3 ms·

It's an arbitrary choice, just like how Unix time is since 1970, or how UTC is timezone for Greenwich England.

• joezydeco 13y ago
  Greenwich wasn't arbitrary at all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meridian_Conference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meridian_Conferen...
  • Aloha 13y ago
    Historical precedent and agreement make the choice no less arbitrary - 0 degrees could have been anywhere, there is no technical reason that Greenwich was chosen.
    • joezydeco 13y ago
      It says so right in the article. Choosing Greenwich as 0-longitude meant that the International Date Line would be located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, avoiding a situation where it could be two dates in the same country simultaneously.
      • Aloha 13y ago
        Have you looked at the map for the IDL? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/International_Date_Line.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Internati... That not jiggered by politics at all.
        • joezydeco 13y ago
          I thought we were talking about the "arbitrary" choice of Longitude 0. What's the political (and not economic) basis for the later IDL modifications?
          • Aloha 13y ago
            That fails to make the first choice any less arbitrary - the choice was made to line up with existing sea charts - which of course used the Greenwich as 0 - but Greenwich as 0 was an arbitrary choice in the first place - not all arbitrary choices are bad ones, that was the crux of my argument in the first place.
• deleted 13y ago
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