Plotting the Globe: Stories of Meridians, Parallels, and the International Date Line (Explorations in World Maritime History)

Plotting the Globe

Also by Dr. A. Ariel: The Last War A Ship of Prey The Book of Names Sea Dogs Don't Be a Sucker: The ABC of Small Claims

Plotting the Globe Stories of Meridians, Parallels, and the International Date Line Avraham Ariel Nora Ariel Berger

Explorations in World Maritime History Lincoln P. Paine, Series Editor

D) PRAEGER

Westport, Connecticut London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ariel, Avraham. Plotting the globe : stories of meridians, parallels, and the international date line / Avraham Ariel and Nora Ariel Berger. p. cm.— (Explorations in world maritime history, ISSN 15,56-3782) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-275-98895-3 (alk. paper) 1. Meridians (Geodesy) 2. Prime Meridian. 3. International Date Line. I. Berger, Nora Ariel. II. Title. III. Series QB207.A75 2006 526'.6-dc22 2005019178 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2006 by Avraham Ariel and Nora Ariel Berger All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2005019178 ISBN: 0-275-98895-3 ISSN: 1556-3782 First published in 2006 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10 987654321

For Aylon Zechariah and Karin Tsipora, our future.

He had bought a large map representing the sea, Without the least vestige of land: And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be A map they could all understand. "What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators, Tropics, Zones and Meridian Lines?" So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply "They are merely conventional signs!" Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes! But we've got our brave Captain to thank" (So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best A perfect and absolute blank! Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark (1876)

Contents

Preface

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction I

1

The Meridians 1 The Lemon or Orange Debate

9

2 Measuring a Meridian Mark I: What Is the Shape of the Earth?

19

3 Measuring a Meridian Mark II: How Long Is One Meter?

65

II

The Prime Meridian

4 From Hipparchus to Pulkovo

81

5 Greenwich—The Ultimate Prime Meridian

89

6 Greenwich Goes International

101

7 1984 Beats 1884—GPS

109

8 Time and Tide Wait for No Man, Especially at Greenwich

115

III The International Date Line 9 The Paradox: Lost by Magellan, Found by Fogg

127

10 The International Date Line—Truth or Myth?

141

11 The International Date Line and the Millennium

151

Contents

VIII

IV The Equator 12 Crossing the Line

159

13 Who Did It First?

163

End of Story

187

Notes

191

Bibliography

209

Internet Sites

215

Index

217

Preface

Plotting the Globe covers and uncovers 3500 years of history and legends of the major lines on the globe—the equator, the prime meridian, and the International Date Line. It is a tribute to the astronomers, explorers, and land surveyors who gave us those lines, measured them, made their derivatives part of our daily lives, and sometimes even died for them. It exposes the bitter rivalry between France on the one hand, and England and the United States on the other, and it demonstrates that little has changed in international relations and personal attitudes from the time of Joan of Arc to that of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Myths and truths of the Phoenicians, Spaniards, Portuguese, British, and French are unraveled. Hanno, Elcano, Sir Francis Drake, Isabel Godin, John Flamsteed, Captain Morrell, and many others star on a set stretching from Lapland to Cape Horn, via Greenwich, Paris, the Andes, and the Fortunate Islands. The principal author of this book is a navigator with a flair for maritime history who worked his way to the bridge up the hawsepipe. Raised on the sextant, the chronometer, the magnetic compass, and the hand lead, he has personally logged more than half a million nautical miles. He was inspired by his love of the sea and admiration of generations of men who went down to it in ships. Captain Abe Ariel, a deck boy at 16 and a shipmaster at 25, was born in Israel. He holds MBA and PhD (industrial engineering) degrees from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. A father of two and a grandfather of two, he is a seafarer, maritime inventor, businessman, educator, and the author of six books—two of which were edited by his daughter Nora.

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Acknowledgments

This work is the fruit of help from many people all over the world, most of whom we have never met. It was surprising, and indeed very encouraging and refreshing, to have virtual meetings with so many people who were ready to devote their time and demonstrate divine tolerance, patience, and collegiality. We made special efforts to remember them all, but to those whom we inadvertently missed, we extend our deepest apologies. Topping the list is Mr. Jim R. Smith, honorary secretary of the International Institution for the History of Surveying & Measurement, Petersfield, Hampshire, United Kingdom. We were very privileged to encounter Jim at the beginning of the research stage of our work and we have since developed e-mail friendship with him. His assistance and guidance were invaluable. Also in the United Kingdom, Mrs. Naomi Almor, an intrepid friend of 50 years, who is always ready to go on assignments; Mr. Mark Greaves, MSc, Geodetic Analyst, Ordnance Survey, GB; Ms. Emily Winterburn, Curator of Astronomy, Royal Observatory, Greenwich; Mr. Robert Warren, Assistant Curator of Navigation, Royal Observatory, Greenwich; Ms. Jane Empsall and Mr. John Hunt, Geodetic Support Managers, United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, Taunton, Somerset. In Finland, Ms. Sanna Saynajakangas, University of Tampere, Tampere. In France, Mme. Claudine Pouret, documentaliste, Institut de France, Academie des Sciences, Paris; Dr. Regine Simon, Centre dTnformatique Geologique de PEcole Nationale des Mines de Paris and Centre National

XII

Acknowledgments

de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris; Monsieur William Thuillot, Directeur de lTnstitut de Mecanique Celeste et de Calcul des Ephemerides (IMCCE), Paris; and Dr. Daniel Gambis, Director Earth Orientation Center of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), Observatoire de Paris. In Germany, Herr Werner Bittner, archivist, Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Cologne; Herr Theodor Bauer, Map Curator, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munchen, Abteilung Karten & Bilder, and Ms. Chantal Kling, Columbus-Verlag, Paul Oestergaard GmbH, Kxauchenwies. In Austria, Mag. Jan Mokre, Director of the Austrian National Library's Map Department and Globe Museum, Vienna. In Catalonia, Sra. Carme Renedo i Puig, The Director, Fundacio Casa de Cultura de la Diputacio, Girona. At the time of writing, Sra. Renedo i Puig was the librarian at Institute Cervantes, Tel Aviv, Israel. In Australia, Mrs. Estelle Moses, librarian, Woollahra Municipal Council, Sydney NSW. In Israel, Ms. Susanna Kokkonen, Cultural Department, Embassy of Finland, Tel Aviv; Ms. Roberta Zucker Hanfling, the librarian, Israel Maritime College, Michmoret; Dr. Amatzia Peled, School of Geography, Haifa University, and Mme. Helene Grinberg who liaised with France on our behalf. In the United States, Dr. Dennis G. Milbert, Chief Geodesist, National Geodetic Survey, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Silver Springs, M D ; Captain Nick Perugini, Chief, Marine Chart Division, Office of Chart Survey, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Silver Spring, M D ; Mr. David Jourdan, President, Nauticos LLC, Cape Porpoise, ME; Mr. Ralph Salomon, WorldView Antique Maps & Books, Katonah, NY; and Pastor Diedrik A. Nelson, PhD, Sioux Falls, SD. In Ecuador, Sr. Fernando Molina, Secretary of The Philatelic Club of Guayaquil. In South Africa, Mr. Richard T. Wonnacott, Director: Survey Services, Chief Directorate: Surveys and Mapping, Mowbray. Last but not least, deepest gratitude goes to my daughter and coauthor Nora, a team worker since my first novel, The Last War. If it had not been for her help, this book would have never weighed anchor and set sail.

Introduction Nothing can remain immense if it can be measured. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958)

This book is about circles: the infinite number of great circles that embrace our planet from pole to pole, and the small circles that run parallel to the equator, all the way to the poles. Nobody has ever seen those elusive circuits, which are really figments of our imagination, yet life cannot be imagined without them. They are the building blocks of maps and charts, travel and navigation, search and rescue. They are the key to defining the location of each and every point and object on the face of planet earth. They are the meridians and parallels that accompany us wherever we go. This book will tell us how and when they came about, and how they have been put to use. It will also tell us of the bitter contests among nations to define the shape of the earth and to delineate it. The principles of delineating our planet became the basis of cartography. Explorers and travelers to faraway countries added their share by providing data of the coastlines and the hinterland. Some details were genuine; others were the products of sailors' yarns, spun in taverns saturated with alcohol fumes and cheap tobacco smoke. Exciting as these topics are, this is no textbook on the history of cartography or exploration. Maps and explorers star in our narrative only in relation to its real protagonists, those invisible circles—meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude—especially the exalted great circles: the prime meridian, the equator, and the International Date Line. This book was written on the assumption—it may look impudent to some readers—that our planet is a spheroid, rotating on its own axis, and revolving around the sun. Generations of scientists have gone even farther

2

Plotting the Globe

and taken the liberty of making this dubious assumption one of the cornerstones of physics and earth sciences. Very few members of our community-indeed too few—have ever seriously contested this unproven hypothesis. "Show me one person," these few say, "who has ever seen the earth rotating, or one person who does not see the sun circling the earth, day in, day out." We are not talking about creationists. Those are honest, simple folk, who rightly reject the odious notion that we, the children of God— whom God created in his own image—are the descendants of chimps and orangutans. We are talking of greater minds that have been, and that still are rejected by a "scientific" community afraid of revolutionary ideas. We are talking, of course, about the Flat Earth Society. Samuel Shenton, an Englishman by birth, established that distinguished society—whose motto is Deprogramming the masses since 1547—in California in 1956. Mr. Shenton died in 1971 and passed on the presidency to one Charles K. Johnson, who also edited The Flat Earth News. That quarterly used to run a regular column entitled "One Hundred Proofs Earth Is Not a Globe," which published convincing arguments such as "Are the antipodes standing upside-down like sleeping bats?" Johnson, soft voiced, good looking, and bearded, preached also that the sun and moon are both about 32 miles in diameter, the space shuttle is a sham, and the landing on the moon was a Hollywood hoax. For nearly 30 years—until his death, at age 76, on March 19, 2001—he fought the lonely uphill battle of "restoring the world to sanity." 1 Mr. Johnson would have been very upset at this book, and the authors are relieved that they do not have to face a scathing attack in The Flat Earth News. Mad Englishmen and Americans aside, it's time we got down to serious business. For starters, let's refresh our memory with a few basics we learned at school some unknown number of years ago. That unknown number is probably a number too large for our liking. At least it is for the principal author. Planet earth has only two definite points on it. These are the extremities of the earth's axis of rotation. We call them the poles, north and south, and they are the only two places on the globe that do not move. East and west are directions, not definite points. The direction toward which the earth rotates is named east. The opposite direction is named west. Earth also has one definite imaginary circle, midway between the poles, that we call the equator.

Introduction

3

Figure O.I A cross-section of the globe, showing latitude and lon-

gitude. Source: Professor Karen A. Lemke, University of WisconsinStevens Point, WI

The equator is the largest circle on the face of the earth. It is also a great circle, which is a circle on a sphere whose plane passes through the center of that sphere. The latitude of a place is a measure of the distance of a point on the surface of the earth from the equator. It is the angular distance of that place—measured at the center of the earth—and expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds, north or south of the equator. All points of the same latitude are equidistant from the equator and from the poles. Latitude lines are therefore called parallels. They are in fact circles that are parallel to each other. We call them small circles because they are not centered on the center of the earth. The number of parallels is infinite. At least two coordinates are required to define a position on the surface of the earth. Latitude is one such coordinate, and on its own it is powerless to define a geographical position. Similarly, a statement that the Titaniclies 324 nautical miles off Cape Race Lighthouse is meaningless, unless the direction 2 —or bearing—from that legendary North Atlantic beacon is given as well. With only one coordinate, Dr. Robert Ballard would never have located the wreck of that most unsinkable ship, and Rupert Murdoch's 20th Century Fox could not have laughed all the way to the bank.

4

Plotting the Globe

There is nothing new in this. Ancient geographers and cartographers realized long ago that the world, although round, has two dimensions— length and breadth—just like a cornfield or an olive grove. They measured the length of the earth on their maps vertically, from the equator toward the polar regions. That was the latitude. As for the breadth, they graduated the equator into 360 equal parts—as they used to divide a circle—and joined each graduation mark to the north and south poles. The resulting arcs were great circles that cut through the poles and the equator. They were named meridians, a name that has its origin in the Latin word meridianus, meaning both midday and southerly. Our ancient ancestors discovered long ago that at noon the sun is always due south. 3

Figure 0.2 Parallels and meridians. Source: Map Projections—A Working Manual, by John P Snyder, U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper 1395, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1987. Image provided by Mr. Carlos Portela of Davis, CA. http://www.3Dsoftware.com.

Introduction

5

Unlike the equator, which is not only a great circle but is also the natural and only zero reference line for measuring latitude, all meridians are identical in shape and size; their starting point, the prime (or zero, or reference) meridian, had to be designated by man, and they will be described at length in the following chapters. Meridians are distributed east and west from the prime meridian. They are numbered from zero to 180 degrees, so that the meridian 180° east is congruent with that of 180° west. The concept of meridians appeared first in Eratosthenes's Geographica (third century B.C.), where he laid the foundations of mathematical geography. Claudius Ptolemaeus (A.D. 90-168), or Ptolemy of Alexandria, as he is better known, displayed meridians in his world map (A.D. 150). This famous map will be discussed in Chapter 13. The angular distance—expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds— measured east or west from the prime meridian to the meridian of a

Figure 0.3 The Greenwich meridian—the world's prime meridian since 1884. Source: Image courtesy ofDaniel R. Strebe, author of map projection software Geocart, http://www.mapthematics.com.

6

Plotting the Globe

place is called the longitude of that place. Latitude together with longitude provide a perfect grid and can identify the location of any point on the face of the earth, be it in the Sargasso Sea or in the Kamchatka Peninsula.

Figure 0.4 Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus, ca. 90-168) is considered one of history's greatest astronomers, geographers, and mathematicians. Source: Narrative and Critical History of America, by Justin Winsor, 1886, V.2, p. 27. Library of Congress.

PART I

The Meridians I congratulate it: it has squashed the poles and the Cassinis. Voltaire to Maupertuis upon publishing the findings of the tatter's expedition to Lapland (1737)

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CHAPTER 1

The Lemon or Orange Debate A generation goes and a generation comes, but the Earth remains forever. Ecclesiastes 1:4

Meridians—especially their measurement—have played a paramount role in several high-profile scientific debates, far beyond the issues of navigation and geographical positioning. Measuring meridians settled once and for all the heated Anglo-French controversy between Newton and the Cassinis over the shape of the earth—whether it was flat at the poles, as the former predicted, or egg-shaped, as the French astronomers insisted. Meridian measurement also became the basis of the metric system. One would have thought that the debate about the shape of the earth had been settled by Sebastian Elcano, the only remaining shipmaster of the ill-fated Magellan expedition, who returned to Spain in the autumn of 1522, after completing the first circumnavigation of the globe. Elcano—who was also known as Del Cano, and who will return to us in a later chapter—sailed around the world in a generally westerly direction and surprisingly did not fall off its edge, as some of his crew members feared they would. Falling over the edge was an issue that had frightened generations of sailors since Ulysses and earlier. Indeed, Elcano proved that such an edge did not exist at all. Serious scientists in the sixteenth century were not at all surprised that Elcano had survived intact. Like the Greek philosophers before them,

10

Plotting the Globe

they knew the earth was round, and that it revolved around the sun; they had even started to understand and formulate the principles governing the solar system. Late medieval scholars worked in secret, fearing the lethal laws of the church and its deadly sword—the Holy Inquisition. The Renaissance brought with it to Europe fresh winds of knowledge and a desire to search for the truth. Debates of the kind of "how many angels can dance on a pinhead?"—that had for years attracted the best ecclesiastical minds—made room for new questions, such as "what is the exact shape of the earth?" "Is it a perfect sphere or a spheroid?" "Is it flattened at the poles or at the equator?" "Which is longer—a meridian or the equator?"

Figure 1.1 The elements of an ellipse. (An ellipse is the locus of points in a plane, so arranged that the sum of the distances of the points from two given points [foci] is constant) Source: Basic Geodesy, byj. R. Smith, Landmark Enterprises, Rancho Cordova CA. Courtesy Paul Cuomo Press, Inc., Newport Beach, CA. Image provided by J. R. Smith, Petersfield, Hampshire, UK.

The Lemon or Orange Debate

1 1

The Middle Ages was a disgraceful period of regression for Western science. The Catholic Church ensured that only issues pertaining to the Holy Scriptures would occupy the minds of the flocks under their care. Any attempt to freely think, question, investigate, and teach, was heavily punished—on many occasions by death. It was thanks only to the Islamic scholars, and to their immense contribution to science—in mathematics, astronomy, and cartography—that humanity was spared the agony of drifting back to pre-Ptolemaic times. The tide turned dramatically with the Renaissance. The recovery came with such force that its rate of acceleration has been maintained to this very day, if not increased. The first heavyweights were the astronomers, physicists, and mathematicians—such as Copernicus, Kepler, Descartes—who heralded the beginning of modern sciences. The decline of the reactionary political forces of the church, the invention of printing, and the improved economic conditions that started with the age of exploration and early colonialism, contributed a great deal toward the search for knowledge. The best recipe for better and more universities is the two Fs: Freedom and Funds. Freedom for teachers and students to think without fear, and governments willing to invest in education a handsome portion of the riches plundered from their overseas colonies. The quest for knowledge that commenced as a ripple in the late fifteenth century, turned into a torrent by the seventeenth, when science flourished in England, France, and Holland. The giants of that era included Newton, Leibniz, and Boyle. A salient change of direction between England and France took place in the eighteenth century. The French preferred to embrace the pure sciences, whereas the British developed the applied sciences, which became the foundation of the Industrial Revolution. While French Encyclopedists were debating humanities and social sciences in Paris, Britain's agenda focused on metallurgy, textile engineering, and the harnessing of steam power. While England was building an empire on which the sun would never set, France's best brains were busy with the life-threatening question, "What was the exact circumference of the earth—to the yard?" French scientists and geodesists had been obsessed with the accurate determination of the shape and measurements of the earth since before the Academie des Sciences was officially relocated to the Louvre in 1699.1 Descartes (1596-1650) postulated that since it spun on its own axis, the earth must be shaped like a lemon. Proving this theory required the measurement by triangulation of arcs of meridional sections of known

12

Plotting the Globe

latitude. The distances so obtained enabled scientists to calculate by how much the shape of the earth differs from a perfect sphere. A student of mine once explained to a colleague who had difficulties understanding how the shape of the earth affects the length of a meridian: "The whole issue is very simple. Meridians expand in tropical heat and contract in the polar cold. They are therefore longer near the equator and shorter towards the poles. Elementary!" He was serious, but he was wrong. As we can see in Figure 2.1, the arc corresponding to a central angle of the same size is longer at the poles than on the equator. One way or another, eighteenth century astronomers, mathematicians, and cartographers realized that if the old assumption that the earth was a perfect sphere proves to be incorrect, a Pandora's box would be opened, with far-reaching implications. The latitude and longitude of each and every point on the map, be it cities, villages, roads, mountains, and so on, would have to be redefined. In short—a cartographer's nightmare. The spherical era of geodesy started with Eratosthenes of Alexandria 2 (ca 276 B.C. to ca 194 B.C.). Eratosthenes 3 is considered the Father of Geodesy because he was the first person to measure the size of the earth. His length of a meridian circle 4 was 16 percent too large—not a bad result for his time. Eratosthenes's theory that the earth was a perfect sphere held for nearly 1900 years. It was brought to a sudden end with the triangulation work of Jean Picard. That notable French astronomer (1620-1682) was the first to accurately measure an arc of a meridian, near Paris in 1669-70. His accuracy was achieved through meticulous work and the first-ever use of logarithm tables and a telescope-fitted micrometer quadrant. The science of triangulation was fairly new then, just recently conceived by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, and developed by his Dutch colleague Willebrord Snell. Picard's first problem in the field was to establish a unit of length that would be acceptable to everybody. He solved that dilemma in his own brilliant way, by using the length of a pendulum oscillating once in a second. This is defined today as the frequency of one hertz. Unaware that the length of such a pendulum varies with latitude, 5 he mistakenly thought he was using a common unit of length. This was the first occasion when the two great issues, measuring the meridian and a universal unit of length, faced one another. It was a brief encounter, practically forgotten for nearly 120 years, until their paths crossed again in 1790, when a committee of the French Academy of Sciences recommended that the standard unit of length be derived from the length of the meridian.

The Lemon or Orange

Debate

13

Figure 1.2 Oblate or prolate? Is Earth orange- or lemonshaped? Source: Basic Geodesy, byj. R. Smith, Landmark Enterprises, Rancho Cordova, CA. Courtesy Paul Cuomo Press, Inc., Newport Beach, CA. Image provided by J. R. Smith, Petersfield, Hampshire, UK.

In 1671 Picard published his treatise on the measurement of one and one-fifth degrees (1.2°) of the meridian from Paris northward, entitled Mesure de la Terre. The astonishing bottom line of that thirty-one-page thesis was that the earth was an oblate spheroid, that is, flattened at the poles. 6 One of the few scientists to be completely unexcited by that revelation was Sir Isaac Newton, who had in fact reached that conclusion himself several years earlier, from the comfort of his desk at Cambridge University. The quantitative evidence provided by Jean Picard opened the ellipsoidal era of the globe and started a bitter scientific debate within France, between the supporters of Picard's theory that the world was oblate and the Cassinis, who insisted that the world was a prolate

Plotting the Globe

14

spheroid, that is, egg-shaped and elongated at the poles. It took the best part of a century for that issue to be settled conclusively, 7 as we shall see later in this book. Enter the Cassinis. The father of that most famous French dynasty of scientists—designated Cassini I—was born on June 8, 1625, at Perinaldo, near Nice. Both his parents were Italian and he was baptized Giovanni Domenico. Young Giovanni received the best Jesuit education at Genoa, although he never had any formal university tuition. He soon became the protege of the influential Marchese (Marquis) Cornelio Malvasia, a noted amateur astronomer in his own right. At the tender age of 25, the Senate of Bologna designated Figure 1.3 Jean Dominique Cassini (Cassini I, Cassini to the chair of Professor of 1625-1712) was first in the dynasty of Parisian astronomers. Source: Library ojAstronomy at the University of Bologna. That may look, on the Congress. face of it, like another case of Italian nepotism—but it was not. Young Cassini was well connected, but he was also very knowledgeable, a fact he did not take long to prove. ' •'-' i ' -

Cassini's appointment coincided with the development of the telescope, and the young professor devoted his nights to industrious observations of the planets. His studies of Jupiter and Mars soon brought him fame and honor. In 1667 France's Great Fving Louis XIV—the selfproclaimed Roi Soleil—offered Cassini to set up and direct the Paris Observatory, at the princely salary of 9000 livres, plus travel allowance. Membership of the recently established Academie des Sciences was also thrown in. Cassini gracefully accepted. He frenchified his name to Jean Dominique and soon became a French subject, to the dismay of both the Bologna Senate and the Pope, who had authorized the trip to Paris for one year only.

The Lemon or Orange Debate

15

Cassini never returned to Italian academia. With his telescope in Paris he made several important discoveries including four of Saturn's satellites and the division in Saturn's rings, now named after him. He loathed Kepler, but he was gracious enough to accept most of Copernicus's teachings. He despised Picard's and Newton's theory of a world flattened at the poles and insisted—until his very last day—that planet earth was prolate. Personally, Jean Dominique did very well for himself as well. He married Genevieve de Laistre, daughter of the lieutenant general of the Compte of Clermont, whose valuable dowry of land- Figure 1.4 holdings included the Chateau de Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), author of Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Thury in the county of Oise. On Naturalis, the most important scientific the 18th (or the 8th, depending on book ever written. Source: Mezzotint by the source) of February, 1677, James McArdell after Enoch Seeman. Library of Congress. while at the Paris Observatory, Madame Cassini gave birth to a healthy baby boy, whom she and her husband named Jacques. Jean Dominique died a happy, old, respectable, and rich man in 1712. Jacques Cassini—known as Cassini II—is the Cassini most relevant to our story and his meteoric career, also without any formal university education, validates Newton's unwritten law that "the apple does not fall far from the tree." Jacques succeeded to his father's position at the observatory at an unclear date, sometime between "after 1700" and 1712, enshrining the Paris Observatory as a family business. His primary scientific interests included planets and their satellites, comets, and the tides. In 1713 he followed Picard's footsteps and continued measuring his arc of the meridian across France: north to Dunkirk, on the shores of the Pas-de-Calais 8 and south, to Perpignan, on the Mediterranean's Golfe du •

•

16

Plotting the Globe

Lion. Not long after that, in 1720, he proposed the adoption of a unit of length based on one minute of the arc of a meridian. 9 This brings him well and truly into our story, as we shall soon see. Later on in life, Jacques Cassini moved to different pastures, developed a taste for the law, and obtained the titles of Advocat and Conseilier dEtat. Jacques Cassini's greatest scientific mistake—which eventually cost him his position at the Paris Observatory—was his mystifying loyalty to his father, supporting the latter's false hypothesis that the earth was flattened at the equator. Most bewildering is the fact that Jacques came to the defense of Cassini I despite the unmistakable results of his own accurate measurements, which corroborated the Kepler-Newton theories and not his father's. That was taking the Fifth Commandment to an unusual extreme, probably more than even God had contemplated, let alone Jacques's employers. The triumph of Newton's theory of flattening at the poles forced Jacques Cassini to retire in 1740. The position of director of the observatory fell upon—surprise! surprise!—none other than Jacques's second son, Cesar-Frangois, the third astronomer of the dynasty, or Cassini III for short.

Figure 1.5 The relation of an oblate ellipsoid to a fitting sphere. Source: Basic Geodesy, by J. R. Smith, Landmark Enterprises, Rancho Cordova, CA. Courtesy Paul Cuomo Press, Inc., Newport Beach, CA. Image provided byj. R. Smith, Petersfield, Hampshire, UK.

The Lemon or Orange Debate

17

Cesar-Frangois was born to Suzanne Franchise Charpentier de Charmois on June 17, 1714, also at the Observatory of Paris—as appropriate to a future astronomer whose father and grandfather were stargazers from way back. Cesar-Francois was raised by his great uncle, JacquesPhilippe Maraldi, and received private at-home education, oriented toward astronomy. Cassini III took over his father's official duties and continued the familial surveying operations. In 1744 he began working on the great topographical map, which subsequently became the first modern map of France. 10 King Louis XV was very enthusiastic at the idea of mapping his country and ordered a handsome annual grant of 40,000 livres for the project, which was to encompass 182 sheets, all made to the scale of 1:86,400. Cesar-Frangois rolled up his sleeves and started working. Soon afterward he was awarded a title of nobility and was known as CesarFrangois Cassini de Thury. In 1747 he married the wealthy Charlotte Drouin de Vandeuil, and a year later was appointed a member of the royal Chamber of Audit and an advisor to the king. Other appointments were to the Academie des Sciences, where his name joined that of his ancestors, to the Royal Society in London, 11 and to the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He was well and truly immersed in affluent circles and had a sparkling social and scientific life. Madame Charlotte bore him two children—a son who would be known as Cassini IV, and a daughter, Fran^oise-Elisabeth. Unfortunately in 1755, on the eve of the Seven Year War, national funding for the mapping project was cut off completely. Cassini III did not despair. His sharp senses predicted the increasing demand for maps by many professionals, and he took his biggest business gamble. In a brilliant act of privatization, he switched all mapping activities over to a private company owned by him, the king, and the royal mistress, Madame Pompadour. The king granted the company a thirty-year monopoly for selling its maps. Cassini experienced no problems raising finances, persuading superstitious villagers that surveyors climbing on their belfries would not cast an evil eye upon their crops, or in drawing his maps. By the time he died of smallpox in 1784, 180 of the planned 182 sheets had been completed. The Paris Observatory remained firmly in the hands of the family. Cassini I V ^ J e a n Dominique, named after his great-grandfather—was born at the observatory (where else?) on June 30, 1748. He continued in the family business of astronomy and surveying, and after his father's

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death he took control of the observatory. Before that, in 1768, he was appointed Commissioner of Marine Clocks and was sent by the Academie on a long sea voyage to America, the African coast, and back to Brest, to test Pierre LeRoy's chronometer. 12 Cassini IV completed his father's map of France and in 1790 presented the complete set of 182 sheets to the Constitutional Assembly. In 1793 the Convention confiscated all maps and made them the property of the State, paying no compensation to Cassini for the world's greatest mapping project to date. It took other European countries another century before they could embark on work of such magnitude. Jean Dominique kept his mouth shut, for he had seen too many heads rolling daily at the foot of the guillotine. His business partners and patrons were no longer around. Louis XV had died in 1774, and the legendary Madame Pompadour ten years earlier, at the tender age of forty-three. Cassini IV certainly made the right decision. Irritating Robespierre was a risk nobody could take. His previous monarchial views cost him his job at the time of the Revolution, and the restoration and reequipping of the observatory were brought to an abrupt halt with his arrest in 1794. He was lucky to stave off the guillotine on more than one occasion and to spend only several months in jail. Scientific work free of political pressure was essential to Jean Dominique Cassini. He could not work with commissars breathing down his neck. He therefore abandoned science in 1800 and moved to his greatgrandmother's dowry—the Chateau de Thury, in the Oise countryside, north of Paris. He kept himself busy as mayor of Thury and as a justice of the peace in Mouy. He was made a count by King Louis XVI, was decorated by both Napoleon Bonaparte and rving Louis XVIII, and died at age 97, three years short of the 1848 revolution. His death effectively brought down the curtain on the Cassini era of great French scientists. The youngest of his five children, Alexandre Henri-Gabriel, Viscount de Cassini, a nondistinguished jurist and botanist, was the last standardbearer of the French branch of the family. He died of cholera in 1832, at age 51.

