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The UK developed the first portable timepiece good enough to accurately tell longitude. It's theirs.
by jackfoxy 9y ago
The UK developed the first portable timepiece good enough to accurately tell longitude. It's theirs.
- perilunar 9y agoThe French didn't like it, but were outvoted. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meridian_Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meridian_Confere...
- jcranmer 9y agoTo be slightly more accurate: in the 1880s, the British Empire had the preeminent navy and thus the preeminent naval charts. While other countries (including the US) maintained more local meridians for doing geodetic surveys of their own countries, it was the Greenwich Meridian that tended to dominate naval charts, which meant that it was more or less a de facto standard anyways by the Meridian Conference.