. I am thinking of them as
> x and y, and in my 4th grade math I remember that x goes always to “right”,
> i.e. east, and y goes to “up”, which is north on canonical maps. So I prefer
> x,y and in other words less common longitude,latitude. Order of y,x
> (latitude,longitude) seems therefore unnatural for me. In various APIs you
> can find either order, if you are lucky you have explicit naming, but in many
> cases you see just a pair of doubles or floats.
> So, why is latitude, longitude more common - is it just bad luck, or is there
> some logic or convention behind it?
> Jaak
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