CHAPTER 2

Measuring a Meridian Mark I: What Is the Shape of the Earth? The Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Genesis 1:2

Nine Years in La Mitad del Mundo There has been no love lost between the French and the English since the Middle Ages. The fight for supremacy continues till today, the most recent example being the bid for the 2012 summer Olympic Games. In the past, their mutual animosity was expressed in a string of long and bloody wars won, by and large, by the British. This brings to mind the French tourist, in London on his first visit, being shown the exquisite treasures of that city. Strolling along Trafalgar Square and Waterloo Bridge, he wears a broad smile on his face. "Funny people you are, mes amis les Anglais? he tells his English hosts, "naming places after military defeats. . . . " The acrimony between the two nations has taken place not only in the limelight of bitter historical confrontations or struggles for economic hegemony, but also in the seemingly peaceful halls of science. The scientific rivalry reached a crescendo during the seventeenth and eighteenth

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centuries with the debate about the shape of the earth. The rationale behind Newton's theory was that the centrifugal force makes the enormous mass of the earth swell out at the equator and flattens the poles. Newton, backed by Huygens, postulated in 1687 an oblate—orangeshaped—spheroid, where a length of an arc of one degree of latitude increases from the equator toward the poles. The Cassinis—Jean Dominique and his son Jacques—on the other hand, thought differently. They continued measuring Picard's arc north to Dunkirk and south to the foot of the Pyrenees, on the Spanish border, and came to the opposite conclusion. Their calculations showed that the length of one degree of meridian north of Paris was 869 feet 5 inches shorter than that of a similar arc south of Paris. This suggested either a prolate—egg-shaped—earth, or serious errors in observations and/or calculations. One way or another, the Cassinis' observations contradicted the idea of a flattened earth. Not that it worried Jean-Rene de Longueil de Maisons, the president of the Academie des Sciences, and his colleagues at the time. 1 All other things equal, they would have had enough Gallic arrogance to dismiss

Figure 2.1 Five degrees of latitude near the equator compared with five degrees near the North Pole. Source: Drawn by Tat Rosman and Jonathan Meiry, Tel Aviv, Israel, after Larry Bogan, http:// www.go.ednet. ns. ca/~ mag/files/midway, htm.

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Newton offhand without a second thought. But Picard was the fly in the ointment, and a big one at that. His conclusions supported Newton, not the Cassinis. The problem was that Picard was French—not a native of perfidious Albion—and the best surveyor of his time. The Academie could not ignore him. The French scientific community was in turmoil. There was an urgent need to calm the cries that ensued, and to settle the controversy once and for all, in the best spirit of the Enlightment. Enter Louis Godin, the bright young member of the Academie des Sciences, who proposed in 1733 to send two meridian-measuring expeditions, one to the equatorial region and one to the Arctic. "Their findings of the length of a degree of a meridian," said Godin, "together with the already established results of French triangulation, will resolve once and for all the burning issue of whether the earth looks like an orange or like a lemon." 2 Godin did not have a crystal ball to tell him what the future held, nor did he read the (nonexistent) astrological column in the Mercure de France? Had he consulted a crystal ball or astrology, he would have seen himself entangled in a ten-year turbulent and punishing voyage to South America. Most probably he would have kept his grandiose ideas to himself, and continued enjoying Paris society life and writing his eleven-volume Histoire de VAcademie des Sciences. The two expeditions left Paris in 1735 and 1736, heading south and north, respectively. rving Louis XV, the popular twenty-two-year-old Louis the WellBeloved, as his people called him in his younger days, undertook— through the good offices of his faithful minister, Cardinal Fleury—to pick up the tab for the two meridian-measuring expeditions. There were no financial problems yet—the treasury was still flush with funds. These were the king's early days on the throne, 4 before his impressive string of mistresses—particularly the Marquise de Pompadour—imposed their petticoat government, and much before his infamous last words "apres moi le deluge!" ("after me—the flood!"). The world of the early-middle eighteenth century was relatively well charted for its time, and it looked pretty similar to what we see today. The east coast of Australia was yet to be discovered by Captain James Cook, but the legendary Terra Australis Incognita had disappeared from the charts, making room for fairly accurate drawings of the western half of Hollandia Nova, the name given to the new continent by its early Dutch discoverers. Antarctica had not yet been sighted, but the Americas were charted, east and west coasts, all the way from Cape Horn to

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the elusive Northwest Passage in the Atlantic, and to the Bering Strait in the Pacific Ocean. There was a slight problem though. John Harrison's chronometer was still a dream away, and so were accurate longitudes and modern marine surveying in general. Charts were more or less precise in their north-tosouth axes, but not from east to west. That, however, did not greatly worry the decision makers in the ivory towers of the Academie des Sciences as they discussed the target area for the proposed meridian measurement. They had only to single out a general geographical region, leaving the details of identifying the exact starting point and its precise latitude and longitude to the surveyors in the field. The equator runs through Asia, Africa, and South America, but that did not offer them many choices, especially because they were preparing a scientific expedition, not an exploratory one. Equatorial Asia—mainly Borneo and Sumatra—was a faraway virgin land, in the hands of the unfriendly Dutch East India Company, which was not going to allow nosy foreigners, and Frenchmen in particular, access to its spice trade. Africa was still unexplored, 5 and Gabon, which lies on the equator and could have been perfect for the job, was 150 years from becoming a French colony. With Asia and Africa written off, only South America remained, either the Portuguese colony of Brazil to the east, or the Spanish colony of Peru to the west. Political relations between France and Portugal had been stable since the peace treaty of April 1713, but the topography of the Amazon basin did not suit the expedition. Low country, creviced by hundreds of rivers and creeks, occasionally waterlogged, is not an idyllic venue for serious triangulation work. So what was left? A very suitable land, an organized and safe colony ruled by a great ally—Peru! Peru of the early eighteenth century was not the modest country it is today, continuously struggling for its economic and political survival. By then, Peru was a large viceroyalty that comprised the whole of South America, except for Venezuela, the Guianas, and Brazil. The viceroy ruled over most of Spanish Latin America from the recently built capital of Lima. 6 The continent's economy—built on forced Indian labor— filled the coffers of Spain with silver, gold, and precious stones. The equator slices through Peru 15 miles north of Quito, and thus her environs are in the middle of the world, or in la mitad del mundo, as it is affectionately called there. Quito is the oldest capital in South America, and it had been conquered by Francisco Pizarro for the Spanish Crown exactly 200 years before the French expedition. Geographi-

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cally, Quito is situated in a narrow Andean Valley, 114 miles east of the Pacific coast. Her altitude is just over 9000 feet, and her stimulating climate has a mean maximum temperature of 70°F, or 21°C. Selecting Peru was the best, and indeed the only, solution—politically, topographically, logistically, and scientifically. The die was cast in Paris— destination Peru! Of course, anyone trying to reenact that epic survey today would not head toward Peru, but to Ecuador, a smaller country to the north. Ecuador, with Quito its capital, finally gained freedom from Spain and seceded from the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1822. In another twist of events, Ecuador—already forced in the nineteenth century to surrender considerable areas to its neighbors Colombia and Brazil—was defeated in the 1941 war with Peru, lost to it another 39 percent of its territory, and shrank to its modern size. The first scientific mission to measure a meridian outside France left Paris by land for the French port of La Rochelle in the Bay of Biscay on April 14, 1735. Their vessel—the good ship St. DAnville, under the command of Captain de Ricour—had just completed her refit and was loading stores and provisions. The scientific party consisted of sixteen men of different disciplines, including a doctor, who would be murdered four years later in the (now Ecuadorian) town of Cuenca. Most were brilliant young men—although not highly experienced in fieldwork. The senior scientist was Louis Godin, 31, the originator of the meridian-measuring expeditions. Godin was an astronomer, a geodesist, and a veteran member (ten years) of the Academie des Sciences.7 Being the initiator and the highest in scientific rank, he was appointed the head of the expedition. Two other senior members were the physicist-cum-hydrographer Pierre Bouguer, and the flamboyant naturalist, Charles Marie de la Condamine. At 37, Pierre Bouguer was the oldest of the three. A mathematician and hydrographer by education, he was an infant prodigy, and by the age of fifteen he had already inherited his dead father's regius professorship of hydrography at Croisic in Lower Brittany. At 32 he became a full professor at the prestigious Le Havre University. Winner of three Grand Prix of the Academie between 1727 and 1731, Bouguer was elected to full membership in 1732. His outstanding mathematical ability earned him a position on the expedition. Last but not least, a much less-gifted astronomer than Godin, and a less reliable mathematician than Bouguer, was Charles Marie de la

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Figure 2.2 Pastoral view of eighteenth-century land surveying in France. Source: La Science de l'arpenteur : dans toute son etendue, by Dupain de Montesson, 1775, frontispiece. The Treasures of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Central Library.

Condamine, 34. In future years he would often receive the major part of the credit, chiefly because of his flair for public relations and his talent as a writer. La Condamine came from an entirely different background than that of his colleagues. The son of a wealthy tax collector, he studied at the Jesuit College of Louis-le-Grand in Paris, and at the age of eighteen he set upon a military career. While serving with distinction, he

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became an amateur naturalist and mathematician, and finally abandoned his army career in 1730 to study the sciences. His scientific education and standing was inferior to that of the other two senior members of the expedition, but he had more field experience, having logged a five-month voyage to North Africa, the Levant, and Asia Minor, in which he performed important physical and mathematical observations. Although La Condamine was well connected at the Academie, that was not enough. The position of leader of the expedition went to Godin, who was the most senior scientist. La Condamine resented the fact that he, a former Figure 2.3 army officer, was not put in Charles Marie de La Condamine. Source: Vignette engraved by Pierre-Philippe charge. Later on, during the mis- Choffard (1736-1809) after a drawing by sion, he did not hesitate to rectify Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1715-1790. Image the situation and take a bite at the provided courtesy of Mr John Loadman of Bishops Stortford, UK, http://www.bouncingleadership. balls.com. A junior member of the expedition was Godin's cousin Jean, also a naturalist, who was 23 at the time. Jean Godin added his mother's maiden name, Odonais, to his surname, in order to be distinguished from his relative. Jean Godin des Odonais, as he was known, made his contribution to the laborious triangulation work by being a general helper and assistant, a chainman in surveyors' terminology. He would not have received mention in this account at all but for his courageous young wife Isabel, whose adventures—motivated by deep love of her husband—will be told in detail later in this story. The expedition sailed from La Rochelle on the morning tide of May 16, 1735. Ten days later, two Spanish men-of-war left Cadiz for Martinique. They were the Conquistador, of 64 guns, and the Incendio, of 50 guns. Each of those vessels carried a special supernumerary naval

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officer, by direct order of the Spanish monarch, King Philip V The king had permitted the French to ramble about his colonial territory on condition they make the expedition a Franco-Spanish coproduction. Spain could not provide notable scientists—the country had not yet recovered from the 1492 expulsion of all its Jewish citizens, including many scientists—so the king had to settle for second best. He appointed two young naval officers, both with only basic scientific education and training, to join the team. Their duty, by and large, was to eavesdrop on the French. They were Jorge Juan y Santacilia, 23, and Juan Antonio de Ulloa, 19.8 The flotilla arrived at Martinique precisely one month after departing Cadiz. The two young officers proceeded to Cartagena, where they waited four months for the St. DAnville to arrive. Eventually a long and difficult journey by land brought them to Quito, where they joined the main body of the expedition on May 29, 1736. The St. DAnville proceeded from La Rochelle to Santo Domingo, where the scientists remained about four months to take various observations. Next destination was Cartagena, the chief colonial port of northern South America (in today's Colombia). Cartagena had a history as a rich port and major slave market. It was a target for attacks by corsairs such as Robert Baal and Francis Drake, and in 1697 it was besieged for 20 days by a French force under the command of Baron de Pointis. The city was taken for a short period of time—and was almost destroyed. The shortest way timewise, and the safest one indeed for the fragile quadrants and other triangulation instruments, was to follow in Pizarro's footsteps, namely to sail to the "waists" of today's Panama, 9 cross the isthmus over land, and then sail again to a suitable landing point off the west coast of today's Ecuador. That is exactly what the French expedition did. They arrived at Guayaquil in late February (or early March, depending upon which version one adopts) 1736, and, before proceeding inland to the Andes, they investigated the coastal area and its flora and fauna, mapping it and engaging in the novel art of measuring temperatures. The disagreement among the members of the expedition that had slowly fermented since the departure from La Rochelle came to a head at the end of the sea voyage. Arguments over which route to take to Quito ended in splitting the camp into several small groups, each heading in its own direction. Some went over land; others took routes that were partly over land and partly by river. Difficult terrain, hostile Indians, 10 dangers and hazards not-

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withstanding, they were all reunited in Quito on June 10, 1736. Soon after, they started their triangulation work—measuring the meridian. The aim was to measure as long an arc as practical, and to reduce the results to ascertain the length of one degree at the mean latitude of the equator. 11 Work progressed very slowly. Quadrant measurements had to be reduced to the horizontal, 12 and all calculations were reduced to sea level. Soon enough disagreements at the top level of the expedition flared again—and in force. Louis Godin began to work with Juan and Ulloa, while La Condamine teamed up with Bouguer. In 1741 Bouguer discovered a small discrepancy in their joint measurements, and he and La Condamine fell out when Bouguer refused to allow his colleague to recheck his calculations. Now all three scientists worked independently.

Figure 2.4 Four Correos del Ecuador souvenir stamps, issued July 10, 1986, to commemorate 250 years of measuring the meridian in South America. Top left: Triangulation theatre. Top right: Map of the Upper Amazon. Bottom: View of baseline measured on the Plain of Yaruqui. Source: Image provided courtesy of Diedrik A. Nelson, Sioux Falls, SD, http://www.danstopicals.com.

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La Condamine, who was not a bright astronomer or mathematician— and this is probably an understatement—was supported in the conflict by the hospitable Pedro Vicente Maldonado y Sotomayor, a member of the academic staff of the Jesuit College in Quito, whose sense for adventure drove him to join the expedition. The two developed a deep friendship during their time together in the Andes, and La Condamine rewarded Maldonado by taking him along on his subsequent adventurous voyage down the Amazon. The geodesic work was completed in May 1744. Godin and Ulloa were the last on the field at Mira, north of Quito. Eight years had passed, eight long years of hard work, perils, internal conflict and bad blood within the expedition's leadership. The outcome of this long sojourn was not going to please the Cassinis. Newton was correct after all—the earth was indeed shaped like an orange. Newton's calculated ratio of the flattening of the ellipsoidal shape was 1:230, while the combination of the

Figure 2.5 La Mitad del Mundo—Quito's monument of the equator. The equator runs through the opening at the monument's base. Source: Reproduced with kind permission ofMr Edward Cole, http://www.overlandy.com (a South American travel diary).

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Peruvian results together with those from Lapland 13 —whose story is yet to be told—produced 1:310. There were scores of scientific spin-offs to the expedition in both observations and discoveries. For example, Bouguer was the first to attempt to measure the density of the earth by using the deflection of a plumb line from the vertical as a result of the attraction of a mountainside. He published the results in his famous book La Figure de la Terre. The speed of sound was also measured; so was the effect of altitude on barometric pressure and the use of a barometer as an altimeter, to determine elevations. While at sea, members of the expedition were engaged in navigational observations, and those who went back to France via Amazonia collected invaluable data of its flora and fauna. Louis Godin reported his findings back to the Academie in Paris on a regular basis. La Condamine is considered by certain sources to be the discoverer of platinum, but this is apparently incorrect, because large deposits of that precious metal had already been uncovered in the bed of South America's Rio Pinto in the sixteenth century. The Spaniards called the new metal platina del pinto, from which the present name was derived. Rubber was La Condamine's real contribution. Although caoutchouc had been known in Europe since the early fifteenth century, nothing was being done with it. La Condamine observed the Indians' production of rubber and presented a comprehensive report—the first of its kind—to the Academie in 1736.

The Very Long Way Home With the meridian measured, the shape of the earth determined, and a myriad of tests and experiments concluded, the expedition had completed its term of reference. It was time to go back to Paris. The trip home, like nearly everything else undertaken by the expedition's senior members, was a matter of every man for himself. One would have expected that Louis Godin, the official leader of the team, would have written his final and comprehensive report and proceeded quickly to France to present his findings to the Academie. Godin, however, had his own agenda. He considered the interim reports he had been sending regularly to Paris as sufficient and he saw no reason to

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hurry home. Instead he accepted an appointment from the viceroy for the position of professor of mathematics at Lima's prestigious University of San Marcos, 14 where he taught from 1744 to 1750. He returned to France in 1751 to discover that he had been practically forgotten and superseded as a pensioner of the Academie. He was also broke, after squandering away all his savings in unfortunate speculations. Beggars can't be choosers; so poor Godin accepted the inferior position of president of the Naval College at Cadiz, Spain. Finally in 1757, the tide turned in his favor when King Ferdinand VI of Spain ennobled him. Two years later he was called to Paris and reinstated as a pensionary member of the Academie. No university, though, offered him a chair. He died heartbroken and alone upon his return to Cadiz in 1760. Pierre Bouguer completed his preliminary calculations in early 1743, and, eager to be the first to report to the Academie the results of the expedition, he left Quito for France by way of Cartagena on February 20 of that year. His return home was slow, and he landed in France in June 1744, nine years after sailing from La Rochelle. He published a full account of the Peru expedition in his book La Figure de la Terre in 1749. Back in France he returned to academia and to his special interests— hydrography and optics. The following year he was elected a fellow of the British Royal Society. He died in Paris in 1758. Two craters, one on the moon and one on planet Mars, are named in his honor. La Condamine's return was an epos apt of a person of his character and flamboyance. It was a triumphant voyage of exploration with no fewer adventures and discoveries than its predecessor, the measuring of the meridian. La Condamine—who eventually split from Bouguer and worked on his own triangulation and computations—also completed his calculations in early 1743 and left by way of Cuenca and Lima. Unlike Bouguer, he was in no hurry to reach France. He wanted first to explore the Amazon and to get to the east coast of South America by way of that mighty river. He first went to Lima, the capital and the seat of the viceroy, to marshal the support he needed for the expedition that would be his alone. He, the leader and only Frenchman, would reap all the credit in Paris, and indeed in the whole of Europe. After a relatively short spell in Lima, he and his friend Maldonado 15 crossed the Andes with a small team of natives and embarked on a four-month raft and boat journey down the Amazon River. La Condamine was not the first explorer to navigate the full length of the Amazon. Several notable Spaniards had done it in the 200 years

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LA FIGURE D E L A

T F R R F

Figure 2.6 Title page of La Figure de la Terre, by Pierre Bouguer, Paris, 1749. Source: The Treasures of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Central Library. before him. The first to embark on the journey was Francisco de Orellana, and his adventure warrants a slight deviation from our main story. La Condamine would not have minded. Orellana was a distinguished member of the infamous conquistadors, whose greed brought about the destruction of the South American cultures and the genocide of millions of Native Americans—all in the name of gold and the holy cross. Orellana's life had been intertwined with that of the Pizarros since he was a kid. The year 1541 found the notorious Pizarro brothers in Peru. Francisco (1474-1541) was governing the country from Lima, the capital he had

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established six years earlier. Gonzalo (1502?-1558), his much younger half-brother and comrade-in-arms, was the governor of Quito. Both brothers, like all the conquistadors, dreamed of the elusive El Dorado— The Golden One. Rumor had it that somewhere beyond the Andes, in the heart of the South American continent, there was a city of pure gold ruled by that eponymous mythical king. None of the expeditions across the cordillera came back with the slightest evidence of El Dorado's existence, but that did not deter the greedy Spaniards. Francisco was not satisfied with the Incas' gold he robbed. He wanted more and he ordered Gonzalo to search for El Dorado. 16 In March 1541, Gonzalo started marching eastward, heading the biggest task force ever assembled for this purpose. It consisted of some 300 Spanish soldiers, 4000 Indians, and 150 horses. Gonzalo appointed Francisco de Orellana (1511-1546) as his second in command. The Pizarros and Orellana were distant relatives and natives of the small town of Trujillo in central Spain. The march proved to be a disaster. Pizarro did not know where he was going. He encountered high mountains, goat tracks, ice, and snow. Hundreds, mostly Indians, froze to death, but that was only the beginning. The lowlands beyond the sierra proved to be no better, with their rains, swamps, mosquitoes, leeches, and dense jungle vegetation. Then there was hunger. The men ate their dogs, their horses, and even their saddles. By mid-October, barely seven months after leaving Quito, most of the natives and many of the Spaniards were dead. The survivors were marching along the Coca River when their enslaved guides and porters absconded. Pizarro, a resourceful commander of considerable creative talents, then ordered the building of a boat to carry their provisions and the sick. It took them four weeks to build that boat. They cut down trees, made nails out of horseshoes, and pitch out of tree resin. They built themselves a crude boat that was not much better than a navigable barge. 17 On November 9 they launched the vessel in a simple ceremony and christened her San Pedro. Everyone was too weak to celebrate. With supplies and the sick loaded, the boat sailed down river, the men advancing on foot along the bank. The land turned more and more desolate, and food became dangerously scarce. In April Pizarro made an executive decision: he would send Orellana in the San Pedro, accompanied by about fifty of the most capable men he had, to find El Dorado and come back with food and provisions. Don

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Francisco obliged. He picked the healthiest fifty-seven men, took the best crossbows and swords, and cast off. He never returned. According to evidence he gave later in Spain—supported by the written and verbal accounts of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal, a member of the boat crew who eventually became the Archbishop of Lima—all the men were on the verge of mutiny. They did not find El Dorado and gathered hardly any food. They insisted that it was impossible to go back upstream, and demanded to continue the voyage downstream. Indeed, they gave Orellana an ultimatum: either participate in their act of desertion, or get off the boat. Orellana asked for the ultimatum to be presented to him in writing, and he received a document signed by every single member of his team. He wrote back to his crew that he was yielding to their demands, under duress. In reality he was relieved. He himself was not keen to return. The voyage continued from the Coca River to the Napo and then into the as-yet-unnamed Amazon, where Orellana stopped for a while, compelling his crew to build a larger and stronger craft, which they christened Victoria. On April 24 they resumed sailing in two boats. During the voyage the natives told the Spaniards of a tribe of fighting women who lived downriver, and Orellana later even claimed to have encountered them. He named the river Amazonas, for those fighting women and for the Amazons of Greek mythology. The river odyssey was completed on August 26, 1542, when the exhausted crews reached the Atlantic Ocean. It had taken the defectors sixteen months to navigate down the 4000-mile river, but their journey was not over yet. They were in Portuguese Brazil, an enemy territory, far from a Spanish colony and from transport home to Spain. Orellana, who was no seaman, rallied his crews to embark on the 1400-mile sea voyage to Venezuela in their rudimentary and ill-equipped boats. Miraculously, they made it. The San Pedro rounded Trinidad and dropped anchor at Nueva Cadiz in Cubagua Island on September 9. The Victoria— commanded by Orellana with Carvajal beside him—arrived there two days later. Forty-seven men were alive. This epic voyage was another monument to man's endurance, sheer will, and lust for life. Orellana reached Spain in 1543 and reported his adventures to King Carlos V. He was clever enough to have kept the correspondence with his mutinous crew. Carvajal testified in his favor and presented his log. In spite of intense lobbying by Pizarro's supporters, all charges of treacherous desertion were dismissed.

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Figure 2.7 Peruvian stamp (dated 1942; issued February 1943) commemorating the fourth centenary of the discovery of the Amazon. It depicts Gonzalo Pizarro's and Francisco de Orellana's route from Cuzco to El Dorado, and Orellana's epic voyage to the mouth of the Amazon. Source: Image provided courtesy ofDiedrikA. Nelson, Sioux Falls, SD, http://www.danstopicals.com.

Orellana managed to convince the Council of the Indies that the lands upstream of the Amazon were not Portuguese, but still free to grab. Spain decided to colonize the area and turn it into a new province, to be named Nueva Andalucia. On February 18, 1544, Orellana was commissioned the Provincial Governor. He was just 32 years of age! The crown, however, allocated no funds for the project and Orellana had to look for private investors to back him. Very soon he ran out of luck. Bedeviled by creditors and by badly prepared ships, Orellana stole out of Sanlucar on May 11, 1545, in charge of a flotilla of four vessels, about 400 soldiers and colonists, provisions, building materials, and

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other equipment. Ana de Ayala, his reportedly very young and poor bride, the future gobernadora, was beside him, but not for long. The adventure turned sour practically from day one. They had to put into the Canary and Cape Verde Islands for months of repairs and attempts to resupply the ships. People died and deserted. One vessel was lost in the Atlantic with all hands, and the other three were wrecked in the Amazon as Orellana was trying to retrace his way upriver. Attacks by Indians, marooning on unknown islands, and starvation added to the toll. Orellana himself died of illness and grief in November 1546. A Spanish ship eventually rescued 44 survivors of the estimated 300 souls that entered the Amazon with Orellana. They were barely alive. Most of them subsequently settled in Central America, Peru, and Chile. Ana de Ayala befriended one of the survivors, Juan de Penalosa, with whom she spent the rest of her days in Panama. She was last heard of in 1572, aged 43. Ecuador did not forget Orellana. On July 20, 1998, the Quito Government carved a 7977-square-mile section off the eastern province of Napo and created a new province named Orellana. On the same day Ciudad Coca, the largest town in the area (2001 population, 18,298) was renamed Puerto Francisco de Orellana. The deserter of El Dorado had come a long way since the fiasco of Nueva Andalucia. And what of his boss Pizarro? Gonzalo Pizarro staggered back over the Andes, and in June 1542 he hobbled into Quito, his tail between his legs. Behind him were about 80 seminaked, sick and hungry men—all that remained of the 4000-plus task force. He quickly learned that his brother Francisco had been assassinated 12 months earlier and that Blasco Nunez, the viceroy, had stripped him, and the rest of the conquistadors, of their military and political privileges. Pizarro had no qualms about starting a civil war. He took to the field against the viceroy and won the Battle of Anaquito in 1546. Two years later he was defeated by the new viceroy, Pedro de la Gasca. He was captured and executed on April 10, 1548. That closed the South American chapter of the Pizarro brothers' adventures. 18 History would have been much more pleasant without them. La Condamine's trek downriver was easier than Orellana's, thanks to missions that had been established along the river by Jesuit priests. Food, information, and helpful directions were in abundance all along the way. The missionaries also provided lodging, maps, and manned

Figure 2.8 The Amazon, Based on La Condamine's first map, 1778. Source: Dufour &Roux, Maestricht, Holland, 7778. Courtesy of WorldView Antique Maps & Books, Katonah, NY.

