Lucky old Greenwich. By being at the heart of global astronomy back in the mid 19th century, a committee of scientists selected it to be the most important place on earth (longitudinally speaking). All eastward and westward measurements around the planet start from here, along a line through the middle of a telescope set up in the famous Observatory in 1851. This is otherwise a very ordinary line, its location completely arbitrary and artificial. But, if you know where to look, the meridian has been marked across the face of London in several different locations. There are plaques and monuments, and sundials and statues, and even hedgerows and footpaths that precisely follow the dividing line between the western and eastern hemispheres. I've told you all about them before. Three years ago I took you on a week-long journey up the zero degree line of latitude from Greenwich to the M25, stopping off at all the places where the PrimeMeridian has been marked in some way. But I didn't have a Flickr account at the time, so I couldn't show you as many photographs as I'd have liked. Today I'm making up for that earlier omission by presenting 50 assorted photographs for your perusal and pleasure. They're all of deliberate "Meridian markers", and not of random places and objects that just happen to lie on the 0° line.
So please enjoy today's special pictorial tribute feature - Marking The Meridian.
See also:
• Marking the meridian - my blog from three years ago, with oodles of meaty detail
• Greenwich Meridian Trail - take a walk along the meridian through Greenwich and Greenwich Park (with a nice map to print out)
• On The Line - An Oxfam website comparing and contrasting the eight countries found along the meridian
• The Greenwich Meridian laser(sorry, that's the one photo I didn't get)
Marking the meridian
