Our position on
the surface of the Earth can be given in degrees of
longitude and latitude. There is a natural line from which to
measure latitude: the equator. But there is no natural line (meridian)
from which to measure longitude. The French used the meridian through
Paris, the Spanish through Madrid and the English through Greenwich -
the Royal Observatory was set up by King Charles II on
a hill outside London to get it away from the smoke.
The Greenwich meridian was used by the English chartmakers, and as
English charts were the best in the world other countries used
them and other meridians fell out of use. Internationally the Greenwich
meridian is called the Prime Meridian, and Greenwich Mean Time Universal
Time (or Universal Time Co-Ordinate, UTC), but Greenwich Mean Time remains the correct name for the
time in Britain when it is not British Summer Time.
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