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canoes. Survival worries off their chest, La Condamine and Maldonado were free to observe, measure, map, and record everything they set their eyes on, in the fields of topography, botany, zoology, and anthropology. They made contacts with a variety of Indian tribes, many of them now annihilated. They studied their cultures, their ways of life, and their knowledge of the flora and fauna around them. The South American adventure ended at Cayenne in French Guiana, where La Condamine and Maldonado remained for five months before heading for Europe. While there, La Condamine had the opportunity to repeat Richer's 1671 experiments in gravity at various latitudes. 19 La Condamine was back in Paris in early 1745, four weeks after his forty-fourth birthday. It had been ten years since he had left for La Rochelle. The hundreds of specimens he brought back with him, his notes and stories of electric eels, strange new plants and drugs, and exotic Indians, stirred tremendous interest in France and in the whole of Europe. La Condamine became a celebrity overnight. He sat down immediately to process all the data he had brought with him into the first scientific account of the Amazon, which he published—with a map—within months of his return. Six years later he published a journal of his voyage to South America, whose abbreviated title was Journal du Voyage Fait Par Ordre du Roi a Lequateur (A Journal of a Voyage Made by the King's Order to the Equator). A two-volume copy of this book in contemporary marbled calf, spine gilt, with red and green title labels, small central inlaid morocco ornament on front covers, decorated with a gilt border of small flowers and a sailing ship in centre, sprinkled edges, etc. was offered for sale on the Internet by a renowned bookseller in July 2005 for US$ 11,000. A genuine bargain! La Condamine was an old and very close friend of Maupertuis, a meridian measurer in another part of the world, whom we shall meet in our next chapter. Some biographers are adamant that in the last part of his life La Condamine was campaigning for inoculation against smallpox, "partly due to the fact that he had suffered from smallpox as a child." This seems to be untrue. The English physician Edward Jenner, discoverer of the smallpox inoculation, applied the first experimental immunization to an eight-year-old boy in Gloucestershire, on May 14, 1796. La Condamine died 22 years earlier, on February 4, 1774. Last but not least we have Juan Antonio de Ulloa and Jorge Juan y Santacilia, the two Spanish naval officers, whose scientific knowledge at the time they joined the expedition was quite lacking. However, their

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natural talents and eagerness for knowledge motivated them to learn a great deal from their senior French counterparts. Over the years, not surprisingly, Spanish historians have glorified Ulloa's and Juan's contribution to the expedition, equating it to that of the French scientists. King Philip V would have loved it! When the French split camp, the Spanish officers remained with Godin, the official leader who never quite consummated his leadership. The two men left the field for Lima together with Godin in May 1744. Godin stayed at Lima and the Spaniards proceeded to Europe by way of Cape Horn, in two separate ships. The rationale was to spread the risk of losing their journals, notes, maps, and the specimens they had collected over the nine-year period. That proved to be a brilliant idea. The English captured Ulloa's ship in May 1745 and he was locked without ceremony in Louisburg Fortress, which had just been seized from the French. He was released about a year later and arrived in Madrid to a hero's welcome on July 25, 1746. Ulloa later held various naval and scientific positions, and in 1766 he enjoyed a two-year appointment as Governor of La Florida Occidental, as Louisiana used to be known in those days. Back in Spain, he established the Spanish Museum of Natural History, and in 1784 he published in Madrid his book Relacion Historica del Viaje a la America Meridional (An Historic Tale of a Voyage to South America) based on his journals. His last major position was as the Lieutenant General of the Spanish Navy. He died near Cadiz in 1795. Jorge Juan y Santacilia also had a great career in the navy, the sciences and public service, more or less parallel to that of his colleague. In 1748, as a full captain, he headed a naval study mission to England—the leading maritime nation of the time—to investigate marine infrastructures: waterways, harbors, and docks. Upon his return he was appointed in charge of modernizing several Spanish ports. In 1767 he had a brief diplomatic career, when he was sent as an extraordinary ambassador to the court of the king of Morocco. He also had a string of academic appointments, established the observatory at Cadiz and published several books, including Noticias Secretas de America (Secret News of America), which he wrote with Antonio de Ulloa, detailing their voyage to Peru. Juan y Santacilia died in Madrid in 1773. He was briefly immortalized when his face adorned the Spanish 10,000 pesetas banknotes (issued on October 12, 1992), now superseded by the Euro.

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Our story would be incomplete without the homecoming saga of Jean Godin des Odonais's family, or, more precisely, of his loving wife Madame Isabel Godin, nee Dona Isabella de Casamayor y Bruno. Godin des Odonais, who was a small cog in the meridian-measuring machinery, was offered the position of Professor of Astronomy and Natural Sciences at the College of Quito in 1739. Academically, that college was the best in northern Peru and a fabulous stepping-stone for an ambitious 27-year-old, who had yet to prove himself in the fields of science. 20 Measuring the meridian progressed very slowly, with half the job still to be done, but the lights of Quito twinkled not too far away. Godin des Odonais was quick to identify an opportunity. He promptly resigned from the expedition and took the professorship. Four years later he married a young heiress in Riobamba, and all his dreams came true. Economic problems gone, he resigned his chair and devoted all his time to natural sciences and the languages of the Indians. He explored the northern provinces of Peru, discovering, drawing, and collecting thousands of specimens of plants and animals. He always knew he would Figure 2.9 one day return to Paris, publish his Jorge Juan y Santacilia (1713-1773), scientific adventures, present his Spanish naval officer, scientist, collections, and take the Academie senior civil servant, and ambassador-at-large. Spanish ESP 10,000 des Sciences by storm. banknote issued October 12, 1992. Madame Godin des Odonais did (Watermark shows a portrait of Juan not participate in her husband's Antonio de Ulloa). Source: Copyright Banco de Expana. By permission. Image projourneys into the wilderness, which vided courtesy of Atsnotes ofBurnaby, B. C, were considered too difficult and Canada, http://www.atsnotes.com.

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dangerous for a lady. Her husband, whom she married at fifteen, underestimated her. He preferred keeping her in a continuous state of pregnancy. The couple's first five children died very young, and the sixth, whom Godin des Odonais never saw, died of yellow fever at sixteen. Peru's country towns were harsh places to live, a far cry from the fabled land of El Dorado. Madame's portrait presents a narrow-lipped, decisive, and unattractive woman. That might have been another reason des Odonais made her stay at home. Isabel's father was a Creole of French extraction, named Don Figure 2.10 Isabel Godin des Odonais (1728Pedro Manuel de Casamayor y 1792). Source: Image taken from a facsimile Bruno. When Isabel was born, of the portrait painted for the Godin family. Courtesy ofEmmanouel Laleos, Fellow of the Senor Casamayor—whose name Royal Geographical Society and owner of was the Spanish translation of the "The Great Web of Percy Harrison Fawcett," French Grandmaison (meaning http://www.phfawcettsweb. org. "big house")—was a small-time country town magistrate. He later went into business for himself and, by the time his daughter came of age, he was a wealthy man who could afford a respectable dowry. It did not take long for his schlemiel of a son-in-law to lose the greater part of the dowry in shady speculations. In 1749, Godin's family assets were quickly approaching the low-water mark, and des Odonais decided it was time to look for greener pastures and move to Cayenne. Madame Godin was pregnant again and could not travel with him. His idea was to go down the Amazon to Cayenne, where he would obtain Portuguese transit visas for the members of his family, and then go back and take them with him to French Guiana. It was not going to be a pleasure cruise for him, but a 4000-mile eight-month exhausting voyage up the river, a little faster back. The hardest part for Isabel and the baby would be to cross the Andes on a mule, from Riobamba to the waiting vessel, 132 miles as the condor flies.

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Des Odonais's sail down the full length of the Amazon River was a repetition of La Condamine's trip five years earlier. La Condamine mentions in his book that Godin des Odonais wrote to him in 1750—from the Brazilian town of Para—that he had successfully completed the trip from Peru, found the route suitable for traveling, and that he intended to return to Quito to bring his family downstream to the Atlantic Ocean and on to France. La Condamine boasts that he "blazed the trail" for des Odonais, but there is no evidence that he contacted the latter before he took off, nor that he provided him with any sailing instruction or information for the grueling trek. Godin des Odonais did not tap La Condamine's experience. No wonder it took him 14 months to reach Cayenne! While there, he established himself on the bank of the River Oyapok, on the French side of Guiana-Brazil border, and for fifteen years he explored the areas north of the Amazon. Indeed, upon arrival his first action was to apply for those visas, but it took the Portuguese authorities eight years to process the application. Eventually they even put a vessel at his disposal, to sail all the way to the foot of the Andes, but by that time des Odonais had fallen sick. He remained ill for several months, and he was then swindled by conmen and unreliable messengers who cost him a lot of money. As time went by he apparently lost hope of seeing his family again and invested all his energy in exploration. Distances were large and communication nonexistent; many years passed. Eventually rumors reached Madame Isabel that somewhere down the Amazon there might be a visa waiting for her. She sent her trusted servant Joaquim to investigate, but it was two years before he finally returned with confirmation of that rumor. It was 1769, twenty years since her husband had left Quito for Cayenne. Twenty years of separation. Isabel was 41, still a young and daring woman. She realized that if she ever wanted to see her husband again—and as a good Catholic wife she did—she had to take matters into her own hands. She quickly organized a task force that included her two brothers, who wished to go to Rome and Spain, a nine-year-old nephew, who was to be sent to school in France, a physician, four servants, and thirty-one porters. They all left Riobamba on October 1, 1769. Her father, accompanied by several other men, proceeded a few days earlier—to organize guides, canoes, and paddlers for the first leg of the journey. The trek was a disaster from day one. The village of Canelos, at the beginning the journey, was infected with smallpox. Seeing this, the por-

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ters and guides absconded, leaving the Europeans and their servants to their own devices. Their canoes stolen, they had to resort to building a raft with their bare hands. The raft soon hit an underwater obstruction and was wrecked, taking with it most of their gear and provisions. They walked for miles barefoot in the desert, and within three days they perished one by one, of thirst and loss of blood—all except for Madame Godin. Delirious and choking, she wandered aimlessly for several weeks in the jungle, living on wild fruit and eggs. A group of Indians in a canoe saved her when she reached the river, and they brought her to Anodas in early January 1770. She was half dead, injured, and wrapped in rags. It had taken her nearly 100 days to trek 132 miles. A condor could have flown that distance between breakfast and lunch. The Andes were now well behind her, as were thoughts of despair, sorrow, or regret. "It's all God's will," she comforted herself. "God wants me to continue, and He will reunite me with my beloved husband." God, apparently, was on her side. As soon as she had recuperated at Anodas, she pushed forward until she reached the Amazon. Changing canoes as she went from village to village, she found the Portuguese ship waiting for her where the river widened. It was a great feeling. There were still 3000 miles to go, but they were very comfortable ones, compared with those she had logged so far. The vessel pulled into Fort Oyapok on July 22, 1770. Jean Godin des Odonais was waiting on the small wharf, clutching a bouquet of orchids. It had been 21 years and 4 months since he had kissed her goodbye. Their separation was longer than the twenty years that Ulysses wandered in the Mediterranean, away from Penelope. Isabel was unwell at Cayenne, a matter that further delayed their departure for France. Eventually they arrived at La Rochelle on May 26, 1773, thirty-eight years and ten days after Godin des Odonais left that port together with his cousin Louis Godin, Pierre Bouguer, Charles Marie de la Condamine, and the rest of the now dispersed team. Jean and Isabel spent the rest of their lives comfortably at Jean's family estate at St. Amand, in Berri, 150 miles south of Paris. Jean donated his botanical collection to the Museum of Natural History, where the specimens are still preserved. He labored on his notes and wrote more than twenty-five volumes on South American nature and Indian languages. In 1784 he was awarded the ultimate honor— membership in the Academie des Sciences. They both died in 1792. He was eighty and she only sixty-four, having never really recovered from

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her perilous journey across South America. Ironically, although separable in their life, the pair was inseparable in their death. Dona Isabella became an inspiration to several writers who wrote biographies and novels based on her life story.21 Prince Charles Bonaparte, the renowned naturalist, gave her name to a remarkable species of South American bird, the Chamaepelia Oodinae. He wrote: "Consecrated to the memory, which can never be too much honored, of Isabel Godin des Odonais, who, alone and abandoned, traveled across the American continent, in its greatest width, sustained by her greatness of soul and her martyrdom to duty."

One Year on Polcirkeln22 On April 20, 1736, exactly one year and one week after Louis Godin and his colleagues left Paris for La Rochelle and their epic adventures in Peru, the second meridian-measuring expedition took the mail coach from Paris to Dunkirk to board a ship headed for the south of Lapland. While members of the mission to la Mitad del Mundo were collecting specimens along the sunny equatorial coast, dipping their toes in the cold water of the Humboldt Current, members of the northbound expedition had an enjoyable seven-day road and canal trip to Dunkirk, in the north of France. In charge of that expedition was the guitar-playing, astronomer-cummathematician-cum-geodesist Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis. He was driven by two ambitions. The short-term one was to quickly sail the 1700 miles up the North and Baltic Seas to South Lapland, measure accurately one degree of a meridian on the polar circle, and get back to Paris. He budgeted one year maximum for the triangulation fieldwork and the ensuing calculations. His long-term ambition was to join the esteemed company of the "forty immortals" of the Academie FrangaiseP He was successful on both counts. The Lapland job was completed nine days ahead of schedule, and he became an "immortal" in 1743. Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis was born in Saint-Malo, on the rugged coast of Brittany, on September 28, 1698. After a short military career, during which he met La Condamine, and their lifelong friendship was forged, he changed direction and opted to study mathematics and astronomy. That was a wise beginning of a brilliant career. In 1728 he visited London for the first time. There he became acquainted with—and

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•u^JHL^JBL.. JMb».

Figure 2.11 Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759). Ridiculed as "Earth flatenner" by friend-turned-enemy Voltaire. Finnish stamp (issued September 5, 1986) commemorating the meridian measurement Source: Copyright Finland Post Limited. By permission. Image provided courtesy ofDiedrikA. Nelson, Sioux Falls, SD, http:// www. danstopicals. com. captivated by—Newton's theories. Three years later he was awarded membership in the Academie des Sciences, and he immediately became the foremost French proponent of Newton's theories of gravitation and orange-shaped earth. In the anti-Newton, pro-Cassini, environment that prevailed in the corridors of the Academie, he infuriated many of his colleagues, who considered him a heretic and a traitor. Not that Maupertuis lost any sleep over it. From 1730 to 1734 Maupertuis was a tutor to the Marquise du Chatelet, teaching her mathematics and physics. Mostly known as Emilie du Chatelet, this remarkable lady was the gifted daughter of Baron de Breteuil. A scientist and great philosopher in her own right, she married the Marquis Florent du Chatelet at 19. They had three children, but that did not stop the vibrant Emilie from having love affairs with a string of other men, both before and after her wedding. Her most famous amour was with Voltaire. Their affair started in 1733, and they continued living together until her death, even after she had transferred her affections to the young poet, Jean Francois de Saint-Lambert, who was ten years her junior. 24 It was through

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Emilie du Chatelet that Maupertuis met Voltaire, gave him lessons in mathematics—so that he would better understand Newton's laws of physics—and earned the great author's attention and esteem. 25 Maupertuis sold King Louis XV on the idea of measuring the meridian, along with Louis Godin, Anders Celsius, and others. sMaupertuis's senior scientific position and proven track record made him the indisputable commander of the second expedition. Determined to achieve quick and clear scientific success, he handpicked a formidable team to accompany him. Three notable members of the group were Alexis Clairaut, Louis Camus, and Reginald Outhier. Clairaut was a twenty-threeyear-old mathematical genius who Figure 2.12 first drew the attention of the Emilie Marquise du Chatelet (1706Academie des Sciences in 1726, 1749), first translator of Newton's Prinwhen he presented a paper in cipia Mathematica into French. Mathegeometry on the properties of four matician, physicist, philosopher, and paramour. Source: Engraved frontispiece curves. He was just twelve at the from her book, Institutions Physiques (1742). 26 time! His job was mainly to cal- From the collection of Ronald K. Smeltzer, culate the results of the triangula- Princeton, NJ. tion. Years later he calculated the effect that Saturn and Jupiter would have on the 1759 appearance of Halley's comet, and he correctly predicted its return to within a month. Camus was an astronomer, and Outhier a priest with considerable experience in triangulation and mapping. Outhier kept a travel journal, which was later published in France and translated into several European languages. There wereother scientists, too, and a contingent of servants who were to look after the needs and well-being of the scientists, ensuring, for instance, that they were not served red wine with their seafood, pour Vamour de Dieu, heaven forbid! The good—and small—ship Prudent, under the command of Captain Francis Bernard, was waiting for them in Dunkirk's inner harbor, behind the tidal sluice gates, as were two Swedes, a thirty-year-old physician and

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a seventy-two-year-old nobleman and prominent author. Two days later they were joined by Professor Celsius, who had just returned from London, where he had gone to collect some specially constructed instruments. The Prudentweighed anchor on May 2 and set course for the North Sea, toward the Skagerrak. The weather was awful, and they all became seasick. Their interim destination was Stockholm, where they berthed on May 21. They celebrated the occasion of touching terra firma with a three-gun salute. Captains of other vessels in the Figure 2.13 harbor and the officer in Anders Celsius (1701-1744), the inventor charge of Stockholm Castle of the thermometer centigrade scale. reciprocated with their artilSource: Painting by Olof Arenius, 1701-1766. Courtesy Dr Goran Henriksson, Uppsala Univer- lery. It was a festive day in the sity, Astronomical Observatory, Uppsala. port. Ships' agents cracked open bottles of aquavit, without even knowing the reason for the celebration. In Sweden, one does not really need a special reason for a good drink of cold aquavit, chased down by succulent spring herrings, fresh from the North Sea. The idea of reinforcing the expedition with Swedish players— particularly Celsius—had scientific and political roots. As in the case of Juan and Ulloa in Peru, King Frederick I of Sweden could not allow a group of foreigners to roam his territory, unless they were under supervision. Celsius, then 35, was an excellent choice. The interpreter, Anders Hellant, and a few others, assisted him. Celsius, born on November 27, 1701, had been a professor of astronomy at Uppsala University since the age of 29. He came from a long line of scientists: his father and two grandfathers were also science professors at Uppsala. Young Celsius's achievements included the Celsius thermometer, 27 the first measurement of the

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brightness of stars, and the discovery that the aurora phenomenon was related to the earth's magnetic field. Celsius's participation in the expedition brought about the support of the king, which in turn led to the much-required practical support of the local authorities and the military through all stages of the expedition. Celsius himself was well experienced in triangulation, mapping, and making astronomical observations and calculations. 28 He was therefore of the utmost assistance to Maupertuis. Anders Hellant was a nineteen-year-old graduate at Uppsala University, whose dissertation was about salmon fishing in the Tornio River. He had wide knowledge of the target area and was fluent in Swedish, Finnish, and French. Hellant was appointed the full-time official interpreter of the expedition. On May 23 they were all presented by Le Comte de Casteja, Louis XV's Ambassador in Sweden, to their Majesties, King Frederick I and Queen Ulrike Eleonora. A royal dinner followed pronto. When visiting Paris in 1733, during his grand tour of Europe's scientific establishments, Celsius suggested that the most suitable location for measuring the meridian was the Tornionlaakso valley in the south of Lapland, now on the Swedish-Finnish frontier. Maupertuis thought more in the direction of the off-lying islands. Valley or islands, Maupertuis did not fancy any more seasickness and took the overland route by coach to Tornio, the major village in the Tornionlaakso valley. Several colleagues, including Celsius, joined him. It took them sixteen uncomfortable days to travel the 710 miles of bad roads and river crossings between Stockholm and Tornio. The others left aboard the Prudent on June 3 with all the expedition's gear and equipment. Eventually coaches and ship converged on Tornio under the midnight sun of midsummer's night 1736.29 Outhier, the priest, and two colleagues inspected the archipelago between Tornio and Raahe, only to find that the islands were all too low for triangulation. It was back to Celsius's original general location, and the locals came to help: Herr Wegelius, the headmaster of the Tornio school, suggested—in Latin, the only common language he had with the French—that the measurements take place on the uplands close to the River Tornionjoki. Wegelius also pointed out that the river flowed in the direction of the meridian and that the high mountains on both sides would provide good triangulation points. That was a brilliant idea, and the complete party of 36 men, French and Scandinavians, pitched camp at Tornio and soon began their reconnaissance of

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the area. It was a very exciting event for the 700-odd inhabitants of Tornio, who watched the unfolding adventure without having the slightest clue what it was all about. Not surprisingly the entire local community of this sleepy hamlet— especially the clergy, civil service, and the military—was eager to give the explorers a helping hand and to entertain them when they were off duty. Most notable were the borgmastare (mayor), Herr Peter Johan Pipping, who spoke good Latin, his aldermen, and Lt.-Col. Carl Magnus Du Rietz, a career officer and descendant of an old French noble family, who spoke good French. Rietz commanded the local regiment, and his soldiers—mainly reservists—were always ready to give every logistical support required, handle boats, carry instruments, and undertake all other practical chores. The belfry of Tornio church was selected as the southernmost point for the triangulation exercise,and the Ettisvaara upland as its northernmost point. The angular distance between these two points was measured by

Figure 2.14

The triangulation of Maupertuis's arc of the meridian, Lapland, 1736. A knockout to the Cassinis. Source: Published in Abbe Reginald Outhier'$ Journal d'un Voyage au Nord en 1736 & 1737. Image provided courtesy of Diedrik A. Nelson, Sioux Falls, SD, http://www.danstopicals.com.

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stellar observations to be 57 minutes and 28.67 seconds (57' 28.67") of latitude. That was close enough to one degree. Maupertuis wrongly assumed that both points lay exactly on the same meridian, and that they therefore provided perfect terminals for his work. In fact they differed slightly in longitude, but that did not influence the accuracy of his findings. The principal measuring instruments were 24-inch and 18-inch quadrants, made by the famous Parisian instrument-maker Langlois. The larger of the two quadrants was donated by Maupertuis, in 1745, to the Potsdam-Bablberg observatory in Germany, and it is still housed there. Both quadrants were very heavy pieces of equipment. The 24-inch one was so heavy that teams of six soldiers took turns carrying it on their shoulders. The unit of length to measure the baseline was an iron toise measure brought from Paris, where it had been checked for length at a temperature of + 14° Reaumur 30 (i.e., 17.5°C). Most of the measurement work was conducted in areas of very difficult terrain and under unfavorable meteorological conditions—fog, rain, and sleet. The country folk were hospitable, but also very poor, and they were not always in a position to provide ample food and shelter. Harsh conditions notwithstanding, the Lapland mission was one big friendly family that mixed well with each other and with the local population, unlike the Peru expedition whose members hated each other's guts. After making all necessary adjustments to the calculations, the length of one degree was set as 57,437.9 toises, which is equal to 111.9485 km or 69.5616 miles. The toise was the old French measure of length, equal to 6 Paris feet, or 6 feet 4.734 inches in today's measurements. Considering Picard's first accurate measurements of an arc of a meridian taken near Paris in 1670, this was the beginning of the end for Cassini's crumbling theory of a lemon-shaped earth. But much worse was yet to come. By 1745 one could have summarized all the meridian measurements taken to date as follows:

Latitude

Year

Scientist

Length of 1 degree (Toises)

0°

1745

La Condamine Bouger

56,748.0 56,753.0

45°

1739-40

CassiniLacaille

57,027.0

49°

1670

Picard

57,060.0

66°

1737

Maupertius

57,437.9

(Lengths are slightly at variance to Figure 2.15 because of different calculations.)

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Figure 2.1 5

Spread of eighteenth-century arcs. The numbers vindicated Newton. Source: Basic Geodesy, byj. R. Smith, Landmark Enterprises, Rancho Cordova CA. Courtesy Paul Cuomo Press, Inc., Newport Beach, CA. Image provided byj. R. Smith, Petersfield, Hampshire, UK.

The trend was clear. The farther one was from the equator, the longer was one degree of latitude measured along a meridian. With all due respect to Descartes—the orange had won over the lemon! They left Tornio on June 10, 1737. It was midsummer, with warm weather and a midnight sun. Everybody who was anybody in Tornio came to wave goodbye. There were handshakes, a small military parade,and of course tears. Most women waved their handkerchiefs in a gesture of farewell, but others dried their tears furtively, in fear of their already suspicious husbands. The French team split two ways for the return home, by sea and overland. The "sea dogs," who included Maupertuis, were not that lucky. Seventy-five miles out of Tornio, off the town of Pitea, their ship went heavily aground. She took a lot of water, but she was eventually refloated. Luckily the land party, which included Celsius, was not too far

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away, and news of the disaster brought the immediate rescue of their colleagues and the salvage of the expedition's gear. They all proceeded by coach to Stockholm, where they arrived on July 11th. There was another dinner at the French Embassy, and they were all presented again to their Majesties. Professor Celsius returned to Uppsala for his final project—building the Celsius Observatory. His participation in the meridian-measuring expedition had made him a local celebrity, and he expertly leveraged this to extract donations from the Swedish government and businesses toward the building and equipping costs of that most modern observatory, which was completed in 1741. Afterward, he continued to lecture and published important works, including an innovative star catalog. His book Arithmetic for the Swedish Youth (1741) was typical of the Enlightenment spirit that prevailed in Europe at the time. He died of tuberculosis in April 1744, only 42 years old, and was buried at Uppsala. Young Anders Hellant, the interpreter of the expedition, embarked on a distinguished public service career. Although only a provincial magistrate before he joined the expedition, Hellant made a meteoric rise to become king's governor in the Tornionlaakso Valley and adjacent areas. During his forty-eight years in that highly influential position, he still found the time to pursue his astronomic and naturalistic interests. He had his own private observatory at Tornio, and he frequently submitted results of his observations to the Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. The French split again in Stockholm. Maupertuis and a colleague took a ship for Amsterdam, whilst others sailed to Rouen. Outhier and three more set out by coach to Paris, via Copenhagen, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Brussels. Their thirty-three-day journey nowadays takes just two and a half hours by jet, barring traffic and security delays. The expedition concluded its work on August 21, 1737, when it visited Versailles and reported to King Louis XV, his minister in charge of household and marine department Le Comte de Maurepas, 31 and the Cardinal of Paris. That over, the group dispersed, and each member went his own way. Alexis Clairaut—the genius boy—returned to academia, where he excelled in the fields of mathematics, physics, and astronomy. He contributed to the mechanics of liquids and to differential equations. One of his important studies (1743) was a postulation, in a simple way, of the dependency of the flattening ratio of the earth on

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the relationship between gravity and the centrifugal force. He died in 1765. Reginald Outhier returned to continue his scientific work under the Bishop of Bayeux. He edited his travel journal and published it under the title fournal d'un Voyage au Nord en 1736 & 1737. In later years he was nominated the representative of the Academie des Sciences in Berlin. Soon after the expedition's return to France came scrutiny of its results. Accusations of a botchy triangulation job and erroneous calculations surfaced everywhere. In spite of the controversial results of his meridian measurements, Maupertuis gained much fame for his expedition, and the popular socialite became the toast of Paris salons. Voltaire wrote of him: This poorly known world which he knew how to measure, Becomes a monument from which he derives his glory, His destiny is to describe the world, To please and to enlighten it. Flattering lines indeed, and from Voltaire! Maupertuis could not help but wonder whether his ex-student and most famous admirer, Mme. du Chatelet, was behind this. Maupertuis was invited to Germany by King Frederick the Great, became a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1741 and presided over it from 1745 to 1753. He published more than half a dozen books on mathematics, geography, astronomy, and cosmology. In 1744 he first enunciated his original Principle of Least Action,62 and he published it six years later. That opened an academic can of worms: some colleagues accused Maupertuis of plagiarizing Leibniz's work, whereas others came to his defense. To make matters worse, Voltaire, in Prussia on exile from Paris, started a controversy on scientific matters with the king's favorite protege, by publishing a pamphlet ridiculing the "Earth Flattener." This time he wrote of Maupertuis: Vous avez trouve par de long ennuis ce que Newton trouva sans sortir de chez lui. He was short and vitriolic, saying, "You have found, by going to a great deal of trouble, what Newton found without leaving his home." The king, in a fiery rage, consigned the pamphlet to the flames and gave its author a thorough tongue-lashing. Voltaire escaped from Prussia

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just before being arrested by Frederick's police. But it was too much for Maupertuis. A few months after that incident he resigned from the presidency of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and returned to Paris in 1753. He died in Basel, Switzerland, on July 27, 1759, ten months after his sixtieth birthday. Two sites on the moon were named in his honor—Crater Maupertuis and Rimae Maupertuis. Word of the controversy that surrounded Maupertuis's results soon reached Stockholm. The Swedish Academy of Sciences could not ignore the polemic, and they therefore planned an entirely new measurement to take place in the early 1740s in the Tornionlaakso Valley, at the same spots the French had used in 1736-1737. Red tape postponed the project until 1801, when Professor Jons Svanberg was commissioned for the job. Vegetation and topography had changed considerably in the 65 years since the expedition, and Svanberg was unable to relocate some of Maupertius's triangulation stations. Svanberg measured a longer arc than Maupertius's (1 degree 37 minutes 20.354 seconds) and used twenty-two triangulation stations instead of the previous eleven. There was a notable discord between Maupertius's and Svanberg's terrestrial and astronomical work, and, because of the different parameters used by the two, comparing the measurements was not comparing "like for like." It resulted in Svenberg's degree being between 26.7 toises and 220 toises shorter than Maupertius's, depending on which way they were viewed. That result brought no joy to the lemon-shape theorists. It still supported the conclusion that degrees of latitude along a meridian become longer as they depart from the equator toward the poles. Yrjo Leinberg, a Finn, carried out some remeasurements in 1928, and his results were practically equal to Svanberg's. Leinberg also produced a detailed analysis of the triangulation and calculation errors made by Maupertuis that fully explained the Frenchman's blunder. The ambition to complete the survey in one year, coupled with the prevailing poor meteorological conditions, were the main culprits in producing a bungled job. There is a sad addendum to the Lapland meridian-measuring story, a monument to man's ungrateful and evil nature. Like all his colleagues and his borgmastare (mayor), Alderman Planstrom of Tornio opened his home to entertain the lonely Frenchmen, especially during the cold, long, winter evenings. Planstrom's two young daughters—Elisabeth and Christine—fell in love with two Frenchmen and traveled to France,

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either with the expedition or slightly afterward. They even converted to Catholicism, as a token of devotion to their lovers. The details of what happened to Christine are sketchy. It is known that Maupertuis wrote a love poem to her, but was he her lover, her only lover? One way or another, she was the first of the two to be dumped. That, together with the culture shock that followed the move from remote little Tornio on the polar circle to the capital of the world, shattered her mental health. In those days there were just two options for a poor girl, far away from home, broke and sick: prostitution or joining a convent. Christine opted for the latter. She took the veil at the convent of Notre Dame du Tresor and disappeared forever. Elisabeth married Monsieur de Pelletot, a Frenchman. The marriage ended in a divorce in 1761, and the husband not only stripped Elisabeth of her dowry, but was also successful in convincing the judge at the divorce trial to sentence her to four years in jail on bogus charges. She spent years fighting him in the courts for a modest pension. Eventually she moved to the convent of the Holy Sacrament in Rouen and lived there as a lay sister until her death. She had one son by de Pelletot. The two poor sisters would have fared much better by staying in Tornio and marrying the boring local boys instead of falling for false foreign charm. The trouble is that, when we are young, we believe love is eternal, and we never allow for contingencies. An unmarried woman at that period—and in many societies still today—had no chance to manage her life alone. The convent was the only option to retain one's honor and dignity. Even a courageous and persevering woman like Elisabeth Planstrom-Pelletot had to end her life in a convent. Imagine the grief of the parents of these two blue-eyed, blonde Swedish beauties!

