Geoscience Reference
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they sailed from one map to another issued by a different authority. The development
of international trade across the world created a demand for a unified, standardized
system of coordinates of latitude and longitude. Latitude was easy; everyone agreed
that it was measured from a zero-point at the Earth's equator but the zero-point of
longitude - the “Prime” Meridian - was not as obvious. People asked should it be
one of the national meridians or should it lie through some natural or artificial feature
(such as the Great Pyramid in Egypt)?
In 1884 a conference was convened in Washington to decide the issue. The Paris
Meridian was an obvious contender because of the work that had been put into its
accurate definition and its key place in scientific development, and so was the
Greenwich Meridian (for similar reasons). The logic for the definition of the meter
was that a neutral meridian should be chosen. Just as the meter favored no individual
person as the basis of a scale of length (the reach of a king's arm, for example, or
the length of his foot), the choice of a neutral meridian as “Prime” would favor no
particular nation. This logic was ignored, though, and for practical reasons the
Greenwich Meridian was chosen as the Prime Meridian of the world.
The status of “Prime” Meridian was wrested from Paris and given to Greenwich.
Some say this was by the logic of nineteenth century commerce and power, some
say that the USA achieved its objectives by bringing the quarreling Europeans
together and forcing them to a conclusion, and some say that the Prime Meridian
was established at Greenwich by an anglo-phone conspiracy against France that
was formed between Britain and the USA. Sometimes French, British and American
people see contemporary events in a similar way.
Even if the Paris Meridian lost its status in these considerations of realpolitik (politics
based on practical rather than logical or ideological considerations), it retains its status
in the French psyche. Laid out on a map ( Fig. 1 ), the meridian has a geometric clean-
liness, running directly across the center of the hexagon of the entire country. 1 and at
lunch time on the premier French national holiday, Bastille Day (14 July) in the year
2000, someone looking down on France from space would have actually seen that
axis of the Hexagon. Thousands of French people - couples, families and groups of
friends - congregated on the Paris Meridian, braving the rather poor weather that day
and gathered to the borders of kilometer-long strips of traditional red and white
checkered cloth. They were like tablecloths, laid down on the grass and on picnic
tables. People set out bread, opened bottles of wine, unwrapped cheese and local
specialities and ate lunch. This was a mass meal, called L'Incroyable Pique-nique ,
and a celebration at the start of France's new millennium.
1 Seen from above, France has the outline of a hexagon, with two opposite corners to the north and
the south. To the west, running roughly north-south from Brittany to the Spanish border, is the
Atlantic coast of the Bay of Biscay. To the north-west, from Brittany to the Netherlands, is the
coast of the English Channel, or, as the French understandably prefer to call it, La Manche (the
Sleeve). To the north-east, the hexagon's side runs along the borders of the neighbouring countries
from the Netherlands, to northern Germany. To the east, the border continues southwards to the
Mediterranean. The Mediterranean coast forms the south-east side of the hexagon, and the border
with Spain completes it to the south-west. In French, the country of France is sometimes meta-
phorically referred to as the Hexagone , because of this shape.
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