At 17:22 +0000 02/12/3, David Jones wrote:
Thanks for this, Louis. May I ask your source for this info? I'm curious
as to the reason why they didn't use the Paris Observatory meridian. The
above figures would give a (quasi-)meridian some 25-30 miles to the west
of it at Paris - a lot.
David
My sources are simply Google : just type "Dunkirk longitude" and you
get a number of sites giving the coordinates of Dunkirk (Dunkerque in
French). Same for Barcelona or any other city in the world.
Now I forgot something : Delambre and M�chain actually used the Paris
Observatory meridian, which at that time was the 0� meridian (which
would give for Dunkirk 0� 30' W and for Barcelona 0� 33' W).
Effectively the "mean" meridian Dunkirk-Barcelona is a few kilometers
west of Paris (Observatory). But already at that time Paris was a
large city...
It was not before 1884 and the Washington Conference that the zero
meridian was decided to be be the Greenwich one. By 22 votes for, one
against (Santo Domingo) and two abstentions (Brazil and ... France).
It is said that the French government abstained because they had got
the assurance that if London got the meridian, they (and also the
USA) would very soon adopt the metric system...
Louis