Africa: 200 Years of Meridian Measurement Although meridian arcs had been measured in the northern hemisphere from Lapland to France, and on the equator in Ecuador (then Peru), astronomers were still not satisfied. Another question had emerged, and it required resolution: Does the shape of the planet in the southern hemisphere mirror that in the northern hemisphere? Our story would therefore be incomplete without describing the meridianmeasuring activity that took place for that purpose in southern Africa,

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in the middle of the eighteenth century, whose last phase was completed two hundred years later. Records tell us that the first measuring of an arc of the meridian in the southern hemisphere took place between Cape Town and Klyp Fontein, in the Cape Colony, in 1752. It was carried out by Abbe Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, a French professor, described by a colleague as the most brilliant and hardworking astronomer of his century. Lacaille was born at Rumigny in the Ardennes, northeast France, most probably on March 15, 1713.33 Des- Figure 2.16 tined for the church, he Abbe Nicolas Louis de Lacaille (17131762). First astronomer and cartogracompleted his philosophical pher of the southern heavens. Source: and theological studies, but was Image kindly provided by the Chief Directorate, never ordained. Although he Surveys and Mapping, Mowbray, South Africa. was always referred to as Abbe (abbot), he performed only minor roles in the church. He took a deep interest in the sciences and became self-taught in mathematics, astronomy, and geodesy. 34 His scientific talents brought him in 1736 to the Paris Observatory, where he became a protege of Jacques Cassini. At the age of 26, Lacaille was appointed professor of mathematics in Mazzarin College, Paris, and two years later he was admitted to the Academie des Sciences. A bright young man indeed! Although his main interest was astronomy, in the late 1730s Lacaille developed a taste for surveying, and by 1738 he had mapped the coast of the Bay of Biscay, from Nantes to Bayonne. He was also very much involved in meridian measurements in France under the Cassinis (Jacques and Cesar-Frangois), including remeasuring and verifying the Dunkirk-to-Perpignan arc in 1739. As much as he was a Cassini man, the results of his own work led him in 1741 to disagree with Cassini III and to embrace full-heartedly Newton's theory of the shape of the earth.

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Lacaille's monumental work of cataloging the stars visible in Paris helped him to convince the Academie that he should also catalog the stars of the southern hemisphere from Cape Town. The States General of Holland and the Dutch East India Company, owners of the Cape Colony at the time, were officially approached for permission to work on the stars and to establish the exact geographical position of the Cape of Good Hope. There was no mention of measuring a meridian, either because Lacaille did not want to raise suspicions of the triangulation work, or because he was not sure he would be able to squeeze the measurement into his narrow time frame. Permission was soon granted and on October 21, 1750, Lacaille left Paris for the port of Lorient, in Brittany, to board the Le Glorieux, under the command of Captain d'Apres. The voyage to South Africa included a one-month unscheduled stopover in Rio de Janeiro, 3 5 for the purpose of repairing another vessel that was accompanying Le Glorieux and that had sprung a leak while running before the southeasterly trade winds. 36 Lacaille, a workaholic from way back, did not let any time to go to waste in Rio, and he kept himself busy with a string of astronomical tasks, including the accurate determination of Rio's geographical position. That was quite a job in the days before the advent of the chronometer. But he did it. Lacaille was delighted and indeed lucky to meet Louis Godin in Rio. Godin had completed his five-year tenure at Lima's University of San Marcos several months earlier, and was on his way home to France. Shipping services from Callao (Lima's port) to Europe were very scarce, slow, and risky, and he therefore crossed the continent overland, along its "waist," passing through Cuzco, Lake Titicaca, Cochabamba (in today's Bolivia), and south of Brazil's Mato Grosso. The two scientists worked jointly during the time they were together at Rio, and they exchanged a considerable amount of information and advice. Lacaille left first, as the Le Glorieux, and her now seaworthy satellite, weighed anchors on February 25. Five weeks later they reached the Cape of Good Hope. Weather was bad, and rough seas prevented them from entering Table Bay until April 19. In his usual way, from the moment he set his foot ashore, Lacaille wasted no time. He had brought with him several letters of recommendation from Dutch government officials, which generated the full support and cooperation of the governor and his various lieutenants. A workspace was allocated immediately in the backyard of cavalry captain Bestbier, in Strand Street, Cape Town, and assistance was given in

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building a compact twelve-foot by twelve-foot observatory and equipping it with the measuring instruments and telescopes that were carefully carried from the Le Glorieux. In August 1751, Lacaille was ready to start working on his stars. He worked every night, seven days a week, using his modest instruments, and by August of the following year he had determined the position and cataloged all the stars he could see, up to magnitude 4, some 10,035 of them. He lay down and named the southern constellations in their modern form, and many stars are still referred to by their numbers in his catalog. His observations of the planets led to working out the distances to them more accurately than ever before. Lacaille's relations with the governor were so good that the latter did not even blink when Lacaille suggested measuring an arc of the meridian, for the dual purpose of discovering whether the southern hemisphere was formed like the northern one, and for the accurate determination of lunar parallax. 37 So in September to October 1752, with the blessing and assistance of the governor of the Cape Colony, Lacaille laid down his eight-mile baseline about twelve leagues north of the Cape and established his stations. It took him until early November to measure a meridian arc with amplitude of 1 degree 13 minutes 17.3 seconds. The terrestrial length of that arc was fixed at 69,669.1 toises, giving the value of 1 degree as 57,037 toises. The fieldwork in Peru, remember, lasted eight years! That value, 57,037 toises for latitude 34° south, posed several problems. First, it was very close to values found in France for latitudes 45° and 49° north, and it demonstrated a remarkable anomaly in the shape of the earth. It meant that not only was there no symmetry between the hemispheres, but that planet earth was more flattened in the north than in the south. Three years earlier, Bouguer had published his book La Figure de la Ferre, where he reported his discovery that the mass of Mount Chimborazo pulled his plumb bob out of the vertical by several seconds of arc. That pull was responsible for the deflection of the vertical error that produced erroneous values for meridian measurements. Surveyors are well aware of that deflection, and Lacaille, on the face of it, should have realized that he too had experienced a similar effect from the mountains at both terminal stations of his arc—Table Mountain to the south and the mountains beyond Klyp Fontein to the north. Surprisingly, there is no indication in his journal that a correction of any sort

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•

Figure 2.17 The triangulation of Lacaille's arc of the meridian, South Africa, 1752. Is planet earth more flattened at the north than in the south? Source: Image kindly provided by the ChiefDirectorate, Surveys and Mapping, Mowbray, South Africa.

was applied, perhaps because Lacaille considered the issue to be an unproven theory. Sir George Everest, who was convalescing in South Africa in 1820, estimated the effect of the mountains to be about 119 toises on a length of a degree, so that in fact the length of a degree should have been 119 toises shorter than that reported by Lacaille. This figure was unfortu-

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nately incorrect because Everest based his calculations on the scant and misprinted information he had received from various sources. The issue was brought to a head with Sir Thomas Maclear, Queen Victoria's astronomer at the Cape, who was given the task of verifying and extending Lacaille's arc. He and his assistants were heavily involved in the project from late 1837 until 1847. They identified most of Lacaille's old stations—although the baseline terminals had completely disappeared with time—extended the survey north and south of Lacaille's terminals, and measured an arc of 4° 36' 48.60". Maclear's final figure for the value of one degree was very close to that of Lacaille's. 38 No wonder Lacaille is regarded as one of the greatest geodesists ever. 39 Lacaille left Cape Town aboard the Puisieux on March 8, 1753. Being the diligent and industrious scientist he was, he did not proceed straight home. Instead he spent close to a year performing astronomical and other scientific observations at He de France and He de Bourbon (now named Mauritius and Reunion, respectively), two French islands in the Indian Ocean. On February 27, 1754, he left for France aboard the Achille, stopping for five days at the tiny island of Ascension in the South Atlantic, in order to fix its exact geographical position by astronomical observations. Lacaille was interested in all aspects of science. In addition to astronomy, he studied meteorology, the tides, earth magnetism, natural history, and flora and fauna. He examined and took notes about everything and anything that drew his attention, collected many specimens, and left Africa with a wealth of knowledge. Lacaille landed at Lorient, on the Brittany coast on June 4, 1754, and he was back in Paris two weeks later. His expedition had lasted almost four years. Paris loved him, gave him a hero's welcome and the honor and respect he deserved for his scientific achievements. He was awarded an annual pension from the Academie, and was given membership in half a dozen foreign Academies, from Bologna to London to Stockholm. 40 He became known as the Father of Southern Astronomy. Although his colleagues crowned him the leading astronomer of his century, Lacaille shied away from publicity and labored alone on the reduction of his observations and on the completion of numerous papers and books. His famous Astonomiae Fundamenta was published in 1757. His last two books, the account of his pmney—fournal Historique de mon Voyage au Cap de Bonne-Esperance—and Caelum Australe Stelliferum (Southern Starry Heavens) were published in 1763, but Lacaille did not make it to

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their launching. He died in Paris of excessive work on March 21, 1762, one week after his forty-ninth birthday. Nicolas Louis Lacaille was the last of the first generation of meridian-measurers, a breed of dedicated scientists who traded their warm academic nests for expeditions to faraway countries, under tough conditions and in extreme environments. Driven by their pure enthusiasm to resolve once and for all what the shape of the earth was, these scientists spent years measuring baselines and surveying triangles with primitive equipment. Ultimately they were successful. Their findings vindicated Newton and his theory of an oblate world. Those geodesists were the triangulation giants of all time. It took others decades to follow in their footsteps and survey Europe and North America. In the next chapter we shall look at a pair of French geodesists, whose diligent—or perhaps not that diligent—work still affects our daily life, many times a day. Before that, though, let us unfold another chapter in the triangulation of Africa. The issue of the length of an arc of a meridian had lost its glitter by the early nineteenth century. Indeed, it became a complete nonissue, as the whole world—barring a few flat-earth eccentrics—accepted the notion of an orange-shaped globe. That was not the end of triangulation, however. On the contrary, geodetic triangulation was accepted in all countries as the basis for topographical and cadastral mapping. The Estonian astronomer Wilhelm Struve, serving under Czar Alexander I of Russia, was the first to introduce that new concept of land surveying on a large scale. Struve instigated the Russian-Scandinavian meridian arc measurement that took place in the 1820s, and he was eventually succeeded by Estonian General von Tenner in 1830-1844. Tenner extended the triangulation chain to Ismail on the Black Sea. Struve's and Tenner's achievements motivated Sir David Gill, who was appointed Her Majesty's Astronomer in the Cape Colony in 1879. In those days of Cape-to-Cairo imperialism, Sir David realized the value of the urgent establishment of a sound basis for geodetic triangulation for mapping the British Empire. He therefore contemplated the most ambitious and greatest triangulation project ever—measuring the whole length of the African continent, along the meridian 30° East, from Port Elizabeth, on the Indian Ocean, to Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast, a total of over 4600 miles, as the migrating birds fly. He realized that the political, financial, and professional obstacles were enormous, but he was not going to allow them to drag him down. He knew colonial

Measuring a Meridian Mark I: What Is the Shape of the Earth? governments would have to be persuaded to issue permits and to push their hands deep into their pockets. Surveyors would have to negotiate their way through unknown, inaccessible lands and be exposed to harsh climates, malaria, sleeping sickness, and bilharzia. Sir David's grand vision was to connect the African arc to existing triangulation in Greece, and hence—via Struve's Great Arc—all the way to North Cape, Europe's most northern point. North Cape was 7250 miles away from his first station, and Sir David realized that it was a very distant dream that would not be achieved in his own lifetime.

Figure 2.18

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Enter Jules Gabriel Verne Jules Verne (1828-1905), the father of (1828-1905) who is known to modern science fiction. Source: Cartoon by millions around the world as the Andre Gill in L'eclipse, Paris, December 13, 1874. Courtesy Dr. Zvi Har'EVsJules Verne Colfather of modern science fiction. lection, http://JV.Gilead.org.il, in memoriam of The oldest of five children, he Gilead Har'El. was born to an upper middle class family in the port and shipbuilding town of Nantes, France. His father was a lawyer, and his mother, Sophie Allotte, was from a family of shipbuilders and sea captains. It did not take long for young Jules to become fascinated with ships and world travel. At twelve Verne ran off to be a cabin boy on a ship called Coralie, bound for the West Indies, but he was recognized, caught, and returned to his parents. In 1847 he was sent to law school in Paris to be trained to take over the family law practice. He did not last there. Fortunately for generations of readers, young and old, Verne—influenced by his mother family's maritime traditions—gravitated toward literature and stayed there. A gifted writer with a great sense of humor, he anticipated a wide range of technological innovations, including the submarine, television, the airplane, and space travel.

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Nowadays, a hundred years after Verne's death, his readers are more and more astonished at his technical foresight. His fans swear that all his predictions have come true, with one exception—the voyage to the center of the earth. We were even told recently that a previously unknown manuscript of his—apparently rejected by his publisher, Hetzel—was discovered in 1990 by Verne's great-grandson, hidden in a deserted Paris vault. Entitled Paris in the 20th Century and featuring a long-distance writing machine (the fascimile?), it was published in 1994 with great success. There is no evidence of Verne writing about IT (information technology), but who knows; perhaps he will one day again surprise us from his grave with another forgotten manuscript, depicting a Bill Gates look-alike taking over the world. Jules Verne was quick to cash in on Sir David Gill's idea. In 1872, after retiring to Amiens, he published one of his less-known and far-from-best novels, Aventures de Frois Russes et Frois Anglais—translated into English under the unattractive title Fhe Adventures of Fhree Englishmen and Fhree Russians in Southern Africa.^1 The adventures were those of an Anglo-Russian expedition of six scientists measuring a meridian in the Kalahari Desert, in order to calculate the circumference of the earth. Word of the Crimean War that had just broken out turns some friends into enemies, and the conflict threatens to wreck the project. Explaining the concept of triangulation, Verne referred to the acclaimed scientists Delambre and Mechain, who measured the meridian from Dunkirk to Barcelona, and who will soon star in our story. Delambre was Amien's most famous son, born there in 1749. Verne's aficionados point to the fact that the book was written in typical prophetic tradition eleven years before Gill commenced work. They also note that the adventure took place in the Kalahari, a stone's throw away (at least on the map) from Gill's theatre of operations— meridian 30° east. Skeptics look at it differently. Verne, they say, did not present any novel technological idea of his own making. His contribution—by no means small—was to take infant inventions and transform them—on paper—from ideas, or prototypes, into working innovations. That is what he did, for example, with the submarine in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He did not invent the submarine, not even her name. The American Robert Fulton, who wanted to help France destroy the British fleet, built a prototype in France in 1800 and named it Nautilus. Unfortunately, nobody was interested, and the frustrated Fulton

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retreated back to the United States to invent the first American steamboat—the 149-foot-long Clermont. Fulton's Nautilus is long forgotten. Even Admiral Rickover's world's first nuclear submarine, also christened Nautilus,42 is hardly remembered. However, we all remember—with a helping hand from Hollywood—Captain Nemo's Nautilus, now more than 130 years old. Measuring a Meridian was a prophecy similar to that of the Nautilus. The idea was there, reported in the press and debated in scientific circles. All Verne had to do was to grab it by the horns and turn it into a cash cow. He did exactly that. Gaining the approval and some resources from Sir Bartle Frere, governor of the Cape Colony, and from the somewhat reluctant Sir George Colley, governor of Natal, Sir David Gill in 1883 sent a party of Royal Engineers to commence measuring the Pietermaritzburg base near Durban. Sir Cecil Rhodes—who had his own imperialist ax to grind in the form of building a Cape-to-Cairo railway—was approached for assistance in Rhodesia and Tanganyika (now Zimbabwe and Tanzania). He did provide assistance in 1897. Work progressed slowly, and in sections, one of which was a mere 200 miles away from Verne's own Kalahari arena. Gill retired in 1906. By then the arc from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth to the border of Tanganyika had been completed. That was just over one third of the way to Alexandria, and it had taken 23 years to measure. Further progress in East Africa was even slower. By late 1951 there were still several untouched sectors, including a 630-mile gap in southern Sudan. African decolonization was in full swing, and the British government was broke and uninterested. Rich Uncle Sam offered help from across the Atlantic, and the governments of the Sudan, Uganda, and Belgian Congo leaped upon a plan submitted by the U.S. Army Mapping Service. The Americans played it big and fast, as they always do. By mid-1952 they had positioned a team of seventeen men in Juba, southern Sudan, equipped to their teeth with every imaginable piece of gear and provision, from chewing gum to bulldozers, as well as twenty-three four-wheel-drive vehicles. Later, a singleengine, multipurpose, De Haviland Beaver aircraft joined the party. It was used to drop spare parts and mail and to deliver messages. Logistics was not the only matter thought out in advance. Geometeorology—to be at the right place for the right weather—did not escape the planners' vision. It was the most powerful survey ever mounted on the

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African continent, and it worked brilliantly. The whole job, a total of 109 triangulation stations, had been completed in 13 months. It was a very costly operation too, and Uncle Sam picked up the tab in full. When asked the reason for such unusual generosity, the Americans' answer was "truly and simply . . . we are interested in obtaining more accurate information about the size and shape of the Earth. 43 " That was nearly five years before the first U.S. ICBM took off from Cape Canaveral. 44 All hats off to American planning and technology! No wonder they easily beat President Kennedy's deadline for landing astronauts on the moon and bringing them back safely. British surveyors believe that work on the meridian 30° east helped the Americans to develop missile technology that, in turn, brought about the Global Positioning System (GPS). The repercussions to geodesy were enormous. GPS soon made triangulation completely redundant.

CHAPTER 3

Measuring a Meridian Mark II: How Long Is One Meter? This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Genesis 6:15

The Pendulum Interlude In an interview published in Newsweek on October 1, 1962, Charles de Gaulle, President of France, was quoted as saying: "How can you be expected to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?" With all due respect to the late "Grand Charles," such diversity is not a genuine threat to good government. However, other expressions of Gallic individualism have bedeviled France since time immemorial. Earlier rulers—who preached, "One King, One Law, One Weight, One Measure"—asked a similar question: "How can one be expected to govern a country that has dozens of units of measure with hundreds of local values?" Indeed, the metrological situation before the French Revolution was catastrophic. Each district, sometimes every town, sometimes every trade, used its own system and units. A pint of beer was smaller in Paris than in Marseille, and within the Paris metropolitan area, the baker's pound was lighter than that of the ironmonger. It is estimated that under the cover of nearly 800 names, France used over 200,000 different measures and weights.

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No other nation suffered from such a disparity between the demands of an industrializing economy and the incapabilities of its system of weights and measures. No other people had such an acute need for uniform standards of length and weight. Since necessity is the mother of invention, the meter was born in France. However, giving birth is one matter, but keeping the baby alive is another. The issue of that standardization was debated seriously for over 100 years, but nothing was done about it, just like with the weather. 1 It took the 1792 Revolution to prove that people power is stronger than the will of kings. That revolution enforced the metric system and thus bore the double trademark of the guillotine and the meter. The issue of a universal standard of length had bothered French scientists since the seventeenth century. Scientific knowledge of the time offered two alternative approaches upon which to base the standard unit. One adopted an agreed portion of the length of a meridian, the other the length of a free-flying pendulum whose frequency was one hertz, or one complete swing—back and forth—each and every second. Gabriel Mouton, a priest at St. Paul's Church in Lyon and a brilliant mathematician and astronomer in his spare time, proposed in 1670 a linear scale based on a geodetic minute of arc. Mouton was the first person to propose the decimal system and hence his suggested linear scale was divided decimally. Picard, on the other hand, suggested in 1671 his universal foot, represented by one third of the length of a pendulum beating seconds. Both Mouton and Picard were unaware of the fact that their "universal" units depended on the geographical latitude where they were measured. On June 21, 1633, Galileo Galilei was found guilty by Rome's Court of the Inquisition of "vehement suspicion of heresy," having "held and taught" the Copernican doctrine. He was ordered to recant. The sentence carried imprisonment, but Pope Urban VIII immediately commuted it to house arrest for the term of his natural life, in the seclusion of Galileo's little estate near Florence. Next day, the long-bearded, sixtynine-year-old scientist had to publicly repent and to recite that he "abjured, cursed, and detested" his past errors. Legend has it that the broken and partially blind old man delivered the apology followed by the famous words: eppur si mouve—nonetheless she's [earth's] moving! Those three Latin words gained the obstinate Galilei immortality. In his exciting and fruitful lifespan (1564-1642), the brilliant mathematician-cum-astronomer-cum-physicist managed to drop out of medical school for acute lack of funds, to be the first person to apply the telescope

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to the study of the skies, and to make outstanding discoveries in the heavens. He reestablished mathematical rationalism against Aristotle's logico-verbal approach and insisted "the Book of Nature is written in mathematical characters." Consequently he stated the principles that were later embodied in two of Newton's laws and proved that—as far as the solar system was concerned—Copernicus was right, and Ptolemy was wrong. This, of course, got him into deep trouble with the Holy See. The story goes that in 1581, while he was a freshman at Pisa University's School of Medicine, Figure 3.1 Galileo—who at that time was still Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Source: Possibly a reproduction of a painting by Giusto on good terms with the Church— Sustermans. Library of Congress. observed a lamp swinging in the Pisa cathedral. He was quick to notice that the lamp always required the same amount of time to complete an oscillation, no matter how large the range of the swing. Later in life he verified this observation experimentally and suggested that the principle of the pendulum might be applied to the regulation of clocks.2 Young Galileo had received no instruction in mathematics, but the swinging lamp seems to have sufficiently ignited his interest in the physical sciences. Pisa lost a medic, but the world gained one of its greatest physicists and astronomers. The relationship between the length of a pendulum and its period of swing was very soon established. Moreover, the French astronomer Jean Richer (1630-1696) found in 1671 that his pendulum clock, regulated to keep time in Paris, beat more slowly, and in fact lost two and a half minutes a day, at Cayenne in French Guiana, which lies 5 degrees north of the equator. From this, Richer deduced that gravity was weaker at Cayenne, because it was farther from the center of the earth than Paris. That drove Cassini I into an uncontrollable rage. He called Richer a liar and, worse, a traitor. Anybody who did not agree with Cassini was, of course, a traitor.

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It became clear that the frequency of the pendulum was not only directly related to the square root of its length, but was also a function of its geographical location. To many scientists the latter was still a mystery. The pendulum must be affected by gravity, fair enough, but why did gravity change with latitude? Did that have any bearing on the shape of the earth? Toward the end of the seventeenth century, the British and the Dutch—Newton and Huygens—already knew what that shape was. French scientists, however, were still pondering it and the earth's exact size. They realized the pendulum could not answer those questions, but they thought it could at least provide a linear scale, as suggested—and indeed used—by Picard in 1669-1670. That was two years before Jean Richer noticed his tardy clock in Cayenne. Picard did not yet know about the latitude effect on the pendulum. Soon enough it was realized that identical pendulums set up in different places had different periods. Moreover, it became clear that any definition of length based on the pendulum must specify the location of that "standard" pendulum. La Condamine and his colleagues established the length of a seconds 3 pendulum at the equator in 1735-1737. Lacaille and Cassini III did this for Paris in 1739-1740. The Paris pendulum was 1.41 lignes, or 3.18 mm, longer than that at the equator. 4 France in the mid-eighteenth century was very much influenced by the teachings of the moralist—and son of a Swiss watchmaker—Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who preached a return to nature and to basics. This influenced scientists to search for a "natural" unit of length. One such unit was the length of an equatorial seconds pendulum, which was proposed by La Condamine in 1747 as a universal standard. There were no takers, but the humble pendulum was not forgotten. Forty-three years later, Talleyrand, then Bishop of Autun, submitted to the National Assembly a proposal to standardize the length of the seconds pendulum at latitude 45 degrees. King Louis XVI sanctioned the action, and the French Academy of Sciences was made responsible for recommending to the government a new system of measurement. Talleyrand was very keen on the innovative system, realizing the economic benefits for Europe's two leading nations, France and Britain, of a common system of weights and measures. He asked the Academie des Sciences to collaborate with the Royal Society of London and also wrote privately to Sir John Riggs Miller, a British parliamentarian who was interested in the topic, suggesting Franco-British cooperation. That letter was a masterpiece of diplomacy. One paragraph read:

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Too long have Great Britain and France been at variance with each other, for empty honor or for guilty interests. It is time that two free nations should unite their exertions for the promotion of a discovery that must be useful to mankind. Miller tabled the letter in Parliament. There was talk of Louis XVI writing to King George III about joint action to determine a natural standard of weight and measures, but no such letter exists in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle. Talleyrand's enthusiasm was not infectious. The British did not trust the French then any more than they do now. Talleyrand's diplomatic skills had to wait for better days, specifically until the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). The pendulum basis was dealt its coup de grace on March 19, 1791, when the Scientific Committee of the Academie des Sciences—that included the illustrious scientists Lagrange, de Borda, and Laplace among its members—recommended scrapping it in favor of a new unit of length—one ten millionth of the distance at sea level from the pole to the equator. Another option that involved measuring an arc of the equator was also discarded due to geographical inconvenience and the difficulty of ascertaining the correct longitude. The Academie des Sciences adopted all the committee's recommendations. This was the birth of the meter, or at least its conception. The road to measuring the meridian for the purpose of establishing the metric system had just opened.

One Ten Millionth of a Meridian Quadrant? The idea that the basic unit of measurement would be a definite fraction of the size of the earth appealed to the back-to-nature prophets of the Enlightenment—as it would to today's consumers of yoga and yogurt. It was thought that such a linear standard would be reproducible at any time. That notion is essentially false, and it makes no scientific sense at all. Unlike the nautical mile, which is equal to the length of an arc of the meridian subtending to an angle of 1' (one minute), 5 one ten millionth of a quarter of meridian is meaningless. Moreover, no two surveys of such a long distance could ever be replicated to produce identical results, nor the precision demanded of a universal measuring unit, especially if carried out with eighteenth-century instrumentation. However, who could ever argue with the infinite wisdom of the Academie des Sciences?

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Naturally, it was impossible to measure the distance of the whole 90 degrees from either pole to the equator, but if several degrees could be measured, then the total could be calculated. To do so, two conditions needed to be met: The arc had to lie about halfway between the equator and the pole, and its two terminal points had to be at sea level. There was only one such meridian on earth that met those criteria, and the lucky French had it in their own backyard. That was the meridian running through Dunkirk and Barcelona. 6 The committee therefore recommended in 1791 that the determination of the length of a quadrant of a meridian would be based on measuring the arc between the French port of Dunkirk and its Catalan counterpart Barcelona. This was affirmed by a governmental decree on March 30, 1791. The Academie decided to extend the line from Dunkirk to Perpignan, originally measured by Jacques Cassini in 1713, and remeasured and verified by Cesar-Frangois Cassini and Lacaille in 1739. The Academie's vision was that the new unit of measurement would become a global standard, and it was therefore decided to start again from scratch, as if no section of the arc had ever been measured. It was expected that using up-to-date equipment would produce more accurate results upon which the Figure 3.2 entire world could rely. For that Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre (1749- very reason the job was assigned 1822), a celebrated astronomer-cumto France's two top astronomersmathematician who released James cum-surveyors at the time— Smithson from jail and thus indirectly contributed to the establishment of the Delambre and Mechain. Smithsonian Institution. Source: Created by Jean Baptiste Joseph DelamBenjamin Hall, engraver, from the original by Boilly, in possession of Delambreis family at bre was born in Amiens—the Amiens. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate city where Jules Verne spent his Street, London, 1835. Library of Congress.

last thirty-three years—on September 19, 1749. A brilliant stu-

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dent of the famous astronomer Lalande, he was soon entrusted with his teacher's most complicated astronomical calculations. Delambre compiled tables of the motions of distant planets, won several top Academie des Sciences prizes, and was elected a member of the Academie in 1792. His colleague, Pierre Frangois Andre Mechain, was born on August 16, 1744, in Laon, northern France. The son of an architect, who was raised to take over his father's business, Mechain was captivated by mathematics and physics and later qualified in hydrography, geod- Figure 3.3 esy, and astronomy. In 1787, after Pierre Francois Andre Mechain (1744surveying the French Atlantic 1804), Laon's greatest son and Delambre's colleague on the meridiancoast, he verified the difference of measuring Held. Source: Painting by longitude between Paris and Narcisse Gamier, 1824. Based on etchings made Greenwich together with Jacques by an unknown artist. Courtesy Musee de Laon, Aisne, France. Dominique Cassini and AdrienMarie Legendre. A member of the Academie des Sciences since 1782, and later a director of the Paris Observatory, he was the discoverer of thirty deep-sky objects and numerous comets. Delambre and Mechain, two great leading astronomers and geodesists, joined forces in 1792 for the most important meridian measurement ever— the measurement to establish all measurements. They set out from Paris on June 25, three months before the establishment of the First Republic. It was a good time to be away from turbulent Paris, where massacres and executions ran rife. Some 1200 alleged royalists lost their heads in September alone. Four months later, King Louis XVI joined them in heaven. Delambre began triangulating his way south from the coast near Dunkirk, while Mechain started measuring his first baseline on the Mediterranean coast, heading north. Mechain's portion included the difficult Pyrenees Mountains, and it was therefore considerably shorter. They contemplated meeting at Rodez, 305 miles south of Paris.

