Paris Meridian
Encyclopedia
Meridian (geography)
A meridian is an imaginary line on the Earth's surface from the North Pole to the South Pole that connects all locations along it with a given longitude. The position of a point along the meridian is given by its latitude. Each meridian is perpendicular to all circles of latitude...
running through the Paris Observatory
Paris Observatory
The Paris Observatory is the foremost astronomical observatory of France, and one of the largest astronomical centres in the world...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
—now longitude 2°20′14.025″ east. It was a long-standing rival to Greenwich
Greenwich
Greenwich is a district of south London, England, located in the London Borough of Greenwich.Greenwich is best known for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time...
as the prime meridian
Prime Meridian
The Prime Meridian is the meridian at which the longitude is defined to be 0°.The Prime Meridian and its opposite the 180th meridian , which the International Date Line generally follows, form a great circle that divides the Earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.An international...
of the world, as was the Meridian of Antwerp
Meridian of Antwerp
The Meridian of Antwerp is an analog to the Paris Meridian and Prime Meridian, running through the city of Antwerp, in Flanders, Belgium, and forming the 0° longitude upon which some Belgian maps were based...
in Antwerp, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
.
Origin
In the year 1634, France ruled by Louis XIIILouis XIII of France
Louis XIII was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1610 to 1643.Louis was only eight years old when he succeeded his father. His mother, Marie de Medici, acted as regent during Louis' minority...
and Cardinal Richelieu decided that Ferro's meridian should be used as the reference on maps, since this island is the most western position of the Old World
Old World
The Old World consists of those parts of the world known to classical antiquity and the European Middle Ages. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the "New World" ....
. It was also thought to be exactly 20 degrees west of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
A French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
astronomer, Abbé Jean Picard
Jean Picard
Jean-Felix Picard was a French astronomer and priest born in La Flèche, where he studied at the Jesuit Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand. He was the first person to measure the size of the Earth to a reasonable degree of accuracy in a survey conducted in 1669–70, for which he is honored with a...
, measured the length of a degree of longitude
Longitude
Longitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east-west position of a point on the Earth's surface. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds, and denoted by the Greek letter lambda ....
and computed from it the size of the Earth during 1669-1670. In 1666, Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...
had authorized the building of an observatory
Observatory
An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geology, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed...
in Paris
Paris Observatory
The Paris Observatory is the foremost astronomical observatory of France, and one of the largest astronomical centres in the world...
to measure longitude. On Midsummer's Day 1667, members of the Academy of Sciences traced the future building's outline on a plot outside town near the Port Royal abbey, with Picard's meridian exactly bisecting the site north-south. French cartographers would use it as their prime meridian for more than 200 years.
Old maps (outside of Anglo-America) often have a common grid with Paris degrees at the top and Ferro degrees offset by 20 at the bottom. Louis Feuillée
Louis Feuillée
Louis Éconches Feuillée was a French member of the Order of the Minims, explorer, astronomer, geographer, and botanist....
also worked on this problem in 1724.
It was later found that the actual island of El Hierro
El Hierro
El Hierro, nicknamed Isla del Meridiano , is the smallest and farthest south and west of the Canary Islands , in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa, with a population of 10,162 .- Name :The name El Hierro, although phonetically identical to the Spanish word for 'iron', is generally thought...
itself is in fact 20° 23' 9" west of Paris, but the Ferro meridian was still defined as 20 degrees west of Paris.
In the early 19th century, the Paris Meridian was recalculated with greater precision by the astronomer François Arago
François Arago
François Jean Dominique Arago , known simply as François Arago , was a French mathematician, physicist, astronomer and politician.-Early life and work:...
, whose name now appears on the plaques or medallions tracing the route of the meridian through Paris (see below).
In 1884, at the International Meridian Conference
International Meridian Conference
The International Meridian Conference was a conference held in October 1884 in Washington, D.C., in the United States to determine the Prime Meridian of the world. The conference was held at the request of U.S. President Chester A...
in Washington DC, the Greenwich Meridian was adopted as the prime meridian
Prime Meridian
The Prime Meridian is the meridian at which the longitude is defined to be 0°.The Prime Meridian and its opposite the 180th meridian , which the International Date Line generally follows, form a great circle that divides the Earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.An international...
of the world. France and Brazil abstained. The French clung to the Paris Meridian as a rival to Greenwich until 1911 for timekeeping purposes and 1914 for navigation. To this day, French cartographers continue to indicate the Paris Meridian on some maps.
