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Re: why is it that
From: John Huth
Date: 2010 Jan 9, 08:06 -0500
From: John Huth
Date: 2010 Jan 9, 08:06 -0500
Perhaps because the zero of longitude was originally set at the westernmost point of land known to the Greeks. These were the Canary Islands. Then any measure of longitude was positive going east. This worked as long as you don't find land west of the Canaries, but if you start to discover lands to the west, and need to assign a longitude, it would make more sense to assign negative values (or west longitude) than to have a huge gap with a much larger error.
These would include the Madeira, Cape Verde islands and the Azores.
I'm assuming this is the historical explanation.
On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 1:20 AM, Guy Schwartz <guyschwartz@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
When longitude was invented the system did not use 0 – 360 similar to the celestial sphere instead of 180 east and 180 west? I’m sure the founding fathers had a good reason.
Thank you
Guy
"May the SCHWARTZ BE WITH YOU"