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The king was dead, but the revolution and the bloodshed had just begun. Political and social tumult trickled from Paris at an accelerating rate and played havoc with the whole country. The civil war turned into a war with neighboring nations—England, Spain, Austria, Prussia, and Holland. The two surveying teams fell victim to gangs of republican revolutionaries and run-of-the-mill hooligans. Delambre went through several life-threatening arrests, and he was accused of being a counterrevolutionary aristocrat plotting an uprising against the Republic. Finally conditions became such that he had to give up his work and return to Paris. Mechain was the less fortunate of the two. Initially his elaborate equipment brought him under suspicion, and he was arrested soon after leaving Paris, accused of being a monarchist spy. Two months later he was tracked down by his friends, released, and allowed to proceed south. Hampered by the war with Spain, he was stranded south of the Pyrenees for some time. To make matters worse, he was persuaded by a friend to watch a demonstration of the mechanical wonders of a local pumping station. The pump handle rebounded, all but crushing Mechain. He never fully recovered from that accident. He went to Italy to recuperate and fortunately spent the years of the Terror 7 in Genoa, instead of in France. In 1795 he returned to Paris to find that, although Robespierre "the incorruptible," was summarily guillotined on 10 Thermidor, Year II (July 28), the capital and the country were not as he had left them in 1792. His family had suffered greatly during that period, and he had lost all his property. Science, however, got the best of him. Soon he was back at his work—searching for more comets. The metric system—based on a provisional meter measuring 0.5132430 toise, derived from Lacaille's measurement—became the legal metrology in France by the Convention's decree of 18 Germinal, Year III (April 7, 1795). The following year Delambre and Mechain were enlisted by the Republique to complete their work on the meridian, in order to provide the figure for the accurate and final meter. Their original plan was to meet at Rodez, where Delambre arrived on August 26, 1797, after completing his portion of the survey. Mechain's wife came there a few days later to meet her husband, but Mechain, ailing and bedeviled by his physical condition, still had to work until October in order to complete several triangles in the direction of Carcassonne, where Delambre was waiting for him. Job finished, both left together for Paris and reached the capital on November 17, 1798.

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Soon they completed their calculations, which included finding the difference of latitude between Dunkirk and Barcelona and combining their arc with that of Peru, to determine the length of the quadrant. The arc they measured was 551,584 toises long, and their conclusion was that the length of a meridian quadrant was 5,130,740 toises. This was only 1 part in 3037 less than the length of 5,132,430 toises calculated by Lacaille. The bottom line was that one meter was set finally at 0.513074 toise, and one toise was equal to 1.9490363 meter. The former jeweler to the Court of Versailles was instructed to produce three platinum standards of the meter. They were compared—at 0° C (32° F)—with the length of the meter determined by the survey. The one closest in length was deposited in the National Archives on June 22, 1799, and was named the Metre des Archives. Several iron meters were made as well. On December 10, 1799—a month after Napoleon's coup d'etat and the demise of the Directory—the French Legislative Assembly established the metre as the legal standard of length and the kilogram as the standard of mass. About eighty years and three international conventions later, several prototype meters were made of platinum-iridium alloy, to replace the platinum Metre des Archives. One of the prototypes made in 1882 had a length—measured between two hairline markings— of sufficient accuracy to suit that replacement, and it was declared equal to the length of the Metre des Archives, without further reference to the quadrant of the earth. The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM)—formed by the Metric Convention of 1875—named it the International Prototype of the Meter. It is kept by the BIPM in Paris. National Meters, that is copies—accurate to within 0.01 millimeter—were provided to countries signatory to the Treaty of the Meter, with the appropriate correction factors. The French people have always been very conservative. Today's older generation still counts in ancients francs, although the currency was revalorized by 100 on January 1, 1960. Their ancestors were no better. They did not welcome the metric system. On the contrary, they rejected it and held firmly to the old weights and measurements. Only the law passed on July 4, 1837, under King Louis Philippe's seal, settled the matter once and for all. Under that law, effective January 1, 1840, it became a penal offence to use any system but the metric—period. Soon the meter was exported to other nations. Holland adopted it in 1816 and Spain in 1849. Seventeen nations, including the United States, signed the 1875 Paris Treaty of the

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Meter. Great Britain joined in 1884 in a ranks-closing gesture, which was no more than lip service, similar to that of the United States. Neither Anglo-Saxon nation had any intention whatsoever of following France. Britain, as a member of the European Union, finally had to go partly metric in the 1990s. The United States—after costly investigations and legislation in the 1970s and 1980s—did not mandate metric use in the private sector. Metric America remains an empty slogan. Going metric does not mean changing only scales, weights, and measures throughout the country. It goes far beyond that. Every single item of day-to-day life will have to be changed, from machine tools, packaging equipment, bottles, gasoline pumps, maps, even simple nuts and bolts. It is too costly for the world's leading power—which faces other priorities—to become involved in such a gigantic undertaking. It will never take place. What happened to Delambre and Mechain, the creators of the Metre des Archives, after they gave that preciously sought-after unit of measurement to France, and indeed to the whole world? Delambre remained in the scientific limelight. He held a string of academic positions, published several books including the highly acclaimed Histoire de VAstronomie and the award-winning three-volume Base du System Metrique Decimal? written jointly with Mechain and published piecemeal between 1806 and 1810, after the latter's death. Delambre was elected to almost every scientific body in Europe. In 1809 Delambre was asked by the botanist Sir Joseph Banks, a veteran of Captain James Cook's voyage of discovery to Australia, and by then the the President of the Royal Society, to facilitate the release of James Smithson, a highly regarded scientist and member of the Royal Society, who was being held as a political prisoner of war by the French army. Delambre acted swiftly, writing to the French Minister for War, and securing Smithson's immediate freedom. 9 Smithson had been born in France to English parents. In 1766, King George III had made his father, Hugh Smithson, first Duke of Northumberland. His mother, Elizabeth Keate Macie, was a member of the wealthy Hungerford family. Smithson was an Oxford graduate, a brilliant chemist and mineralogist—the zinc carbonate mineral smithsonite is named for him—and he was made a fellow of the Royal Society at the unusually young age of twenty-two. He made a fortune in Europe and bequeathed his property to the United States, "to found an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." Congress channeled the funds to establish the Smithsonian Institution.

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Delambre died in Paris on August 19, 1822, and was honored with Crater Delambre being named after him on the moon and, a bit closer to home, Rue Delambre and Square Delambre in Paris's fourteenth quarter. Mechain became a member of the new 10 Academie des Sciences and of the Board of Longitude. Soon after he returned to Paris in 1798, he discovered a minute error in his calculation. Scientists of his caliber know that no matter how careful they are, all observations are subject to errors. It is therefore surprising to learn that, although he was successful in concealing that error—initially with Delambre's backing, and then by long refusing to publish the results of his calculations—he was distressed and terrified until his very last day of losing his reputation. In 1800 Mechain was the director of the Paris Observatory, but he decided to go back to the field and verify parts of his work. By late 1803 he had received Napoleon's permission to extend his survey, and he left for Spain. Unfortunately he caught yellow fever there, and, on September 20, 1804, he died in the small town of Castellon de la Plana, on Catalufia's Costa Blanca. His position at the Paris Observatory went to Delambre, who also kept it until his death. On June 24, 2002, nearly 200 years after he died, the astronomical community honored Mechain by naming a recently discovered asteroid after him. This, of course, was not the first erroneous meridian survey, nor would it be the last. In fact all previous measurements—in France, Peru, Lapland, and South Africa—had fallen victim to one or more serious errors of measurement and/or calculation and were of limited exactitude. Planet earth is no perfect, smooth, sphere, and every arc measurement is, by definition, prone to errors, even when conducted by a twenty-first-century satellite survey. One would naturally expect that satellite's errors would be smaller than those made by triangulation. Delambre and Mechain's measurements were better than previous ones. Their disparity was minute—only 0.023%, or 1 in 4350. Besides being an excellent result for eighteenth century instrumentation and calculation, it was simply further proof that measuring a meridian makes no scientific sense at all. Just imagine if the quadrant of a meridian were still being used to define the meter today. The value of the meter would have fluctuated with every successive new measurement! A state of the art satellite survey will show today that the length of a quarter meridian is 10,002,290 meters. That means that every meter is actually one fifth of a millimeter shorter than one ten millionth of a quadrant. The fact that the meter is "short" was first discovered by the

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German astronomer-cum-geodesist Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (17841846), while he was conducting extensive measurements of meridian arcs in East Prussia in 1831 and 1832. Bessel experimented with about ten arcs, and he produced many values for the length of the quadrant. Two of those were 10,000,856 meters and 10,000,565 meters. They were not as good as those provided by a satellite survey, but they were significantly different from those of Delambre and Mechain. This issue is the topic of a new book 11 unfolding Mechain's alleged cover-up of his mistake. One critic points out what he sees as "the irony of the metric system," which is supposed to be based on science, but which in fact—according to that critic—is a fallacy. He concludes that people prefer and understand "human measurements" rather than a system made up by scientists who "do not live in the real world anyway." Pungent words indeed! When we are told by such an authority that— unlike the meter—feet, stones, pints, and bushels are human measurements, we have no choice but to resort to the Good Book that tells us: "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes" (Proverbs 26:5). These pearls of wisdom cannot, and should not, be left unanswered. So, what does it boil down to? Beyond the rhetoric, one can detect two grievances: (1) the U.S. and imperial weights and measures are human, and the metric ones are demonic, the brainchildren of detached scientists who do not live in the real world; and (2) the length of the meter is not 1/10,000,000 of a meridian quadrant, a fact that was allegedly concealed from the public for 200 years. Damning accusations indeed, as severe as those thrown at Galileo Galilei by the Holy Inquisition! Let us examine them, one by one. Weights and measurements go far beyond shopping at Safeway and at Macy's. They are the basis for scores of scientific terms such as the centimeter, gram, joule, kilowatt, newton, maxwell, acceleration, and relativity. They are the building blocks of each and every science, from mechanics to engineering to electronics. All of science is based on the cloven-hoofed meter, gravitation, and time. The laws connecting these elements enable us to understand how the world goes around. And yet these laws were all formulated by . . . exactly, "scientists who do not live in the real world anyway." Those "detached" scientists have brought us cheap energy, cell phones, GPS, and in-vitrio fertilization, to name but a few things. Let us whisper in your ear, Mister Meter-Skeptic, so that nobody else will hear us: Most of these goodies are the fruit of the inter-

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nationally accepted metric and decimal systems. And then, of course, there's beer. Don't forget that a half-liter glass is 6.7 percent bigger than a U.S. pint! We rest our case! Now to the major indictment: the metric system is based on a fallacy. The argument goes that the meter is (1) not really a meter, and (2) it is not 1/10,000,000 of a quadrant, and this dreadful fact was kept secret from the masses by a two-century cover-up! In answer to that, the meter pleads not guilty on count one and guilty on count two. The meter is a meter; there is no question that it's alive and kicking. Just look at the odometer mounted in the dashboard of your car, or on the control panel of the space vehicle speeding towards Mars. Look at your radio dial, or at the Olympic games' scoreboards. All are based on Delambre's and Mechain's findings. They might have been kept from the U.S. public, but they reign all over the world. What do you say? They are not accurate? They are not based on a "correct" meter? J. R. Smith, the Honorary Secretary of the International Institution for the History of Surveying & Measurement, summed it up razor-sharp. 12 "No measurement in surveying (or in any other area) is correct. It is no more as near to the truth as the equipment and techniques can give. No matter how accurate the measuring instrument is, one can always strive for the next decimal place, so there is always uncertainty in the last place (or two) of the decimals, or even whole numbers, depending what is being measured. The only 'measurements' that can be correct are those such as counting the number of people in a room." What else do we hear? The meter is not an exact one ten millionth of the meridian? So what? The West Indies are not in India, although Columbus thought they were. Fahrenheit's zero temperature is not the lowest possible temperature, as he had hoped. The Green Card is not green, and Jesus Christ was not born in year zero of our common era, but—according to the consensus among most biblical scholars— between 7 B.C. and 5 B.C.13 Do we still detect a faint grumble from the rear that the meter is not 1/10,002,290 of a meridian—as it supposedly should be-and, therefore, the 100-meter Olympic champion runs only 99.98 meters? That's the fallacy! Metric weights and measures are offspring of the meter, not of the meridian, which has been forgotten since Delambre and Mechain downed their tools and pencils. The meter, whose name originates from the Greek word metron— "measure"—and which is spelled metre outside the United States (e.g., Australia and the United Kingdom), is the basis for the metric system

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and for all SI (Systeme International) units. It is related to a metal bar, and it has nothing to do with the length of a meridian. In fact one can say that arc measurements were never material to the meter. Moreover, since 1983 the meter has been defined as the distance traveled by electromagnetic radiation, or light, through a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 second. 14 This not only invalidates Napoleon Bonaparte's praise of Delambre and Mechain: "Conquests will come and go, but this work will endure," but it casts a giant question mark over the value of their seven years of difficult, dangerous, and frustrating work. "What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the Earth remains forever" (Ecclesiastes 1:3 & 4).

P A R T II

The Prime Meridian Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat. Rudyard Kipling, Fhe Ballad ofEast and West (1889)

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CHAPTER 4

From Hipparchus to Pulkovo The world's a wood, in which all lose their way, Though by a different path each goes astray. Buckingham

All meridians are great circles of equal length, run from pole to pole, converge at the poles, and diverge toward the equator. They curve elegantly on most maps, are straight and parallel on the Mercator's projection, but regretfully, none of them is really marked along the surface of the earth. They are all equal, except for one meridian that is more equal than all others. Sailors have been chasing longitude since they first ventured into the deep blue sea, beyond friendly coastlines and visible headlands. Soon enough they developed navigation, the science of finding a vessel's position and the art of conducting her safely from place to place. In time they learned to figure out their latitude, but had to apply dead reckoning to tell them where they were on the east-to-west axis of their charts, if they carried any. In many cases, dead reckoning navigation proved to be deadly, as vessels foundered even in charted waters. The west coast of Australia, for example, is littered with scores of wrecked sailing ships that were en route from the Cape of Good Hope to today's Indonesia. Those wretched windjammers ran before the roaring forties, overshot their turning point northward, hit the coral reefs, foundered, and left no survivors to tell their sad tales. Matters improved only with the advent of

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the chronometer, which facilitated accurate position finding by celestial observations. That elusive parameter, the longitude of a place, is—as we remember— the angular distance measured east or west from the prime meridian to the meridian of that place. Simple, isn't it? The longitude is measured east or west from the prime meridian, just like measuring the height of mountains or the depth of the seabed, above or below sea level, respectively. But if all meridians are equal, which one is the more equal? Which is the one and only zero meridian? Where does counting begin? The history of the primogeniture of the prime meridian started about two thousand years ago. As we shall see, it officially came to a not-sohappy end in 1884, but not quite. Capitalizing on the occasion of the millennium, a few French daydreamers were trying to undermine the world accord on the prime meridian and spin the wheels of history backward. It did not work. What was done about 120 years ago will most probably never be undone. Hipparchus, a leading mathematician and the greatest of Greek astronomers, was the first to propose (ca 130 B.C.) rigorous mathematical principles for determining places on the surface of the earth. He suggested a map drawn on "a grid of 360 degrees of latitude and longitude." Being a devoted astronomer, he wanted such a map to be based solely upon astronomical observations and devised a method to determine longitude by timing observations of eclipses. His technique did not work that well, but Ptolemy used the foundations that Hipparchus laid for scientific cartography. Ptolemy's book Geographike Huphegesis—Guide to Geography (ca A.D. 150)—was accompanied by an atlas comprising twenty-seven maps, one of which was a map of the known world, drawn according to Hipparchus' principles, including the equator, parallels of latitude, and meridians. The original map had long disappeared, but numerous editions were reconstructed, engraved, and printed during the 1500 years that Ptolemy's work had canonical authority. 1 That map of the world presented 180 degrees of longitude—half the world. Ptolemy did not know what was on the other side. The division of the world into 360 meridians, one degree apart, is still valid today, nearly 1900 years after Ptolemy. There were attempts over the past 200 years—mainly French, of course—to go decimal and divide the world into 400 meridians, but they were easily warded off. The duodecimal system is apparently rooted too deeply in us and there is a limit to how far we can allow decimalization to go.

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Ptolemy also borrowed from the foundations laid by Marinus, a second century A.D. Greek scientist and philosopher who lived in Tyre, 40 miles south of today's Beirut. Typical of the Greco-Roman period, more stories describing the geography of the known world were left to us than maps in their original form. Marinus did not leave behind any maps either. Ptolemy in his Guide described some of Marinus' geographical methods. That famous son of Tyre, who lived shortly before Ptolemy, suggested placing the prime meridian at the very end of the known world. Ptolemy consented with that notion and placed it at the edge of the mythological Fortunate Islands, which are identified with today's Madeira and Canary Islands. 2 He therefore drew his prime meridian at

Figure 4.1 Map of northwest Africa, 1826. Note prime meridian at Hierro, the most western of the Fortunate (Canary) Islands. Source: Cartographer Sidney Hall, 1826. Centerfold in Butler s Atlas of Ancient Geography (1841).

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the little island of Hierro (previously named Ferro 3 ), the most westerly of the lot. There was some logic in that concept. Longitude zero starts where the world begins. Fair enough! It made sense to cartographers and geographers. As in so many other matters, Ptolemy's concepts were accepted without question for centuries, and navigators of most nations continued to reckon from that line until the late eighteenth century. Portuguese cartographer Pedro Reinel made a dramatic leap forward in 1506, when he first drew a latitude scale on the prime meridian. Amazingly, it took cartographers 1356 years to create that cartographic novelty, nearly three times the period between Christopher Columbus and Neil Armstrong! Innovation was weak among many generations of cartographers. They had no qualms incorporating into their maps all kind of phony data, stolen from shipmasters back from long voyages, or collected in crummy taverns from drunken sailors, all for the sacred purpose of enhancing their nautical chart business. Charts presented information—news—and news sold well even in those days. There were the odd mavericks who thought—for their own good reasons—about improving upon the island of Hierro (Ferro). The Dutch cartographer Joan (John) Blaeu 4 (1596-1673) suggested Tenerife's peak El Pico; others wanted the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores. The Belgian philologist and humanist Erycius Puteanus (1574-1646) proposed in 1632 the meridian running through Rome. He even had a name for it— Circulus Urbanianus—in honor of Pope Urban VIII, the pontiff at the time. The Arabs did not want any of the islands, and they kept using Cape Verde proper—Africa's most western extreme—as their zero meridian. And there were, of course, the naturalists, who—like today's "greens"—searched for a prime meridian that was entirely "natural." Naturalness to them was a meridian where the magnetic variation 5 was zero, and the compass pointed to true north. The Dutch globe maker Jodocus Hondius 6 was told in 1601 that a place fitting that description lay in the vicinity of the Azores, and he hailed its meridian as the true prime meridian. It was not. Columbus is often credited with the discovery of variation, although he did not understand this phenomenon at all. Since the arrival of the magnetic compass in Europe in the twelfth century, sailors have trusted the needle, because it has always pointed toward Polaris—the Northern Star—or more exactly, very slightly east of the true pole. The reason for this was that at that time European ships plied only the waters of the

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Mediterranean and the west coasts of Europe and Africa, where the values of magnetic variation were very few degrees east. The isogonic lines (or isogonals)—those invisible lines that connect places of equal magnetic variation—run in those waters, and in portions of the North Atlantic Ocean, parallel to each other, and in a more-or-less north-to-south direction. Navigators in the Mediterranean, and along the coast from the Baltic to Cape Verde, were therefore shielded from significant changes in the value of their compass variation. Columbus left Palos in Spain on August 3, 1492, for the Canary Islands, on a southerly course that was more-or-less parallel to the isogonic lines in that part of the world. Therefore, no changes in compass variation were observed between Palos and the Canaries. He left Gomera Island on September 6th and headed west—to Chipango. A week later he entered in his log: "the needles point to the northwest." Not only had he discovered variation, but he had also discovered that the compass needle gradually swung from very slightly east to zero and then to increasing westerly values. The phenomenon seems pretty simple today: proceeding on a westerly course made Columbus's ships cross the isogonic lines and gradually get into areas of higher westerly variation. But the ignorant crews thought differently. Seeing their most reliable friend, the compass, suddenly turn on them, the sailors became frightened and agitated. It was a very bad omen indeed. The future Grand Admiral of the Ocean Sea ordered immediate damage control. Columbus explained to the crew that the needle is always true and that the fault lay with the Pole Star "that moves like the others." To be on the safe side he ordered his navigators not to leak any information regarding the extent of the variation. 7 That was the forerunner of his keeping a double log of the ship's track— a true one for himself and a false one for public consumption aboard—to make the crew believe that the distance sailed was less than that actually covered. The purpose of that shenanigan was, as he wrote in his personal journal, "to prevent fear and dismay, should the voyage prove long." Another reason could have been his desire to keep maximum navigational data of the voyage close to his chest, thus ensuring that only he had the key to the discovery of Cathay and Chipango. The phenomenon of north-south isogonic lines made Columbus, and other cross-Atlantic navigators after him, believe that longitude at sea could be calculated by measurements of the compass variation. It did not take long for the Portuguese Captain Joao de Castro 8 to dismiss that

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grandiose idea as utter nonsense. Professor Henry Gellibrand had shown in 1638 that variation alters over time and place, mainly because of the wandering of the magnetic poles. Edmund Halley—whom we shall meet in our next chapter—put the lid on the issue when he compiled the first chart of magnetic variation, on behalf of the Royal Navy. Halley showed that isogonic lines do not run parallel to the meridians for long distances and that in certain locations off the east coast of North America they stretch in a east-to-west direction, perpendicular to the meridians. All this activity over the prime meridian, with cartographers drawing their charts practically on a whim, got the French worried. In April 1634, Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII's chief minister, convened an international meeting of European astronomers and mathematicians to consider a commonly accepted prime meridian. They chose to stick to the old line of Hierro. The issue of the zero-variation meridian was discussed at that conference as well and was summed up in a decree signed by King Louis XIII that forbade all pilots, hydrographers, designers, and engravers of charts and globes, to deviate from the old prime meridian passing through Hierro. The decree specifically warned against the novel and false idea of linking zero compass error to any particular meridian. Louis XIII was not the first royal to show interest in the prime meridian. King Philip II of Spain preceded him on July 13, 1573, when he ordered that longitudes be reckoned from the meridian of the city of Toledo (Spain—not Ohio, of course) and be measured westward, instead of eastward from Hierro. That reckoning was to conform to the discovery of the West Indies, but did not strike roots. Hierro had been in use for too long. Ptolemy's and Richelieu's prime meridian completely lost its glitter in the eighteenth century, after Britannia began ruling the waves and producing the best nautical charts and publications. With the Canary Islands no longer at the edge of the world, maintaining the prime meridian there made no sense. The time had come to bring it home to Europe. Meanwhile, observatories became the focal point for prime meridians, because they were the bases for astronomers to set their telescopes on celestial bodies that culminated when crossing the meridian. Sweden's King Frederick II built the first modern national observatory in 1576 on the Island of Hven, off the country's southwestern coast. He built it for the pioneer astronomer Tycho Brahe. The invention of the telescope in 1608 was the catalyst for establishing similar institutions in Copenhagen (1637), Paris (1667-71), and Greenwich—one of the thirty-

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two boroughs constituting Greater London (1675). King Charles II founded the latter and his royal warrant for building the Royal Observatory, dated June 22, 1675, stated: Whereas, in order to the finding out of the longitude of places for perfecting navigation and astronomy, we have resolved to build a small observatory within our park at Greenwich, upon the highest ground. Within 150 years observatories flourished all over the world. Even Sydney, Australia, went astronomical in 1786. Observatories had become a matter of national pride, and, in the spirit of patriotism, most respectable nations felt that the prime meridian should pass through their own principal cities, national observatories, or even through unique landmarks. A free-for-all situation developed in that respect in the nineteenth century. The British, the French, the Scandinavians, the

•

Figure 4.2 Greenwich Observatory, 2000. Note prime meridian marked on pavement in foreground. Source: Courtesy Mr. Peter Lind, Holbaek, Denmark.

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Iberians, and the Russians, each country adopted the meridian of its observatory—in most cases in or near its capital—as its prime meridian. Some nations used more than one prime meridian at the same time, even for the same purpose. The Scandinavians were the best at that. Swedish sea charts, for example, were based on Stockholm, Paris, and Greenwich, whereas land maps were based on Stockholm and Ferro. The greatest mess was, no surprise, in Russia, where sea charts were centered on Greenwich, Pulkovo, 9 and Ferro, and land maps were based on Ferro, Pulkovo, Warsaw, and Paris. This led to a national nightmare that was taken very lightly by the indifferent administration. In the late eighteenth century, France adopted the metric system, Napoleon took his first steps into history, and the European nations used about twenty different prime meridians for their charts and maps. "Ridiculous situation!" summed up the great French mathematician and astronomer, the Marquis de Laplace 10 (1749-1827), who was one of the first to advocate a common prime meridian "indicated by nature itself, for all nations." Alas he did not name that natural meridian. Years later Professor Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900), the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, had a tongue-in-cheek suggestion for the late Laplace—the meridian passing through the apex of Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt. He said it was desirable on two counts—passing through the world's tallest man-made edifice and, being close to Jerusalem, it was the spiritual prime meridian of the faithful. Piazzi Smyth was born in Naples to a British admiral stationed in Italy. His godfather was the Italian astronomer Piazzi, a revered friend of the family. Smyth ties into our story from another direction as well. A very talented lad, he went to the Cape Colony at the age of sixteen to work as an assistant to Sir Thomas Maclear. He took an active part in the verification and extension of Lacaille's meridian measurement. At twenty-six he was appointed Astronomer Royal for Scotland and a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. 11 In the beginning the quest for the prime meridian was a mere mapping issue. Cartographers and mariners needed a zero reference point for the purpose of drawing maps and establishing positions on their charts. Later, with the advent of the chronometer, things changed dramatically. The main use of the prime meridian was as a time reference to calculate longitude. It became the home of GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and its later replacement—UTC (Coordinated Universal Time ).

CHAPTER 5

Greenwich—The Ultimate Prime Meridian Out where the handclasp's a little stronger, Out where the smile dwells a little longer, That's where the West Begins. Arthur Chapman, Out Where the West Begins, 1917

With no international consent on the location of the prime meridian, it was left to the individuals in the field to make their own choices. Some shipmasters on westbound Atlantic crossings from the English Channel used to log their longitude with reference to the last sighted land. Thus on those particular voyages, the meridian of Cornwall's Lizard Point became the de facto prime meridian. However, in general, the determination of the prime meridian had always been the privilege of cartographers only. Since the days of Hipparchus and Ptolemy, it had been common for cartographers to set their own favorite—and sometimes new and imaginative—prime meridian on their products. Take John Seller1 (ca 1630-1697), a London chart publisher and a cartographer of somewhat smaller caliber than those famous Greeks. Seller, who was appointed Hydrographer by King Charles II, and who later served James II and William III, did just the same. He was the first cartographer to use London (in fact, St. Paul's Cathedral) as the zero-longitude reference point in his 1676 topographic 2 maps of Hertfordshire. This was the first time the prime meridian had come home to England. It was there to stay, and it was soon to go international.

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Seller's shift of the prime meridian from Hierro to London was large in distance—about 18 degrees of longitude at one time—but small in international impact. Nobody took notice of the English publisher, sitting in his shop near the Tower of London. Yet Seller sowed the seeds of change in British marine cartography that would soon take over the world because of its accuracy and quality. It took two centuries for Seller's daring move to result in official international recognition of the Greenwich meridian. Subsequent shifts of that meridian—also in an easterly direction—were much smaller: first was the 5-mile leap from St. Paul's Cathedral to the Greenwich Observatory, and then three very minute movements within the grounds of the observatory. It all started with John Flamsteed (1646-1719), the first Astronomer Royal and one of Britain's greatest astronomers, who in 1676 established the first in a series of four Greenwich meridians. Flamsteed was the son of a Derbyshire maltster, and he lost his mother at a very young age. At fifteen he contracted a rheumatic illness that left him in poor health for the rest of his life. His father thought he would be more useful looking after the house and made him leave Derby's Free Grammar School when he was sixteen. Young John did not give up on his studies. Despite his father's objections, he learned astronomy entirely on his own, making full use of the Latin and mathematics in which he excelled at school. At twenty-three he calculated the path of the moon and eclipses to be seen the following year, and he sent his predictions anonymously to the Royal Society in London. Soon afterward he was recognized as an outstanding observing astronomer, and he corresponded on scientific matters with members of the Royal Society and the Academie des Sciences, notably Jean Dominique, Figure 5.1 John Flamsteed (1646-1719). From a the father of the Cassini dynasty. self-taught astronomer to an M.A. Flamsteed's ship came in in 1670, degree by royal assent, to the seat of first Astronomer Royal. Engraver when he was introduced to Sir unknown. Jonas Moore.