The competition between the Paris and Greenwich Meridians is a plot element in Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne published in 1870. It tells the story of Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus as seen from the perspective of Professor Pierre Aronnax...
", published just before the international decision in favor of the British one.
The Arago medallions
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
conceptual artist, Jan Dibbets
Jan Dibbets
Jan Dibbets , is a Dutch conceptual artist.In 1994, he was commissioned by the Arago Association to create a memorial to the French astronomer François Arago, known as Hommage à Arago...
, to create a memorial to Arago
François Arago
François Jean Dominique Arago , known simply as François Arago , was a French mathematician, physicist, astronomer and politician.-Early life and work:...
. Dibbets came up with the idea of setting 135 bronze medallions (although only 121 are documented in the official guide to the medallions) into the ground along the Paris Meridian between the northern and southern limits of Paris: a total distance of 9.2 kilometres/5.7 miles. Each medallion is 12 cm in diameter and marked with the name ARAGO plus N and S pointers.
Another project, the Green Meridian
Méridienne verte
The Méridienne verte is a project devised by the architect Paul Chemetov for the 2000 celebration in France. It involved marking on the ground the Paris Meridian crossing France from North to South by planting trees along the whole line.On 14 July 2000, a picnic...
(An 2000 — La Méridienne Verte), aims to establish a plantation of trees along the entire length of the meridian arc
Meridian arc
In geodesy, a meridian arc measurement is a highly accurate determination of the distance between two points with the same longitude. Two or more such determinations at different locations then specify the shape of the reference ellipsoid which best approximates the shape of the geoid. This...
in France. Several missing Arago medallions appear to have been replaced with the newer 'An 2000 — La Méridienne Verte' markers.
Esoteric interpretations
In certain circles, some kind of occultOccult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
or esoteric significance is ascribed to the Paris Meridian; sometimes it is even perceived as a sinister axis. Dominique Stezepfandts, a French conspiracy theorist, attacks the Arago medallions that supposedly trace the route of "an occult geographical line"; to him the Paris Meridian is a "Masonic axis" or even "the heart of the Devil."
Henry Lincoln
Henry Lincoln
Henry Lincoln is an English author, television presenter, scriptwriter and former Supporting actor. He co-wrote three Doctor Who multi-part serials in the 1960s, and —starting in the 1970s— authored a series of books and inspired documentaries for the British television channel BBC2,...
, in his book The Holy Place, argues that various ancient structures are aligned according to the Paris Meridian. They even include medieval churches, built long before the meridian was established according to conventional history, and Lincoln finds it obvious that the meridian "was based upon the 'cromlech
Cromlech
Cromlech is a Brythonic word used to describe prehistoric megalithic structures, where crom means "bent" and llech means "flagstone". The term is now virtually obsolete in archaeology, but remains in use as a colloquial term for two different types of megalithic monument.In English it usually...
intersect division line'." David Wood, in his book Genisis, likewise ascribes a deeper significance to the Paris Meridian and takes it into account when trying to decipher the geometry of the myth-encrusted village of Rennes-le-Château
Rennes-le-Château
Rennes-le-Château is a commune in the Aude department in Languedoc in southern France.This small French hilltop village is known internationally, and receives tens of thousands of visitors per year, for being at the center of various conspiracy theories, and for being the location of an alleged...
: The meridian passes about 350 meters (1,150 ft) west of the site of the so-called "Poussin tomb," an important location in the legends and esoteric theories relating to that place. (A skeptical discussion of these theories, including the supposed "alignments," can be found in Bill Putnam and Edwin Wood's book The Treasure of Rennes-le-Château - A mystery solved.)
External links
- The Real Rose Line: The Real Rose line - Rosslyn Chapel and Sainte Roseline Chapel
- The Invisible Monument: a short description of the Arago Monument, including a picture.
- Paris Meridian / Arago Medallions: details about the Arago Medallion route, including GPS data.
- Hommage à Arago de Jan Dibbets: official guide to the Arago Medallions.
- The Arago medallions on Google Earth
- Full Meridian of Glory: Perilous Adventures in the Competition to Measure the Earth: history of science book by Prof. Paul Murdin
- The Rose Line