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SirJonas was an outstanding person of his generation's England. He was a member of the Royal Society, teacher, author, cartographer, surveyor general of ordnance, courtier, and patron of astronomy. He had a remarkable career, and he was one of the first to make a substantial fortune from scientific knowledge and practice. Sir Jonas was greatly impressed by the young Flamsteed and became his patron. Flamsteed—who had had little formal education—returned home via Cambridge, where he enrolled as an undergraduate student. He attended only a few of the classes, as he found the rest to be quite boring. In 1674 Sir Jonas persuaded Charles II to issue a warrant to Cambridge University to award Flamsteed a Master of Arts degree without the usual requirements fulfilled. The following year Flamsteed accompanied Sir Jonas to the palace, where the latter presented the case for establishing a royal observatory. Charles II was very impressed with Flamsteed, who had earlier made barometer-cum-thermometer sets for him and for the Duke of York. On March 4, 1675, the king appointed Flamsteed his Astronomical Observator, with an annual salary of 100 pounds. The title was later changed to Astronomer Royal. The elusive longitude was on top of Albion's agenda and the Observator was required first and foremost to Forthwith apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the rectifying of the tables of motion of the heavens, and places of the fixed stars, so as to find the so much desired longitude of places for the perfecting of the art of navigation and astronomy. This was a very important and heavy task indeed, although the king was not particularly generous with the person who had to carry it out. Flamsteed had to provide his own telescope and other instruments to the observatory. Sir Jonas presented him with a 7-foot equatorial sextant and two pendulum clocks that he accepted gratefully. The income—which was taxed at 10 percent—was insufficient, and Flamsteed, who was ordained in 1675, moonlighted for 35 years as rector at the Church of St. Bartholomew at Burstow in Surrey, where he was eventually buried. He also took private pupils to augment his income. The workload at Greenwich was very heavy—measuring the distance to the sun and the moon, compiling astronomical tables, cataloging the stars, plotting the paths of comets, inventing the conical projection of maps, liaising with the Royal Society, chasing donors to maintain the observatory's finances, and much more. The job at Burstow was more of an income generator for an absentee rector.

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Although Sir Christopher Wren, the architect who built the attractive Greenwich Observatory, as well as other fine monuments such as St. Paul's Cathedral, was also a professor of astronomy, his creation was far from astronomical perfection, to say the least. Indeed, its main hall, the Octagon Room, was completely unsuitable for transit observations because it had a fixed roof and was offset from the north-south direction by about 13 degrees. Wren, like many other architects since time immemorial, delivered his clients creations that they had never requested. He justified his planning fiasco by saying that the Great Star Room—as it was originally called—was never intended for making transit observations. He had designed it as a place of "some pomp" where certain observing, such as that of planets, comets, and so on, could take place, but by and large it was the grand place for meeting the king and dignitaries such as Isaac Newton. It was the king's observatory, and the Great Star Room had to reflect that status. It was just too bad that it did not suit the astronomers. Flamsteed had come to Greenwich to work, not to waste his time on social gatherings. He had no choice but to construct, in 1676, his own small observatory in the garden adjacent to Wren's building (now named Flamsteed House) with a strong brick meridian wall upon which he mounted his transit instrument. The latter was a ten-foot mural arc, codesigned and built by the polymath Robert Hooke. A transit instrument is a specially designed telescope used for measuring the altitude of a celestial body when on the meridian. It is mounted on a pivot, it can be moved 360 degrees vertically, and it is always aligned with a north-south line. When a star passes over the meridian, the transit instrument measures the meridian altitude. While this happens, an extremely accurate clock, called an astronomical regulator, is used to measure the exact time it occurs. 3 These two measurements—altitude and time—provide the objective coordinates of that star, namely its declination and right ascension, which can be used to create star charts and star position tables. Production of these tables, which are still published annually in the Nautical Almanac, was fundamental to the founding of the observatory, whose raison d'etre was to improve navigation. The crosshairs at the center of the telescope of Flamsteed's transit instrument pointed to the first Greenwich meridian, 4 and its continuation is marked on a brass strip, visible to visitors at Greenwich. As important as the establishment of the prime meridian at Greenwich was to Flamsteed, and to historians over the years, at the time it was no more

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than a local event of setting up a national line. Continental Europe hardly took notice, and Hierro felt no threat. Flamsteed died at Greenwich on New Year's Eve, 1719, after a prolonged and ugly feud with Sir Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley. The friendship of many years that he had enjoyed with these two colleagues soured to bitter antagonism and blew up into the greatest scientific scandal of the eighteenth century. Flamsteed was a very pedantic and busy scientist, who wished to publish the results of his stellar observations only in their complete form. That was too slow for Newton and Halley's liking, as they needed his results to test their current theories. Newton, through the Royal Society, led a pro-publishing pressure group and obtained a grant from Prince George of Denmark to cover the printing costs. Flamsteed refused to cooperate, and, as a result, the Historiae Coelestis, embodying the first incomplete and imperfect Greenwich star catalog was issued in 1712 under Halley's editorship. Halley also wrote an introduction that was far from complimentary to Flamsteed. Flamsteed was furious that his life's work had been "robbed" and published in an inaccurate and unfinished form. He sued, eventually won, recovered the remaining 300-odd copies of the 400 printed, and burned them on a large bonfire in Greenwich Park "as a sacrifice to heavenly truth." He then turned to write his monumental three-volume work, Historiae Coelestis Britannica, but finished only Volume I before he died. His loyal assistants Joseph Crosthwait and Abraham Sharp completed that great work, which included all of Flamsteed's observations plus a superb catalog of nearly 3000 stars. They had it published in parts, from 1725 to 1729. This publication propelled Britain to leadership of world astronomy. It also got Flamsteed a crater on the moon named in his honor. Edmund Halley (1656-1742), of 1682 comet fame, 5 gave Greenwich its second prime meridian. By a twist of fate, Flamsteed's friend-turnedenemy inherited his position after his death, to become the second Astronomer Royal. Halley was one of those geniuses who did not have the time to complete a formal education. While a student at Oxford University in his late teens, he formed a friendship with Flamsteed, who gave him the opportunity to help him in his observations and to learn a great deal from him. Halley was influenced by Flamsteed's cataloging of the northern stars, and he proposed to do the same in the south. Backed by the British East India Company, he left Oxford at age twenty, without a

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degree, and sailed to St. Helena aboard one of that company's vessels. In St. Helena, 140 years before Napoleon, Halley cataloged about 350 stars, observed the transit of Mercury across the sun, and made numerous pendulum experiments and observations. Back in England two years later, Oxford granted the twenty-two-yearold lad an M.A. degree, and the Royal Society awarded him membership. He soon developed a close friendship with Newton, encouraged him to write and complete his Principia, and in 1687, when the Royal Society was short of funds, Halley took upon himself the cost of publishing that great book that sealed Newton's reputation. Halley must have enjoyed his sea voyage to St. Helena, for he was very pleased to receive in 1698 instructions from the Admiralty to take command of the war sloop Paramour Pink and to proceed on the first purely scientific research voyage ever performed by a ship. He spent nearly two years aboard that vessel, and, among other projects, he surveyed the earth's magnetic field and the tides in the English Channel. In 1703 he returned to Oxford as a Savilian 6 Professor of Geometry. That same year Newton became president of the Royal Society, a position he held—by annual reelection—until his death in 1727. In 1720 Halley planted his feet in John Flamsteed's big shoes and kept them there for twenty-two years. When he took over the observatory, he found it devoid of major instruments. They had all been Flamsteed's personal possessions, and his widow had removed and sold them as soon as the funeral was over. She could do with the money, but more important, she was not going to let her husband's archenemy use his gear for even one day. The 7-foot sextant that had been built in 1676, and the 7-foot mural arc, built in 1683 and installed in 1689, to replace a previous, difficult-to-use 10-foot mural quadrant, were of such excellent workmanship and accuracy that their readings were accepted internationally for more than 200 years. Unfortunately both are gone forever, although replicas have been made from early engravings. By 1720, stingy Charles II had already been dead for 35 years, and Halley was not willing to personally bear the cost of a new set of observing instruments. The Board of Ordnance had to dip its hands deep into its pockets to bring Greenwich to a standard satisfactory to Halley. In 1725 Halley discovered that Flamsteed's meridian wall was slowly subsiding into the ground. He had no choice but to build another room to house his instruments, with a wall to support his own 8-foot iron mural quadrant. The new wall was 73 inches east of the old one, and

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Halley thus established Greenwich meridian mark II, approximately one tenth of a second of arc—practically nothing—eastward. Two of Halley's principal published works were the Catalogus Stellarum Australium ("Catalog of Southern Stars") published in 1679, and Synopsis Astronomiae Cometicae ("A Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets") 7 published in 1705. When he was in his forties, Halley learned Arabic for the sole purpose of translating into English several old science books that were available only in that language. He even reconstituted some passages where the Arabic text was corrupt. Halley ran Greenwich as the second Astronomer Royal until 1742. His fieldwork was inferior to Flamsteed's, and most of his observations remained unreduced and unpublished. His contribution to cartography was in originating graphical methods for the presentation of physical features in geographical maps, as well as drawing the first meteorological and magnetic maps. The latter were of great practical value, especially to mariners, and they were used for many years after his death. Halley died in London on January 14, 1742. His comet has visited planet earth four times since then, and it will return once every approximately seventy-six years, forever.8 The taste for pushing the Greenwich meridian eastward was triggered again with the appointment of the third Astronomer Royal. James Bradley took charge of Greenwich in 1742 and seven years later moved the line where east meets west a further 436 inches eastward, toward India. One journalist 9 recently published on the Web—tongue in cheek, hopefully—that Bradley did that in order to impress his girlfriend. "What did you do today, dear?" "Oh, I thought I would establish another prime meridian." "That's nice; now what would you like for tea?" Well, James Bradley was a reverend who served his parish until he was forty-eight, and men of God do not have girlfriends—at least, they are not supposed to. They do have teas, though. 10 It seems more likely that Bradley wanted to facilitate Britain's colonial ascendancy in the Indian subcontinent. Like Halley, Bradley came to Greenwich from Oxford, where he held the position of Savilian Professor of Astronomy. His background was theology, and when he reached Oxford as a thirty-eight-year-old undergraduate, he was encouraged to take up astronomy by none other than Edmund Halley, himself a Savilian Professor at the time. They became

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good friends, and ten years after he first entered Oxford, Bradley got his professorship there. His comradeship with Halley (and his qualifications, of course) paid off and brought him the longed-for job at Greenwich, where he served twenty years, until just before his death in 1762, at eighty-nine years of age. Bradley's record before Greenwich included discovery of the aberration 11 of light and of nutation, that is, the earth's wobbling on its axis. While at Greenwich he made fundamental contributions to the techniques and instrumentation of practical astronomy. He also corrected existing tables of Jupiter, which he used to accurately determine longitude. Bradley's 60,000-plus celestial observations, which marked him as the founder of the modern era in physical astronomy, were the subject of a prolonged and bitter ownership dispute. Like Flamsteed before him, Bradley essentially regarded the observations he made at the Observatory as his own property. After he died they were left at the Observatory in the care of the next Astronomer Royal, Nathaniel Bliss. Bliss died in 1764, and the executors of Bradley's will insisted on the return of the papers, and they received them. The Visitors—which is how the trustees of the Royal Observatory have been named since 1710—were powerless to demand their return. The Crown, however, was not. It put the issue in the hands of its attorneys and instructed them to begin court proceedings to retrieve all of the documents. It was only after Reverend Samuel Peach Jr. married his cousin—who happened to be James Bradley's niece 12 —and thus became the legal guardian of the papers, that the problem was resolved. Soon after his wedding, Peach presented all of Bradley's documents to Lord North, the then prime minister of Britain and chancellor of Oxford University.13 Local politics had won the best of Lord North. Rather than returning the papers to the observatory for publication, he insisted they be issued by Oxford University. That unusual move delayed the process still further. Eventually they were posthumously published in Oxford in two volumes—in 1798 and 1805. Bradley's new, more easterly, meridian became the basis for topographic surveys and land map-making in Great Britain. That line of reference was in fact upgraded from being a mere meridian of Greenwich to become the British prime meridian, although not the prime meridian for the world. As we shall soon see, Bradley's line is no longer congruent with the official Greenwich meridian, nor with Britain's national grid. Before losing its primogeniture, Bradley's meridian became the basis for the British Nautical Almanac, which, when first published in 1767,

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awarded the Bradley Line international fame and recognition. Navigators worldwide put their trust in British almanacs and crowned Greenwich, and Bradley's line in particular, as their prime meridian. Three subsequent Astronomers Royal were apparently too shy to touch the prime meridian and amused themselves with more conventional pastimes. The seventh Astronomer Royal built a new transit circle and mounted it in the Meridian Building. The line through its telescope to the crosshairs, which was parallel to Bradley's line and 19 feet (threetenths of one second of arc) farther east, became the official Greenwich meridian, and it was later—as we shall soon see—confirmed as the prime meridian for the world. Officially, that was the last and final movement of the prime meridian. But was it really? Well, for Greenwich, yes—but for the world, no! Sir George Biddell Airy, K.C.B, M . A , L L . D , D.C.L, F.R.S, F.R.A.S, a man whose resume was as distinguished as his list of titles, was appointed by King William IV in 1835 Britain's seventh Astronomer Royal. It took Sir George 34 years to be molded into that position. The year 1801 was a turbulent year for Europe. On February 9, Napoleon forced Austria to sign the Peace of Luneville and recognize France's "natural frontiers" from the Pyrenees to the Alps and to the Rhine, the same frontiers that Julius Caesar had given to Gaul eighteen and a half centuries earlier. On March 14, William Pitt resigned his first premiership. Nine days later, Czar Pavel I was Figure 5.2 assassinated in St. Petersburg, George Biddell Airy (1801-1892). Seventh Astronomer Royal who could not and nine days after that Nelson afford the fees of being knighted. fought the Battle of Copen- Source: The Royal Observatory Greenwich: Its History and Work, by E. Walter hagen. 14 Maunder, London, 1900. Image provided courOn July 27—the month in tesy of Mr. Eric Hutton, F.R.A.S., Waltham which Napoleon Bonaparte signed Abbey, UK.

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the concordat with Pope Pius VII, and Henry Addington consolidated his short, three-year term as prime minister of Britain—Ann Biddell and William Airy had a baby boy whom they named George. Both parents came from humble English farming backgrounds, although William had educated himself and risen to the position of tax inspector. George was first in his class at Byatt Walker's School at Colchester, where he learned arithmetic, double-entry bookkeeping, and the use of a slide rule.15 A shy boy, he turned into a snob, and he was never a favorite with his classmates. His life turned at thirteen, when his father lost his position and the family fell into poverty. The long-term results were like the words in Samson's riddle: "out of the strong came something sweet" (Judges 14:14). Poverty forced young George to move to live with his uncle, Arthur Biddell, for the next five years. Biddell was a learned man, especially in the sciences. He had friends in the scientific community, and he owned a fine library. Young George fell captive to the chemistry and physics books, and it was not difficult for his uncle to convince him to seek an academic career. With top grades from Colchester Grammar School, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1819, on a partial scholarship. He had to work as a servant to receive the reduction in fees, while the balance of funds, for tuition and living expenses, came from his uncle and from giving private lessons. Airy graduated in 1823 with first-class honors, collecting on his way each and every possible university prize. The following year he was awarded a fellowship at Trinity, and his academic career entered high gear: further proof that "poverty is the stepmother of genius." 16 At the age of twenty-three, Airy met Richarda Smith on a walking holiday and proposed to her two days after they met. She accepted, but her small-town vicar father declined to give them his blessing. "Forget it, young man," he said. "Come back when you can prove to me that you can support my daughter financially." Airy did not argue. He made up his mind to obtain only positions with suitable financial standing, which would enable him to live with his sweetheart. Two years later he was offered the chair of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. The job commanded the modest salary of 100 pounds that, even with the 100 he received as a member of the Board of Longitude, did not satisfy the vicar. Airy continued to cast his bread over Cambridge's waters. He did very well, and he strengthened his academic position. In 1828 he was offered the Plumian Chair of Astronomy at a salary of 300 pounds. He accepted, but demanded 500.

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The university yielded, and on March 24, 1830, the grave-faced vicar walked his beaming daughter down the aisle. Airy was better off than Jacob, who worked two times seven years for Rachel. He won Richarda in six. Airy's Greenwich brief was to start with reorganizing the observatory, where work practices and staff morale were deteriorating. He applied all his talents, especially his engineering ability, remarkable memory, and excellent organizational skills. On the technical side, he ordered modern astronomical apparatuses and increased the number of staff and their workload. He automated systems and produced strict step-by-step guidelines to reduce human error and increase efficiency in and around the observatory. The staff was subjected to rigid discipline, and they were made to clock in and clock out, as in factories. Lacking any interest in industrial relations, Airy rejected all grumbles of dissatisfaction. In 1850 he installed a state-of-the-art Transit Circle that was emblematic of the revolutionary working practices that he had introduced at the observatory. It was mounted, of course, in an exact true north-south direction, and since January 4, 1851, it has marked the fourth and final Greenwich prime meridian—longitude zero degrees. This prime meridian also signals the start of the Universal Day for the entire world, as we shall see in the following pages. Airy resigned from the observatory in 1881. Looking backward, he should have been very pleased with himself. His academic achievements included chairs at Cambridge, eleven published books, and membership and presidency of numerous commissions and societies, including the Royal Society (1871). He received many awards, doctorates, and medals. His research embraced astronomy, meteorology, magnetism, optics, photography, and more. He calculated the density of the earth, presented to the world a method of correcting ship compasses, and, suffering from astigmatism, he was the first to explain that problem and to design lenses to correct it. His 1822 ellipsoid approximation of the earth is still used for surveying in Great Britain, and in a modified form in the Irish Republic. In short, this mighty Lincolnshire boy was a winner. However, might is not always right. His colleagues and subordinates were not crazy about him, to put it mildly. No wonder he did not groom an heir. Some of his decisions were tainted by personal animosity. He dismissed Charles Babbage's calculating engine as "worthless" and blocked Sir Robert Peel's government support of it. Babbage, by the way, is known today as the

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originator of the modern automatic computer. Babbage also supported a wide gauge for railways, whereas Airy was for the narrow gauge. Unfortunately Airy won the day, at a tremendous cost to British and colonial taxpayers. In 1872 Queen Victoria knighted Airy, after he had declined the honor on three previous occasions, saying he "could not afford the fees." He retired from the observatory at the age of 80 and lived the rest of his life with his two unmarried daughters in the White House close to Greenwich Park. He died on January 2, 1892, and was buried at Suffolk, England. His final award was two heavenly craters, one on the moon and one on Mars.

CHAPTER 6

Greenwich Goes International Greenwich is supposed to be the first, or fixed meridian; all to the east of this meridian is called east longitude, and all to the west, west longitude, as far as the opposite meridian, or 180 degrees each way. Captain James Cook in the preface to his Voyage, written aboard H.M. Discovery Sloop Resolution, the Cape of Good Hope, March 22, 1774

The debate over where the prime meridian should be drawn commenced with Hipparchus, who adopted for that purpose the meridian of Bithynia, a town on the island of Rhodes, south of Turkey, where he lived in the second century B.C. Two thousand years later, European nations were using about twenty different prime meridians for their topographic maps and nautical charts. The situation became chaotic, and practically intolerable, as cartographers and mariners unwittingly put the safety of international shipping—augmented by new, bigger, deeper, and faster steamships—in jeopardy. Just imagine the outcome of different captains reporting divergent positions of vessels in distress, or of dangers to navigation, using coordinates based on different reference grids. Safety of navigation demanded one language to prevent a Tower of Babel situation, such as when God confused the builders' languages and brought disaster upon their project (Genesis 11:1-9). Urgent and decisive international action to standardize the longitude was highly required. The first International Geographic Congress (IGC) took place at Antwerp, Belgium, in August 1871. It was agreed there that each country could

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keep its own prime meridian for land and coastal surveys and maps, but that all high-sea charts would transfer to the Greenwich meridian within fifteen years. To avoid confusion among mariners, all exchanges of information about longitude at sea would be based on Greenwich forthwith. The second IGC (Rome, 1875) was a full retreat from the first. France insisted it would accept Greenwich only if Britain would accept the metric system. The British—gentlemen to their toes—contained their laughter at what they thought was the joke of the decade. All participants agreed that a prime meridian for all nations was indeed crucial, but they could reach no common ground, and they dispersed indecisively. Since the Europeans were at each other's throats, the solution to that Gordian problem had to come from across the Atlantic. The New World was no stranger to ephemeral prime meridians. First there was Professor de Beaumont from Geneva, who suggested at the third IGC—held in Venice in September 1881—a prime meridian passing through the Bering Strait and the Pacific Ocean, "because it was uninhabited and its anti-meridian would pass close to Rome, Venice, and Copenhagen." That was a very unwise suggestion—to put it mildly—as will be demonstrated in Part III, The International Date Line. 1 Then, in 1816, forty-nine years after the British Nautical Almanac was based on the Bradley line and earned the approval, respect, and gratitude of generations of navigators worldwide, President Madison decided it was time to free his fledging nation from dependence upon Greenwich-based British charts. He therefore established a prime meridian that ran through the White House and up Washington's 16th Street, giving Meridian Hill its name. Fortunately the president's vision put the West Wing in the Western World. Imagine what would have been the consequences otherwise. Common sense, however, is stronger than presidential whim, and by the mid-nineteenth century most European charts used the meridian of Greenwich as their longitude benchmark. Realizing it could not beat Greenwich, President's Arthur's administration joined it in 1883. Moreover the United States decided to exert leadership on the issue. Hence the president invited all nations with diplomatic relations with the United States to come to Washington the following year for a conference that would settle the prime meridian question once and for all. Delegates from twenty-five nations, 2 including great world powers such as San Domingo, 3 the Kingdom of Hawaii, 4 and land-locked Switzerland and Paraguay, gathered in Washington, D . C , on October 1, 1884, for the

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International Meridian Conference. The list of delegates included two counts (Italy and Sweden), two barons (Austria-Hungary and Germany), two professors (United Kingdom and Japan), and a long line of military officers and ordinary mortals, 41 in to to. There was not a single woman present! The gathering, as the Final Act of the International Meridian Conference reads, was "for the purpose of discussing, and, if possible fixing upon a meridian proper to be employed as a common zero of longitude and standard of time reckoning throughout the whole world." The issues and their discussions were sometimes sensible, sometimes oafish. They received prominent coverage in the Fimes of London during the first two weeks of October. The French delegation knew that Paris had no chance in hell of becoming the home of the prime meridian and, therefore—as unbelievable as it may sound—objected to the selection of any meridian line. Unsupported, they tabled their second best idea, that of a "neutral" meridian, far from any world power, and they suggested the Bering Strait or one of the Azores Islands—anywhere but Britain! Only the delegates from Brazil and San Domingo supported this proposal, which would have necessitated, among other things, the refashioning of each and every single existing nautical chart and publication. The French motion was lost, as was that of the Canadians to adopt longitude 180 degrees as the prime meridian. The senior British delegate, Sir Frederick Evans, put the whole argument in perspective when he provided figures showing that seventy-two percent of world shipping was already using Greenwich, nine percent used Paris, and the remaining nineteen percent used a variety of other meridians. Evans also pointed out that the Greenwich anti-meridian passed through vast areas of the Pacific Ocean and was therefore ideal for an international date line. The English-speaking group then insisted that the prime meridian must pass through an astronomical observatory. This argument gained the approval of the delegates and it quickly reduced the number of contenders to four: Greenwich, Paris, Berlin, and Washington. The British pointed out that Greenwich—being no capital—defused the political issues and had the merit of being "neutral" or inoffensive to national pride. The French could not reject that notion, and they had to swallow the argument. As we have seen, and shall see again later on, the zero meridian no longer passes through the Greenwich Observatory, and one can only laugh at that and other similar arguments. It is funny how a matter of burning importance in one age is almost meaningless to future generations.

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Finally, the French threw in their trump card, repeating their demand—which was not carried in the second IGC (Rome, 1875)—that Great Britain adopt the "neutral" metric system. Throughout the proceedings the U.S. representatives were in favor of the Greenwich meridian, and in that connection, Mr. Rutherford, for the United States, retorted that the metric system was a French system and that nothing about it was neutral. The British delegate went even farther: he confirmed that his government had just applied to join the International Metric Convention. He failed to mention that, as far as John Bull was concerned, it was a hollow act that would have no follow-up. The honorable delegates met and deliberated, wined, and dined for three whole weeks during that October, and, "after careful and patient discussions", they passed the following seven resolutions. 5

Resolution I That it is the opinion of this Congress that it is desirable to adopt a single prime meridian for all nations, in place of the multiplicity of initial meridians which now exists. This resolution was unanimously adopted. Resolution II That the Conference proposes to the Governments here represented the adoption of the meridian passing through the centre of the transit instrument at the Observatory of Greenwich as the initial meridian for longitude. This resolution was adopted by twenty-two ayes, one nay (San Domingo 6 ), and two abstentions (Brazil and France). France was the most ardent fighter against a British meridian, but it was a lost battle. The twenty-two delegates who cast the ayes had no latitude for negotiations. They had come with clear instructions from their governments to vote for Greenwich. France eventually succumbed to the majority opinion, although it would not say aye. French-speaking San Domingo was more French than the French. What grudge did that world power have against Great Britain? Was it bad memories of English buccaneers, Britain's historical role in the slave trade, mere muscle flexing to demonstrate black power? Or did the French buy the delegate? We shall never know.

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Resolution III That from this meridian longitude shall be counted in two directions up to 180 degrees, east longitude being plus and west longitude being minus. This resolution was adopted by fourteen ayes, five nays (Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland), and six abstentions (AustriaHungary, Brazil, France, Germany, San Domingo, and Turkey). A long and fierce debate preceded this innocent and harmless resolution that nearly half the represented nations of the world did not support. Some delegates insisted that longitude should be reckoned by 360 degrees—as had been proposed by the Rome conference—similar to the reckoning of time by 24 hours. The Swedes suggested counting the meridians from east to west. That would have put New York City at the strange longitude of about 285°, instead of its present 75° west. Likewise, Los Angeles would have been at 240° instead of 120° west. The Spaniards accepted the principle, but they insisted on a west-toeast count. Then there were some Europeans who wanted to scrap the duodecimal system used for dividing angular space and time, in favor of the decimal system. Apparently the fine system we inherited from the Babylonians 3000 years earlier was no good to those modernists. The British proposed maintaining the status quo of 180 degrees each way. The United States supported Great Britain, and—to the relief of the whole world—the Anglo-Saxon coalition won the day. Resolution IV That the Conference proposes the adoption of a universal day for all purposes for which it may be found convenient and which shall not interfere with the use of local or other standard time where desirable. The locomotive behind this resolution was W. F. Allen, Secretary of the Railway Time Conventions, and a member of the U.S. delegation. He proposed a standard time system for ordinary life and a universal time system for international matters such as science, navigation, and telegraphy. The resolution was adopted by twenty-three ayes and two abstentions (Germany and Santo Domingo). Resolution V That this universal day is to be a mean solar day, is to begin for all the world at the moment of mean midnight of the initial meridian,

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coinciding with the beginning of the civil day and date of that meridian, and is to be counted from zero up to twenty-four hours. The major issue here was when the universal day should commence. Astronomers and navigators used to start their day at noon, civilians at midnight. Astronomers used the culmination of the sun as their starting point and did not want their night to be carried over two dates. Sailors also worked their day from one meridian passage of the sun to another. Civilian needs, on the other hand, were augmented by the electric telegraph service that dictated midnight-to-midnight reckoning. Professor J. C. Adams, Director of the Cambridge Observatory and a member of the British delegation, supported the resolution, although he himself was an astronomer. "Astronomers," he said, "are very few to compare to the rest of the world, are an intelligent lot, and will have no difficulty to adjust to changing the time of the start of the day." In an answer to a query by a French delegate, Professor Adams said that noon is midi in French, the middle of the day, and not its beginning or its end. The Swedes did not agree with Professor Adams and—believe it or not—they brought up a resolution to start the day at noon. They lost fourteen to six with four abstentions. Then the members voted for the universal day to commence at midnight. This resolution was adopted by fifteen ayes, two nays (Austria-Hungary and Spain), and seven abstentions (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, San Domingo, Sweden, and Switzerland). Rustem Effendi, the delegate for Turkey, had a reservation. His country would follow two times, he said: the international midnight-to-midnight, and sunset-to-sunset, for the purpose of Moslem prayers. The Conference did not object. The representative for Salvador was not present. Again, most Europeans did not support the resolution. They were locked to the idee fixe of noon-to-noon days, and some were dreaming of decimalization. Just imagine dividing the day into twenty or twenty-five hours, with each hour comprising 100 minutes. The story did not end there. Most astronomers objected to the idea, and in the following year the Astronomical Congress in Geneva condemned and rejected the Washington resolution. It took navigators until the 1917 Anglo-French Conference on Time Keeping at Sea to start their day at midnight, and a few more years for the grudging astronomers to fall into line. The British Nautical Almanac began its day on midnight in 1925, and it was soon followed by other nations' almanacs.

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Resolution VI That the Conference expresses the hope that as soon as may be practicable the astronomical and nautical days will be arranged everywhere to begin at mean midnight. This resolution was in fact a continuation of the previous one, and after the long debate on Resolution V everyone was tired of the issue. It was therefore carried unanimously, but it took thirty-five years for all members to implement.

Resolution VII That the Conference expresses the hope that the technical studies designed to regulate and extend the application of the decimal system to the division of angular space and of time shall be resumed, so as to permit the extension of this application to all cases in which it presents real advantages. This resolution was adopted by twenty-one ayes and three abstentions (Germany, Sweden, and Guatemala). The representative for Salvador was again not present. Was he suffering from an acute prostate problem, or was he just bored with the proceedings? Why didn't Germany and Sweden support the resolution to enhance decimalization? Were the baron and the count so disenchanted that they gave up hope for that altogether? We do not know. Mr. C. R. P. Rodgers, the president of the conference, signed the Final Act and dated it October 22, 1884. The three secretaries added their signatures at the bottom of the document. It was half-past three on a Wednesday afternoon. The delegates had enough time to retire to their hotel rooms before meeting again for the happy hour. They'd worked very hard and had resolved a 2000-year-old international conflict. They deserved a few drinks. Most country delegates to the Meridian Conference experienced no problems switching over immediately to the Greenwich Meridian. Indeed, they had already awarded Greenwich de facto recognition for some time. France, however, took the demise of the Paris Observatory meridian very hard. It was a big blow to Gallic pride, and it unleashed a storm of national rage. Marianne felt as if she had been raped. (Marianne is the symbol of the republic of France.) Compliance with the imposed agreement, which gave primacy to perfidious Albion, that hated neighbor to the north, was too hard to

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swallow. It took France fully thirty years to implement those resolutions, thirty years in which it kept ignoring the 1884 Washington meridian agreement. 7 The French senate finally voted to recognize the meridian of Greenwich as the prime meridian only on March 9, 1911. The parliament took two years to ratify that vote and make it law. The Geographical Service of the Army commenced using the Greenwich meridian in 1909. The nautical services were in no hurry, and they began the transformation to Greenwich only in 1914. In spite of all that, France refused to surrender The millennium gave the French another opportunity to stake their impudent and pathetic claim to their prime meridian. In the year 2000 they planted La Meridienne Vert (the Green Meridian), a 600-mile line of trees, extending from Dunkirk in the north, all the way to the Spanish border in the south. In Paris, La Meridienne Vert traverses the Senate Gardens, also known as the Luxembourg Gardens. The line goes through hundreds of French villages and towns. Meridian celebrations commenced on June 22, 1999, "the longest day of the year preceding the millennium," 8 with special festivities performed by 2000 children. On Bastille Day (July 14th) 2000, hundreds of thousands of French citizens participated in the incroyable pique nique9 (incredible picnic) that took place all along the meridian. Special celebrations were orchestrated where it crosses the 45th parallel. France, and President Jacques Chirac, in particular, were elated. The prime meridian of Paris is alive and well in the French psyche, as we shall see in the next chapter. Any educated Frenchman will tell you that Greenwich is just a line, west of Paris. The very educated will add that it is 2° 20' 14.025" away.

CHAPTER 7

1984 Beats 1884—GPS All our publications are based on the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS 84). WGS 84 is what GPS uses. . . . We can therefore consider the zero longitude meridian of WGS 84 to be different from the old Greenwich observatory meridian by about 100 meters. John Bangert, Head ofAstronomical Applications Dept., U.S. Naval Observatory, Washington, DC (in an e-mail message to the authors, 2003)

Universal consensus—by navigators, in particular—that Airy's was the final prime meridian was shattered with the advent of GPS, the Global Positioning System. GPS is the ultimate position fixing system, conceived, launched, maintained, and paid for—to the extent of hundreds of millions of dollars—by generous Uncle Sam. The irony is that terrorists, killing and maiming GIs and U.S. citizens, also use GPS on their missions. GPS is a highly accurate electronic navigation system based on twenty-four orbiting satellites available to anybody, anytime, in any weather. When early satellite navigation first came on the civilian market in the late 1960s, based on a different concept and marketed under the brand name SatNav, its receivers were the size and weight of 21-inch television sets, and they cost thousands of dollars each. Only rich ship owners could then afford such luxury. 1 Today GPS receivers are the size of mobile phones, and they cost under $150. Originally incorporated

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Figure 7.1 GPS satellite system. Navigation is no longer science or art Source: Image courtesy ofFAA.

only into the navigation systems of cruise missiles and the like, GPS receivers have now become standard equipment for military and police patrols, car navigation, hikers, yachtsmen, and even Boy Scouts. GPS is funded and operated by the United States Department of Defense. As the need arises, the DoD can—and, in extreme situations, most probably will—selectively block access to the system. At the moment, however, GPS policy is guided by President Clinton's order of May 1, 2000, saying: The decision to discontinue Selective Availability is the latest measure in an ongoing effort to make GPS more responsive to civil and commercial users worldwide. . . . This increase in accuracy will allow new GPS applications to emerge and continue to enhance the lives of people around the world. That dual-use system is providing the world with highly accurate positioning and timing data, which produce tangible benefits to the millions of individuals and businesses around the world that use GPS.

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The European Union, which like the rest of the world is a free rider on GPS, does not like that U.S. control. It has therefore lined up a host of arguments to justify the huge outlay for setting up and operating its own new system—dubbed Galileo. One such pretext was "with tough times that are starting, you don't know that there will be no terrorist attacks against the GPS. It's more reliable to have two systems." 2 This pundit, of course, ignores the fact that the marginal effort to knock down a second GPS system is infinitesimal. President Jacques Chirac of France told the International Herald Fribune in December 2001 that if Europe did not pursue Galileo and other space projects, the failure "would lead inevitably to a vassal status, first scientific and technical and then industrial and economic." Europe is now building Galileo, which is contemplated to be fully operational in 2008. The development and deployment stages will cost the European taxpayer more than four billion U.S. dollars. That seems to be small beer to leaders of the community that faces a default on Saddam Hussein's debts and has to integrate the ten Eastern European nations it embraced into its bosom in 2004. One can only hope and pray that another Concorde is not in the offing. The GPS datum is based on the World Geodetic System 1984WGS 84, 3 a global coordinate system designed for position fixing anywhere in the world. It is the most widely used global coordinate system. 4 Unfortunately, continental drift—or plate tectonics, as it is also known— precludes the usage of one highly accurate coordinate system for the whole world. WGS 84 is periodically updated to keep track of continental drift. The most recent version is officially known as WGS 84 (G1150), and it is closely related to the International Terrestrial Reference System 2000 (ITRS2000) as it was on January 1, 2001 (known as epoch 2001.0). The ITRS is the most accurate global coordinate system, and this is why WGS 84 is now aligned to it. The ITRS is managed by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (see next chapter), and it is updated and improved periodically. In reality there are no fixed points on earth, as the continents constantly drift apart, some at the rate of 5 inches per year. GPS can therefore have two distinct applications: a global, real time, absolute position one for navigation purposes, and a continental-based precise version based on more accurate realizations of WGS 84 such as ITRS2000 and relative positioning, used for post processed geoscientific purposes. According to U.S. Air Force's sources, typical horizontal position accuracy for the former is 30 to 60 feet, although

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FAA's experience proved it to be less than 5 feet. The accuracy of the latter is reported to be less than one fifth of an inch. The European standard for precise GPS is the European Terrestrial Reference System 1989 (ETRS89) and is of course tied to the European continent. It is moving away from the current WGS 84 coordinate system in an east-north-easterly direction at the annual rate of about one inch. In 2002, the difference between ETRS89 coordinates of a point and WGS 84 coordinates of the same point was about 12 inches.^ The navigator community ignores plate tectonics and is quite happy to consider WGS 84 as stationary and so it is for navigational purposes. GPS is not based on Airy's prime meridian. It uses WGS84's zero meridian that lies 336 feet (102.41 meters) 6 east of Airy's. This became the de facto prime meridian for the world. The lines marked on the wall of Flamsteed House and on its pavement are tourist attractions and have no significance to navigation. The accuracy of GPS readings depends on setting the GPS receiver to the correct datum 7 for the area of operation. By default, GPS uses the WGS 84 grid, but most modern receivers come with a menu of local datums to suit the user. Before starting to collect data with the receiver, the observer should select the datum that is compatible with the map or chart he or she is using. The receiver will spit out automatically and immediately the correct position. In case the local datum is not available in the menu, there is a way to collect the data in terms of WGS 84 and later on correct it to the relevant datum. Air navigation relies on GPS more than marine navigation. On January 1, 1998, WGS 84—and its prime meridian—became the global standard for air navigation. The International Hydrographic Organization has since recommended that all nautical charts use the WGS 84 meridian, in order to reflect the growing use of GPS by navigators at sea. That would be quite a task. Take the British Admiralty charts, for example. First, as strange as it may sound, not all Admiralty charts are based on Airy's meridian, despite its establishment as the prime meridian in 1884. The prime meridian used for each individual chart depends on its horizontal datum. Complicated? It sure is! So let us stop right here. At present, Admiralty charts are nearly equally divided into three groups: One third refers to a WGS 84 compatible datum, one third refers to local datums that have a known relationship to WGS 84, and one third does not refer to any known datum. The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO), publisher of the Admiralty charts, has for some time

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been converting U.K. territorial waters charts to the ETRS89 datum. This process is due for completion in 2007. By then, all British Isles charts will refer to a WGS 84 compatible datum since the difference between WGS 84 and ETRS89 is negligible for marine navigation. What about other waters? Well, time will tell. Meanwhile every Admiralty chart has on it a printed Satellite-Derived Positions note, instructing the observer how to make GPS readings compatible with that particular chart, by adding or subtracting certain values to latitude and longitude. Two separate official bodies publish nautical charts in the United States. The National Geodetic Survey (NGS), an arm of the Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is responsible for surveying, producing and maintaining the nautical charts that cover US coastal waters, while the US Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) looks after all charting operations in the rest of the world. Virtually, the entire suite of 1,000 nautical charts is referenced to North American Datum NAD83, which is not based on the 1884 Greenwich meridian and for all intents and purposes is the same as WGS 84, from which it differs only negligibly. What does the future hold for topographic maps? Will they be more faithful to Greenwich? Well, the NGS, which also defines and manages US national coordinate system, advises that modern US topographic maps are based on the NAD83 datum as well. This makes them—and the nautical charts above mentioned—14 inches off WGS 84 at the latitude of equator. This discrepancy shrinks to 10.75 inches at the latitude of New York City, because of the convergency of the meridians. US topographic maps are therefore compatible with most commercial GPS units sold for use in North America. Domestic GPS units in civilian use usually have settings for the datum and coordinate system used in all US topographic maps. Ordnance Survey, Great Britain's national mapping agency, established in 1791, based its original triangulation of Great Britain and Ireland—known as the "Principal Triangulation"—on Bradley's meridian. The datum of the Principal Triangulation, that is the longitude of Bradley's transit instrument after it was relocated in 1749, was in force until the middle of the twentieth century. In 1936 the mapping datum of Great Britain was redefined and became known as OSGB36. It was followed by the Retriangulation campaign, which was brought to a halt during World War II. In 1949, new observations were taken and a problem was discovered.

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The computed location of Ordnance Survey's prime meridian was 0.417 seconds of arc (26.39 feet) west of Airy's line. Considering the fact that Airy moved his transit instrument only 19 feet eastward, it meant that Ordnance Survey's computed meridian was about 7 feet 5 inches west ofBradley's. Consequently, Britain's coordinate system's meridian no longer coincided with the prime meridian defined by Bradley's transit instrument. What a faux pas! To add insult to injury, another complication was added to the fact that Bradley's was not really Bradley's. The position of the Bradley Line was destroyed on the ground before the Retriangulation was completed! We now do not know for sure the coordinates of that meridian. All we know is that Airy moved the line eastward "about 19 feet," and hence we put Bradley's 19 feet to the west of Airy's. The latter, to remind you, was the prime meridian agreed upon in Washington, 1884. In 2002 Britain was integrated into Europe in another respect— OSGB36 was redefined by linking it to ETRS89. This, however, did not significantly change the position of the OSGB36 prime meridian, since it is considered to coincide with the previous OSGB36 prime meridian (26.39 feet west of Airy) to within 4 inches. All's well that ends well. And France? The French had to swallow their pride and follow suit. First they aligned themselves with Airy, although, with a small difference. To express their virtual independence, they use an interesting facesaver: Their topographic maps (IGNS cartes regionales) carry two scales of longitude. 9 One is based on Greenwich, using the common sexagesimal division, whereby the equator is divided into 360 degrees and each degree into 60 minutes. The other longitude scale—known only in France—is based on the Paris Observatory and the decimal division of the equator into 400 grades. In recent years, France's maps have been brought to conform to ETRS89 and modern GPS-compatible datums, in line with those of other European countries. Like air navigators, mariners are now adopting the prime meridian of WGS 84 for all navigational purposes. That line is not only the reference line for electronic navigation (GPS, LORAN), but also for celestial navigation. It became the reference line for all navigational publications, for ephemeris, and for global time. All ship chronometers now keep UTC for that line. 10 Navigation and astronomy have shied away from the Greenwich Observatory and Airy's meridian. Both have served a purpose that is required no more. The brass strips11 have no significance whatsoever. They are only a tourist attraction, a memento for the good old days when Britannia ruled the waves.

CHAPTER 8

Time and Tide Wait for No Man, Especially at Greenwich But time always stands still for a woman of 30. Robert Frost, American poet (1874-1963)

Man has been interested in time, to various degrees, since time immemorial. In early days people were in no great hurry, as they are today. The slow-paced ancient world never heard of Benjamin Franklin's maxim, time is money. The architects of the pyramids would have laughed hearing that. They had all the time in the world, and time was cheap, as were the lives of their laborers, who perished by the thousands. Man's early interest was in the seasons, not in minutes or seconds. Three thousand years ago said the Preacher: "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven" (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Indeed, man had to prepare for the flooding Nile, for planting crops along the fertile banks of the Euphrates, and for pickling his olives on the hills of the Peloponnesus. Man's clock—and calendar—was the sun that indicated the time of day and the seasons. His first timekeepers were shadow sticks and sundials. The earliest shadow stick was found in Egypt, and it has been dated to the fifteenth century B.C.1 Man has come a long way since—to atomic clocks. Time is not only a duration, but it is also a particular instant in that duration, as expressed by the statement the time now is ten minutes past five A.M. Its two major units—the year and the day—are the product of

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astronomical phenomena, and they have been known to man since his first day on earth. A year is the time it takes the sun to complete its apparent revolution around the ecliptic. A day is the time taken by planet earth to complete one revolution about its own axis. The scientific definition of a day is the interval that elapses between two successive transits of a heavenly body across the same meridian. This innocent and seemingly straightforward definition is a setup. The heavenly body can be a star, and then the day in question will be a sidereal day, of which there are 366 and a bit in a year, all of variable length, in consequence of Bradley's nutation. If the heavenly body is the sun, then the day in question will be an apparent solar day, of which there are 365 and a bit in a year, all of no fixed length, because the earth does not move along its orbit around the sun at a constant speed. Earth's speed fluctuates a few thousandths of a second per day. Sound inconsequential? Well, for you and me—yes, but not for science, nor for those responsible for slipping a cruise missile down the air vent of an enemy's bunker, one thousand miles away. To make things less cumbersome, another complication was concocted—the imaginary mean sun, which moves at a uniform speed around the earth, along the celestial equator. The interval between two successive transits of the mean sun across the same meridian is called a mean solar day, which is arbitrarily divided into hours, minutes, and seconds, as we know them. Nowadays our clocks and watches show mean solar time ("mean time" for short) that is the basis for standard times and zone times all over the world. Things were not always like that. Until the mid-1800s there was no uniform time at all. Every country, sometimes every city, set its clocks to 12:00 at noon and proceeded from that. Surprisingly there was no confusion because just a few people traveled beyond the bounds of their community, and only the very rich carried watches. Who cared for the hardships of the rich, anyway? The commoners did not worry much about what time it was, and, when they did, they could always look at the Town Hall's clock—if they could read it. The need for taming time was born to the sound of locomotive whistles in the mid-nineteenth century. The London Times of October 2, 1884, quotes the story of an Irishman who came on business to Liverpool and who was half an hour late for an appointment. He exhibited his watch in evidence of his punctuality. When it was explained to him that he had Dublin local time, and that the sun rose half an hour later in Ire-

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land than in England, he bitterly protested against the arrangement as another injustice to his bleeding country. The railroads required national timetables based on a common time system, and Britain, the birthplace of the steam engine, 2 was first to oblige. The Royal Greenwich Observatory was chosen as the country's reference point of time measurement. That—according to some pundits—is where the expression Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT, originates. The situation of the U.S. railroad system was far worse. Many of the railway companies that sprang up after the Civil War kept their own time, and each town and city did the same. By the 1870s there were over eighty different time standards on the U.S. railroads, and more local times were kept by each individual station. Change came only in November 1883, when the U.S. and Canadian railways adopted the four-time-zone system of North America and incorporated them into their timetables. The second, as a unit of time, is equal to 1/86,400 of a mean solar day. It is adequate enough to handle all our day-to-day affairs, including the calculation of a ship's longitude to a satisfactory degree of accuracy. However, when it comes to genuine precision, scientists give it the thumbs down. Scientists need something more exact, and to their delight they discovered that atoms of all elements absorb and emit electromagnetic radiation, each at its own characteristic resonance frequency. In other words, atoms are potential pendulums that can form a basis for highly accurate timepieces. The first atomic clock was built in 1949. It was based on ammonia atoms, and it performed lousily. It was no better than existing standards. Soon cesium was substituted for ammonia and it provided excellent results. Today's cesium clocks are capable of keeping time to about 30 billionths of a second per year. Since 1967 the cesium atom's natural frequency has been recognized as the international unit of time. One second is the time it takes an atom of cesium to oscillate 9,192,631,770 times in a zero magnetic field. Luckily we do not have to count those oscillations, or to remember that figure. The unit of time, the second, is no more based on astronomical parameters, than the unit of length, the meter, is based on a geophysical parameter—the length of the meridian. The latter's basis, as we know, is the distance traveled by electromagnetic radiation, or light, through a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 second.

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Atomic clocks are excellent for clocking actual elapsed time—laboratory time, as it is called—but they do not quite follow the earth rotational time, labeled UT1. The problem is—and we now suggest the readers sit down, lest they lose their equilibrium—that planet earth is constantly decelerating because of the braking action of the tides. The average deceleration amounts to 1.4 milliseconds per day per century. This deceleration is causing the earth's rotational time to slow with respect to the time of atomic clocks. It may come as another shocking surprise, but the last time a mean solar day was exactly 86,400 seconds was in 1820! Since then the situation has deteriorated considerably, and at the time of writing, the mean solar day is equal to 86,400.002 seconds. The length of the mean solar day has increased by about 2 milliseconds—two thousandths of a second! Woe for the calamity! Now, how can we carry on living in such a precarious situation? To our great fortune this peril was overcome on January 1, 1972, with the introduction of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). 3 UTC is the time for civil usage, the time we live by. It runs at the rate of cesium-beam atomic clocks, and it is not directly related to the rotation of the earth. It is promulgated to the world by special radio stations that broadcast time signals, and it can also be obtained readily from GPS satellites. UTC and UT1 (earth rotational time) are continuously monitored by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), which—even if it sounds like that—does not really rotate the planet. By international agreement, UTC is not permitted to differ from UT1 by more than 0.9 second. When it appears that the difference between the two kinds of time is approaching that limit, the IERS orders a onesecond change to be inserted into UTC, in order to maintain the synchronization between arbitrary time and the earth's rotation about its axis and around the sun. This occurs on the last second of June 30, or December 31, normally once every 12 to 18 months, depending on the evolution of the difference between earth rotational time (UT1) and international atomic time (TAI), and that second is called a leap second. In the 33 years since the introduction of UTC in 1972, 22 leap seconds have been introduced, and all have been positive. The pattern reflects the slowing trend of the earth caused by tidal braking and by climatic and other reasons. In 2005, International Atomic Time (TAI), that is, the combined mean of several national atomic clocks, was 32 seconds

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ahead of UTC, and it has been that way since January 1, 1999. The twenty-third leap second will be introduced on December 31, 2005. A glimpse of hope and faith for our anxious readers: earth will not stop rotating in the foreseeable future, not even in thousands of years. The leap second is not a measure of the rate of slowing down, but a measure of the accumulated difference in time between the two systems. Just imagine we have two clocks; one is planet earth, which slows down, and another is a precise atomic clock. Instead of setting the clock that is running slow, we prefer to set the atomic one. That is the only way to go about it, because we cannot change the rotation speed of earth to match the atomic clock. Rest your mind! Disaster is not about to strike. During the 185 years since 1820, the length of day has increased by only two thousandths of a second. You may finish your beer peacefully and perhaps even head to the fridge for another one. The principal author cannot refrain from making two personal observations about the issue of time. In the early 1950s, I was a nineteen-yearold Third Officer in the Merchant Marine. One of the duties of the Third Officer is to wind the ship's mechanical chronometer daily at 08:00 local time, to which I attended with diligence and with a deep sense of responsibility. The chronometer was a beautiful, brass-encased timepiece, mounted in gimbals and fitted in a velvet-lined, polished mahogany box. It cost then over $ 1000, and it had excellent accuracy, gaining only two seconds per day. Fifty years later, Chinese-made wristwatches, accurate to two seconds per week, were selling on the streets of Hong Kong for two dollars apiece! Another duty of a Third Officer was to verify daily the accuracy of the chronometer by comparing it with radio-transmitted time signals. The results were carefully noted in the Chronometer Rate Book. Once while at anchor in the River Thames off Greenwich, I had the opportunity to check the chronometer the way navigating officers had since 1833, before the advent of radio. There was (and still is) a mast there, on top of the Royal Observatory's Flamsteed House, with a big red-orange ball called the time ballon it. Each day at 12:55 local time, the time ball rose halfway up the mast. Three minutes later it rose all the way to the top. At exactly 13 hours 00 minutes 00 seconds, the ball fell down to the cheers of onlookers. I pressed my stopwatch and ran to the chartroom to read the chronometer. I was told that the ceremony took place at 13:00 because, traditionally, the astronomers—who were no longer there—

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had been busy at 12:00 observing, or preparing for, the sun's meridian passage. Lowering time balls was popular in the nineteenth century, in a world without radio. They were dropped from St. Helena 4 (since 1834) to Washington, D.C. (1845), and from Cincinnati (1874) to Lyttelton, New Zealand (1876). Nearly all have been discontinued. Some cities—including Washington, D.C.—reintroduced the ceremony for the millennium, but Greenwich has never missed a day! Other cities used to herald the correct time by firing a time gun. Some famous ones were Hong Kong (since 1842), Paris (1846), and Dundee (1872). All those guns—save the one in Hong Kong—fell silent long ago. Jardines Trading Company has operated the Hong Kong Noonday Gun since 1844. It is located on the first plot of land ever sold by public auction in Hong Kong. Jardines purchased it in 1841 and in 1844 moved its headquarters there from Macau. Originally, the gun used to salute the head of Jardines, known as the Taipan, whenever he arrived in or left Hong Kong. This practice faded away over the years, and for a long time now the gun has been used only to signal time.

Figure 8.1 Hong Kong Noonday Gun. The last remnant of British colonial tradition in Hong Kong. Source: Reprinted with the permission ofMr. Michael D. Scott.

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The practice was stopped when Hong Kong fell to the Japanese in December 1941. The original cannon disappeared, but firing was renewed in August 1947 with a replacement six-pound gun donated by the Royal Navy. In 1961, after many Hong Kong residents complained that the six-pounder was too noisy, the Marine Police provided the present weapon—a Hotchkiss Mark 1 three-pound, quick-firing naval piece. Situated at East Point, the gun is still fired daily by Jardines' gunner, to the sound of eight bells, signaling the end of the forenoon watch. That's what one calls tradition! One addition to this old tradition is that since 1946 the gun has also been used to welcome in the New Year at midnight on December 31. Visual and acoustic time signals are obsolete now. Time was more colorful and more abundant in the old days! Greenwich seems to run on inertia and tradition. Knowing the British, it is highly likely the Greenwich time ball will remain there forever, just like the monarchy, the Loch Ness Monster, and Stonehenge. We spoke of different times, GMT, UTC, UT1 and TAI, all important scientific terms, but what about the time that affects us more than all, the one we cannot wait for every year—daylight saving time? How did that come about? Well, Benjamin Franklin first suggested daylight saving time (DST), or "summer time," in a whimsical essay in 1784. The Englishman William Willet started a campaign for DST in 1907, but the British parliament and the press ridiculed the idea. Ironically, it was adopted as a measure of wartime economy by Germany and Austria—Great Britain's enemies—on April 30, 1916, in the midst of World War I. Other European countries followed immediately, but it took Britain three more weeks to implement its own creation. Later during World War II, Britain moved the clock forward one hour during winter and two hours forward during the summer, for "double summer time." The U.S. Congress enacted its Act to preserve daylight and provide standard time for the United States on March 19, 1918. Daylight saving time was kept by the nation until the end of World War I and was instituted again during World War II. After that the government of each state did what it wanted, depending upon the level of internal pressure by farmers, broadcasters, and other interest groups. This free-for-all policy brought about such an absurdity that on the 35mile stretch of Route 2 between Moundsville, West Virginia, and

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Steubenville, Ohio, every driver and passenger had to endure seven time changes. The administration stepped in again in 1966. A new law was made, amended, and re-amended. In 1986 the U.S. Congress passed legislation that mandated daylight saving time in the United States to begin at 2 A.M. on the first Sunday of April every year, and end at 2 A.M. on the last Sunday of October every year. On August 8, 2005, The U.S. president signed a bill that will start daylight saving time three weeks earlier in the spring, on the second Sunday in March, and continue it a week longer in the fall to the first Sunday in Novermber. This legislation will go into effect in 2007. Europe—and especially the EU—must be different, of course. Their daylight saving time begins at 1 A.M. on the last Sunday of March, and ends at 1 A.M. on the last Sunday of October. God bless the Europeans. Time, the prime meridian, and Airy's were first officially brought together at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, D . C , in October 1884. The terms of reference for the delegates read, inter alia, ". . . discussing, and, if possible fixing upon a meridian proper to be employed as a common zero of longitude and standard of time reckoning throughout the whole world." King Charles II had spelled out in 1675 one of the main purposes of establishing the Greenwich Observatory "as to find the so much desired longitude of places for the perfecting the art of navigation and astronomy." The story of the Greenwich Observatory had come full circle, and beyond. It contributed to navigation and astronomy and became the datum meridian for measuring longitude 0 and time. The zero line for navigation and time is now 336 feet east of Airy's line, and 397 feet 5 inches east of Flamsteed's. The Greenwich Observatory is meaningless for modern navigation, just as the quadrant of the meridian is meaningless for the length of the meter. Only time will tell whether the prime meridian has come to its final resting place. Its old home, that world-famous edifice and institution, did it adapt to the winds of change? Well, after serving as Great Britain's leading establishment for research of the heavens and as the prime promoter of navigation at sea for 250 years, the decline of the Greenwich Observatory was swift and irreversible. It was originally built on a hill in a park outside London, but creeping urban expansion closed the town in on it. London's growth started slowly, but accelerated fast.

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The Southern Railway suburban system was electrified in 1923, and the electromagnetic fields it produced forced the observatory to transfer its magnetic observations to a new site at Abinger in Surrey. That was only the beginning. In 1939 deteriorating astronomical conditions— bright streetlights, fog, smog, deposition of dust particles on mirrors and pivots—forced Harold Spencer Jones (1890-1960), the tenth Astronomer Royal, to recommend that a new site altogether be found for the observatory. Then World War II broke out. The objective lenses of the larger telescopes were dismounted and sent away for safekeeping; some departments closed down for the duration of the war, never to return to Greenwich, while others continued to function elsewhere. Only the Solar, Astrometric, and Metrological Departments remained at Greenwich. In October 1940, the Luftwaffe destroyed the main gates and caused considerable damage to the coverings of the domes, the Altazimuth Pavilion, and the small transit instrument mounted in it. On July 15, 1944—five days before the attempted assassination of Hitler—a V-l flying bomb landed nearby and caused widespread superficial damage. A future best possible site for the observatory was considered during the war years, and in 1945 the Board of Visitors—after consultations with the Admiralty—unanimously recommended Herstmonceux Castle in Sussex, where "conditions for astronomical observations appeared to be as good as could be obtained in England." The Visitors' report concluded: "Herstmonceux Castle, built in 1446 by Sir Roger de Fiennes, Treasurer to the Household of [King] Henry the Sixth, is probably the most beautiful early brick building in the country and will provide a dignified future home for the Royal Observatory, appropriate to its history and tradition." The move to Herstmonceux began in 1948, and it took almost 10 years to complete. Royal assent changed the name of the institution from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, to the Royal Greenwich Observatory, Herstmonceux. In 1957 it seemed that the saga of the move was finally over when the archive of glass photographic plates—over 30,000 in number—was removed from the old building. Not a single plate was damaged in the process. However, in the early 1970s a bigger move was contemplated, and effected, for the major observing activities. It was to the Canary Islands, the original home of the prime meridian, where the cleaner air provides significantly better viewing opportunities, and where there are few nights where clouds obscure the view. The 98-inch Sir Isaac Newton

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reflector telescope was mounted on the top of one of the peaks of the Canary Island of Palma. 6 Scientific and administrative activities of the Royal Greenwich Observatory were moved in 1988 to a new building in Cambridge named—you guessed it—the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO). Since 1951 the old buildings at Greenwich Park have been progressively handed over to the National Maritime Museum "to be used as astronomical and navigational annexes." The architects swarmed the place in no time. Insignificant structures were demolished, others were reconstructed, and in May 1953 His Royal Highness Prince Philip opened the Octagon Room to the public. Halley's transit instrument, Bradley's zenith sector, and Airy's transit circle were mounted and restored to their original glory. Additional renovations and restorations followed well into the 1980s, in the best of British conservation and tradition. This beautiful site is well worth a visit and even a photograph, straddling "both hemispheres" over the line that no longer separates them.

Figure 8.2 World standard time zones, 2005. Note the disregard of the Kiribati shenanigan. Source: Provided by HM Nautical Almanac Office. Copyright Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils.

PART

III

The International Date Line The eyes of the world will be on Greenwich as the clocks strike midnight on December 31, 1999. Where once there was a derelict land, people will see the most spectacular celebration anywhere in the world to mark the millennium. The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, at the launching of the Dome, February 24, 1998

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CHAPTER 9

The Paradox: Lost by Magellan, Found by Fogg How angry must God be with us for celebrating his holy days on the wrong days! Antonio Pigafetta, diary, Monday, September 8, 1522

On Saturday, September 6, 1522, according to the ship's log, a small battered vessel limped into the Spanish port of Sanlucar de Barrameda. The port was situated at the mouth of the great River Guadalquivir, the seaway to Seville, then the world's capital of shipping and navigation. She was an 85-tonner, about 70 feet long, with a 25-foot beam. Sharpeyed onlookers could hardly read her name, once painted on her stern in proud letters of gold. Victoria it was, but neither the rotting vessel nor her twenty-two shorthanded, sick, and starving crew looked victorious. All of them—eighteen Europeans and four Moluccans—were only one step away from death. The vessel's hold—kept dry only by nonstop, round-the-clock hand pumping—contained a real treasure: 77,000 pounds of Moluccan produce—cloves, cinnamon, nutmegs, and other spices. The sailors, led by their captain, Juan Sebastian Elcano, hobbled ashore and kissed the soil of their Spanish motherland. Some late churchgoers examined the gaunt and haggard men, amused and amazed. A middle-aged lady cried to her husband: iEstos marineros se estdn muriendo de hambre—"These seamen are dying of hunger!" Not

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waiting for his answer, she ran to the grocer's home across the road and knocked on the door. It was Sunday in Sanlucar de Barrameda, but the grocer and his wife knew the meaning of hunger aboard ship. Their seafaring son had told them all about it. They threw anything and everything into two large wicker baskets and boarded the Victoria in no time. The sick, exhausted, sailors could hardly eat. This was the first proper meal they had had in nearly nine months. They kissed the hands of the two angels who refused to be remunerated for their noble act and slowly retreated to church. Next day the crew ran the ship safely up the Guadalquivir, all the way to Seville, to a tumultuous welcome, greater than that given to Christopher Columbus in March 1493, upon his return from his first voyage to the New World. Three years earlier, a Spanish fleet of five ships and 265 men, 1 under the command of Portuguese Captain Fernao de Magalhaes (whom we call Ferdinand Magellan, and whom the Spaniards call Hernando de Magallanes) left Sanlucar de Barrameda on the greatest sea voyage ever—to find a westerly route to the Spice Islands. Magellan sustained each and every tribulation and peril a commander could ever undergo at sea—navigating without charts, disobedience, desertion, shipwrecks, scurvy, mutiny, fights, and finally death. He used his exceptional resolution, ruthlessness, and resourcefulness to control his crew and ships in very difficult situations. His toughest moment was facing a mutiny in Argentina's Port San Julian, for which he executed one of his captains and left another to die on the wind-swept desolate shores of Patagonia. Magellan was a seaman of outstanding experience and ability. He navigated the treacherous strait—that was later to bear his name—and safely reached the Pacific Ocean. One of his vessels, the Santiago, was wrecked; another, the San Antonio, deserted and was never seen again, but the remaining three ships traversed the Pacific for 99 days until they made a safe landfall at Guam in the Marianas. A poisonous arrow killed Magellan during a skirmish with natives on the Philippine Island of Mactan on April 27, 1521. Some of his crew and officers died with him, and more were injured. The incident was quite a fiasco for the already depleted crew. Elcano, by then the master of the Concepcion—and a pardoned veteran of the mutiny of Port San Julian— assumed command of the expedition, the remaining three ships, and 115 men. He transferred the remnant crew of the Concepcion to the Frinidad and the Victoria, shifted as many stores and provisions as was possible, torched the Concepcion, and set sail south.

The Paradox: Lost by Magellan, Found by Fogg Elcano brought the two ships safely to the Moluccas and bartered with the natives for spices. The vessels were not seaworthy for the voyage home, but nonetheless, both departed from the legendary Spice Islands on December 18, 1521. The Trinidad, which had been Magellan's flagship, leaked heavily and soon had to put back for repairs. She later proceeded east, toward the Isthmus of Panama, manned by fifty-three exhausted sailors under the command of the talented Captain Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa. The Pacific, the great ocean that was so peaceful on its first crossing—and thus earned its name from Magellan—was rough and nasty to the Trinidad. More than half the crew died during seven months of gales

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Figure 9.1

Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521). Was the first circumnavigation of the earth worth the sacrifice? Source: Painted 1581, published 1810. Library of Congress.

and disease. The surviving sailors were forced to return to the Moluccas, where the Portuguese—determined to keep the spice trade to themselves—put them in irons. Most died in custody; only Espinosa and three of his men were lucky enough to see their homes again, after years of suffering and agony. Elcano demonstrated his greatness as a seaman and commander of men in his decision to take his chance and sail home west, via the Cape of Good Hope. His major danger was falling into the hands of the Portuguese, Spain's bitter enemy at the time. 2 That risk seemed to him to be much smaller than the perils of crossing the Pacific again, which had been Magellan's original plan. 3 He took his crew on a voyage of hunger and exposure, away from land and major sea routes, but his gamble paid off. He crossed the Indian Ocean undetected, fought weeks of gale after gale before rounding the Cape, and made it into the Atlantic Ocean. The toll on the ship and crew was very heavy. The fore-topmast went by the board, the foreyard was badly sprung, and, worst of all, thirty-two wornout and sick sailors died before they reached the Cape of Good Hope.

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Figure 9.2 Ciskei postage stamp (issued May 19, 1993) showing Ferdinand Magellan, the Victoria, and the route of the first circumnavigation of the globe. Victoria crossed the equator, northbound, on the 8th ofJune 1522, fifty years after Santarem and Escobar discovered the island of Sao Tome, probably rounded it, and became the first European explorers to cross the equator southbound. 4 That was, perhaps, the greatest half-century of achievement for Europe and a prelude to suffering and disaster for the rest of the world. The crew was sick with scurvy and starving to the verge of death. Elcano had no choice but to stop for provisions at the Cape Verde Islands—a territory populated by the Portuguese enemy. He bluffed his way by telling the Portuguese that they were returning from an Atlantic voyage, and he managed to buy some food. The next day a boatload of thirteen men was sent ashore for rice. One of the seamen had pilfered some cloves from the ship's hold, tried to sell it ashore, and thus betrayed their secret. The thirteen were arrested at once. An armed boat called upon the Victoria to surrender, but Elcano quickly stretched every square inch of canvas he had and got away by the skin of his teeth.

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He was a worried man. According to his log they had anchored off Santiago on Wednesday, the 9th of July, but the locals had told him it was Thursday, the 10th. Had he gone out of his mind and messed up his calendar? Was it a bad omen? Eventually he dismissed those thoughts, deciding to stick to his own diary. Santiago was a small,

•

Figure 9-3 Antonio Pigafetta's south-up map of the Philippine Islands of Macatan (where Magellan was killed), Bohol, and Cebu. Source: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. By permission.

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faraway island, he thought, and the locals may have unwittingly erred. In any event, the issue of the date seemed pretty trivial compared with the ordeal that was still ahead of them, and the little food they had to face it with. Elcano embarked on his one final effort and brought his crawling ship and ailing men back home. It took him a further eight long and grueling weeks. It was a great welcome, but there was a fly in the ointment, shrouded by a mystery. The people at Santiago had been right after all. The ship had lost one full day. Elcano consulted Antonio Pigafetta (ca 1490-ca 1535), a native of Vicenza in northern Italy and a knight of Rhodes, who had sailed with Magellan in the Trinidad, and returned with Elcano aboard the Victoria. Pigafetta had kept a daily chronicle of the voyage. The date of arrival in his diary was also different by one day from the date in Spain. According to Pigafetta they arrived at Sanlucar de Barrameda on Saturday, September 6, but when they got there, church bells were ringing, and his sharp eyes noticed the people on the wharf were wearing their Sunday best. Pigafetta was a devoted Catholic, and the first thought that crossed his mind was how angry God must be with them for celebrating his holy days on the wrong days. Indeed, the next day, the entire crew, humbly dressed, barefoot and carrying lit candles, marched to the Church of Santa Maria de Antigua and begged forgiveness for their serious sin of celebrating all Sundays, holy days, and saints' days on the wrong day. Their minds did not rest until Signor Gaspari Contarini (1483-1542), the Venetian Ambassador to the Court of Emperor Carlos V, and a philosopher-cum-astronomer in his own right, explained to them that because of the rotation of the earth, a full day is lost on a westward passage around the world. Travelers on an eastward voyage would gain a day, he said. They did not quite understand that explanation, but nevertheless, it put their minds to rest. The authorities insisted on their own ruling and ordered an independent investigation of the issue by a committee comprising local astronomers, court officials, and Pigafetta himself. After a few weeks the committee delivered its findings that no day was actually lost. The verdict was a confirmation that circumnavigating the world always causes an apparent gain or loss of twenty-four hours. The news that the Victoria was back from the first rounding of the world, after logging over 42,000 nautical miles and proving the sphericity of the earth, spread like fire in a gunpowder magazine. Seville first,

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then the rest of Spain, and finally the whole Europe, held their breath. The cargo of spices was auctioned in the port of Antwerp, and it brought a fortune to the Spanish Crown. It paid for the cost of the five ships, their equipment, and the goods they had used for barter. It also left a big profit. Everybody onboard was handsomely rewarded. Elcano—the mutineer of Port San Julian—was showered with money and honors. Emperor Carlos V (King Carlos I of Spain) awarded him a life pension of 500 ducados per annum (that he never received, as we shall soon see) and a title of nobility with a coat of arms showing the globe flanked by branches of cloves and other spices, carrying the Latin motto Primus circumdedisti me—"First didst thou sail around me.". 5 There was no reward for the families of the dead and the missing. They were all forgotten. Spanish historians have since dwarfed the "foreign" Magellan and—what a bitter irony—glorified his mutinous enemy. Magellan's widow suffered a tragedy of her own. Beatriz Barbosa, the daughter of an important official in Seville, had married Magellan in 1517, and, six months before his departure on that epic voyage had born him their only son, Rodrigo. The baby died shortly after his father sailed into the unknown, and Dona Beatriz joined him and her husband as soon as she heard about the fate of her beloved and brave captain. Elcano could not stay ashore for too long. Eager to return to the Pacific, he asked for, and was given, command of the La Coruna that was headed for the Moluccas, together with four other ships, on an expedition under the command of Captain Garcia Jofre de Loaisa. They weighed anchor on August 24, 1525, and before Christmas that year Elcano had wrecked his ship in the Strait of Magellan. His previous voyage was apparently no insurance policy for a safe passage through those treacherous southern waters. Exhausted and sick with scurvy and probably pneumonia, he was transferred to the flagship San Lesmes and entered the Pacific Ocean together with Captain de Loaisa, who died shortly afterward. Elcano assumed command of the expedition, but he was too sick and weak to issue even one single clear order. He died four days after Loaisa, a monument to the spirit of those men who were ready to risk and bear any personal cost in order reach plus ultra—more beyond! 6 The first circumnavigation of the world by an Englishman was performed by none other than Sir Francis Drake, a bitter enemy of Spain, and the worst ever adversary of Iberian shipping and foreign trade. An adventurer, corsair, and finally an admiral and a knight of the realm,

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Drake forged British naval tradition. His patron—Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen—used to refer to him as My Dear Pyrate. Well experienced in sea skirmishes and battles that he described as "singeing the King of Spain's beard," he—more than any other person—was responsible for the victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588.7 Sailor folklore has it that when word reached Plymouth that the Armada was already in the English Channel, Drake and his commanders were playing bowls on the Hoe. Drake did not stop the game: "There's time for that and to beat the Spaniards after," he said. 8 He finished his game, boarded his flagship Revenge, and put to sea to capture the Rosario galleon. That was the beginning; the rest is history. Drake set sail from Plymouth on December 13, 1577, in command of the 100-ton Pelican and two other ships, accompanied by two small supply vessels, which he planned to abandon later. The captains of the other two bigger ships were William Wynter, and the queen's courtesan and Drake's personal friend Thomas Doughty, whose brother John was there as well. Sir Francis's overt mission was to establish trading bases in the

Figure 9.4 Ciskei postage stamp (issued May 19, 1993) showing Sir Francis Drake, the Golden Hind, and the route of the first circumnavigation of the globe by an English ship.

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Spice Islands and in the legendary Terra Australis—yet to be discovered. He had a secret agenda as well—supported by the Queen—to raid the major ports of the Spanish west coast of South America, and also to search for the western exit of the Northwest Passage. His total complement numbered about 160 men, a mixed crew of experienced seamen and gentlemen of the court who had attached themselves to the expedition as representatives of the Royal syndicate. Drake revealed, in confidence, the true nature of the voyage only to Thomas Doughty, but Doughty betrayed the secret to Lord Burleigh, the then Lord Treasurer of England. Burleigh was aghast at the effect of such a voyage on English relations with Spain, already exacerbated by Drake's previous voyages. He did all in his power to prevent the expedition from taking place, and he apparently persuaded Doughty to disrupt it, should Drake succeed in getting away. That sealed Doughty's fate. Loyalty to a faraway minister of the crown could not save him from the fatal consequences of betraying an immediate, iron-fisted commander. Doughty convinced the exhausted crew to revolt against their captain. Drake's reaction was swift and ruthless. Upon arrival at Port San Julian, he convened a jury of 40 men and pressed charges of treason and conjuring against Doughty, while he himself acted as judge and prosecutor. All 40 men voted guilty and Doughty was summarily beheaded. 9 The incident took place at the very same site where Magellan had hanged one of his captains 58 years before. The gibbet upon which he had been hanged was still to be seen. Shortly afterward Drake's flotilla—now reduced to three vessels—proceeded for the Strait of Magellan. Before entering that gateway to the unknown, Drake orchestrated an unusual ceremony to galvanize the esprit de corps of his anxious crews. He ordered all ships to strike their topsails in an act of homage to the Queen, "in token of dutiful obedience to Her Highness" and in recognition of her personal stake in the voyage. He used that opportunity to also change the name of his ship from the Pelican to Golden Hind, in honor of his friend and sponsor Sir Christopher Hatten, who had a golden hind 10 adorning his coat of arms. Drake's talented nephew John embellished the ship's stern and superstructure with Hatton's livery colors—red and yellow—the ship's carpenter replaced the pelican figurehead with one of a hind, and the ships entered the narrows. It had taken Magellan thirty-seven days to negotiate the strait. Drake did it in sixteen, but when they reached the Pacific Ocean, the ships were

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Figure 9.5 Fanciful view of Drake's Bay with Drake's vessel, the Golden Hind, at anchor. Source: The Annals of San Francisco, ^y .Frarc/; Soule,John Gihon, and James Nesbit, 1855. The Treasures of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Central Library.

driven south by a violent storm. The Golden Hind was blown to latitude 57°, which enabled Drake to prove that Tierra del Fuego was indeed an island and not part of the elusive great southern continent of Terra Australis Incognita. The storm separated Drake from his only remaining consort, the Elizabeth, commanded by William Wynter. The latter decided to return home when he could find no trace of Drake and his ship. The Golden Hind was alone. Drake navigated her up the west coast of the Americas, according to some accounts, all the way from the freezing waters of the strait that now bears his name to just a few miles south of present-day Cape Flattery on the Washington coast.11 On his course he sacked Chilean and Peruvian towns and plundered Spanish vessels, notably the treasure galleon Cacafuego, which he captured off Ecuador. 12 Bad weather forced him back south, and he landed somewhere in today's San Francisco area, which he named New Albion.

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According to the journal kept by Francis Fletcher, the ship's chaplain, Drake claimed California on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I, and "caused a brass plaque to be made and erected on a wooden post as a token of his discovery and conquest. A small hole chiseled in the plaque accommodated a silver sixpence bearing the Queen's portrait." 13 He then set course across the Pacific to the Moluccas, where he loaded six tons of cloves and other spices. Most of the cargo was jettisoned after the ship grounded on a reef, but that did not have an adverse impact on the voyage's balance sheet. Drake returned to Plymouth on September 26, 1580, after sailing for two years and ten months. It was "the Lord's day of Sunday" according to the logbook of the Golden Hind, while at Plymouth it was Monday. Drake did not worry much about it. His thoughts were with the mindboggling profit of the voyage—over half a million Elizabethan pounds, the fruit of sheer piracy. Most of the loot went to the Queen—who hurried to Deptford, to knight her pirate aboard his ship—but Drake and his crew were not denied their share. Drake used the funds to purchase Buckland Abbey in South Devon, which became the home of his descendants and now contains a Drake museum. In 1596—while aboard his ship, off Porto Bello in the Caribbean—he died of dysentery. He was fifty-six years old. Spain was elated. The loss or gain of one day while sailing westward or eastward, respectively, was repeated with every circumnavigation of the earth. Indeed, philosophers and astronomers had debated this phenomenon since the thirteenth century.14 Ambassador Contarini explained that at the time: "Imagine two ships, one Spanish and one Portuguese, departing from Cape Verde Islands at the same time for circumnavigation voyages. They depart stern-to-stern; the Spanish ship proceeds westwards and the Portuguese ship sails eastwards. The Spanish ship follows the sun and has every day longer than 24 hours by the distance she covers during that period. In a complete rounding of the earth, the longer days will make this ship save one day. The Portuguese ship sails into the sun and has every day shorter than 24 hours by the distance she covers during that period. In a complete rounding of the earth, the shorter days will make this ship spend at sea one more day. Now imagine both ships return back to their port of departure at exactly the same date and time. If that day would be Thursday at the port, it would be Wednesday aboard the Spanish ship, where that whole day was distributed into slightly longer days. Aboard the Portuguese ship, the daily shortening

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of days would add up to one whole day, and that same day would be Friday." In other words, by sailing westward, a ship goes with the sun, and as a result her days become four minutes longer every time she crosses a degree of longitude in that direction. There are 360 degrees in the circumference of the earth, and these 360 degrees, multiplied by four minutes, make exactly twenty-four hours. That is the loss aboard a westbound ship. Likewise it is the gain aboard an eastbound vessel. The proliferation of world travel helped sailors understand the date paradox, and by the end of the sixteenth century it had become a nonissue. In the early seventeenth century, scholars working independently proposed the nomination of a date line opposite the prime meridians of the time. Erycius Puteanus—of Circulus Urbanianus prime meridian fame—even had the foresight to determine that, for matters of convenience, the date line should not cross any land, but should pass over water only. That idea was too hard for many to follow, and cartographers, who were not impressed with it, did not even consider reengraving their plates. Writers, though, were impressed. The issue fired their imagination. The first was Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), who is renowned for introducing the detective story and turning pseudoscientific tales into literature. His short story Three Sundays in a Week15 is about a young man (the narrator) who has grown up with his grand uncle Rumgudgeon and his cousin Kate. The two youths wish to be married, but when they broach the subject with the stubborn old man, he says they may marry when three Sundays occur in one week. They get two ship captains who have circled the world in opposite directions to come to the house. Each captain claims that from his frame of reference, Sunday will come one day before or after the Sunday from Rumgudgeon's frame of reference. In the end the old man gives his consent. Happy end! The most famous story on circumnavigating the world is, of course, Around the World in 80 Days, published in 1873 by Jules Verne, our acquaintance from the meridian measurement in the Kalahari Desert. Verne's protagonist was a Mr. Phileas Fogg, who lived in 1872 at London's No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, "the house in which Sheridan died in 1814." That particular Sheridan was probably Richard Brinsley Sheridan, an Irish dramatist and politician, who died in 1816. Fogg is described as "one of the most noticeable members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting attention; an enig-

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matical personage, about whom little was known, except that he was a polished member of the world." In keeping with his character, Fogg placed a 20,000-pound wager with fellow members of the club that he would complete a voyage around the world in eighty days, and he rushed to Victoria Station to catch the train to Dover, on the first leg of his eastbound journey. Fogg does not make it. He arrives back in London in a state of doom and gloom, bellyful of adventures, and a day too late. At the very last moment, his devoted servant Passepartout discovers that, although his master believes it to be Sunday, the day in London is in fact Saturday. What happened is that by traveling east they gained one day during the journey. While Fogg saw the sun cross the meridian eighty times, his fellow members of the Reform Club, who had stayed in London, had only seen it cross seventy-nine times. Fogg looked at his watch. Only ten minutes were left to meet the deadline. Too late! Passepartout seized him by the collar and shoved him into a cab. The cabman was offered 100 pounds if he would make the club on time. He ran over two dogs, overturned five carriages, and made it. Verne described the finale with his sharp, polished, pen as follows16: "Sixteen minutes to nine!" said John Sullivan, in a voice that betrayed his emotion. One minute more, and the wager would be won. Andrew Stuart and his partners suspended their game. They left their cards, and counted the seconds. At the fortieth second, nothing. At the fiftieth second, still nothing. At the fifty-fifth second, a loud cry was heard in the streets, followed by applause, hurrahs, and some fierce growls. The players rose from their seats. At the fifty-seventh second the door of the saloon opened; and the pendulum had not beat the sixtieth second when Phileas Fogg appeared, followed by an excited crowd who had forced their way through the club doors, and in his calm voice, said, "Here I am, gentlemen!"

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CHAPTER 1 0

International Date Line— Truth or Myth? The date line, decided by an international conference [sic] in 1884, is beyond our control. The United Nations (reported in The Times, Internet Edition, January 25, 1996) The [British] Admiralty Manual of Navigation defines the Date or Calendar Line as: "a modification of the line of the 180th meridian, which is drawn so as to include islands of any one group on the same side of the line." It continues: "when the date line is crossed on an easterly course the date is put back a day; on a westerly course the date is put on a day." Some readers are, perhaps, still bewildered at the whole issue of marginally longer, or shorter, days that add up to an entire day upon the complete circling of the earth. For them we have a modern-day, easy-toperceive explanation, one that Contarini could not provide at the time to Elcano and his distraught crew.1 Imagine a Concorde supersonic aircraft flying around the world along the equator at 900 knots, which is the sun's speed in longitude in that latitude. 2 The Admiralty Manual of Navigation goes on to explain. "If the pilot starts at noon on a Monday, when the sun is on his meridian, and flies west, the sun will remain on his meridian. He will thus experience no change of day at all. Wherever he is it will be noon, and people will be thinking of their midday meal. But when he arrives back at his starting point, the people he left there will be

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thinking about Tuesday's meal. Somewhere along his journey, Monday suddenly became Tuesday. That somewhere is the date line, on one side of which people say the time is noon on Monday, and on the other, it is noon on Tuesday. A ship steaming round the world has a similar but less rapid, and therefore not so obvious, experience. She must adjust her clocks so as to keep the sun approximately overhead each day at 12:00. When she crosses the date line she must make a further adjustment of one day." Steaming west, the instant a ship crosses the date line she passes from a zone that is twelve hours slow compared to UTC, to one that is twelve hours fast compared to UTC. It is thus necessary to miss one day in the local time and to skip, for instance, from Tuesday to Thursday. Steaming east, a ship goes from a zone that is 12 hours fast on UTC to one that is 12 hours slow on UTC. It is thus necessary to repeat a day in local time. 3 Now that the issue is more or less clear to us all, there comes a most confusing statement: The International Date Line is a misnomer. It is not a line; it is out of line; and it is not international. In practice the date line is an imaginary series of circle segments on the face of the earth that separate two consecutive calendar dates—hence it is "not a line." Moreover, while the date line is invisible on the globe, it is a very tangible product of the feverish imaginations and whims of politicians and mandarins, not caring for the rest of the world; hence it is "out of line." No international agreement, treaty, or law, governs the precise location of the date line—hence it is "not international." The date line could have been placed anywhere on the globe, but for convenience it was designated 180 degrees away from Airy's Greenwich meridian, which was the prime meridian at that time. That location is also fortunate because Greenwich's anti-meridian traverses no continental land except the extreme eastern points of Asia and Antarctica. The necessary change of date in the vicinity of this meridian causes a minimum of inconvenience. In 1911, the Hydrographic Department of the British Admiralty charted its version of the International Date Line that admittedly was one of many possible lines. Most of its length was congruent with the 180th meridian, but there have been zigs and zags to accommodate local circumstances, such as to make the whole of Siberia share the same day, and lump together Pacific islands of any one group. It obtained general acceptance, mainly because Great Britain was the leading maritime nation at the time, and most of the world could not have cared less

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where the date line was located, as long as it was far away, at the end of the world. It was neither the first calendar line drawn, nor was it the last. The issue of an international date line came to a head in the nineteenth century. The line of demarcation was in the Asian theater of commerce and shipping, what we call today the Far East, particularly the Philippine Islands. The Asian mainland, the Dutch East Indies, 4 and Australia were under Portuguese, Dutch, and British influence, respectively. The ships of their colonial powers sailed via the Cape of Good Hope, and the colonies kept the same date as at home, that is, the Eastern (or Asiatic) date. Alaska was Russian and it kept that same date too. The Philippines were a Spanish colony, and most of their trade and passenger traffic went by sea to Acapulco in Mexico, then over a land bridge to the port of Veracruz, where it was reloaded onto ships proceeding to Spain. The link with Latin America was so strong that the Philippines kept the Western (or American) date, which was one day behind the Eastern. Thus Indonesia and Australia—practically on the same meridian as the Philippines—were one day apart from the latter. Sunday in Manila was Monday in Batavia (now Jakarta), just 1700 miles due south.5 Just imagine that Sunday in New York would be Monday in Mexico City. Crazy! Luckily, people then had no airline schedules to observe. Two major geopolitical changes affected the date line in the middle of the nineteenth century. The first was in the Philippines; the second happened soon afterward in Alaska. After the independence of Latin American countries and improved relations with Portugal, Spain changed its pattern of shipping to the East. Instead of transshipping goods across Mexico, or sailing on long voyages around Cape Horn, Spanish bottoms serviced Spain's colonies in the east via the shorter—and much safer— route around the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian Ocean. Thus there was no sense in maintaining Western dates in the Philippines. Not that there was much of it earlier, either. The Spaniards changed the date in style. Narciso Claveria, the Governor General of the Philippines, proclaimed that Monday, December 30, 1844, was to be immediately followed by Wednesday, January 1, 1845. Tuesday, December 31, 1844, evaporated with the smoke of fireworks and alcohol fumes welcoming the New Year. There were no CNN reporters in Manila to make a big fuss of the celebrations and of the day on which no Filipinos were born. Consequently the rest of the world was indifferent to that once-in-a-lifetime event. Most European atlases ignored the change and maintained for another 50 years that the Philippines were still on the American Date.

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On April 9, 1867, the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty with Imperial Russia for the acquisition of Alaska and adjacent islands. The price tag was $7,200,000, then considered by many to be an absurdly large sum for a chunk of polar wasteland, even though it was more than twice the size of Texas. 6 It took Congress until July 1868 to pass the appropriation. On Sunday, October 6, 1867, Alaska adopted the Western date and—on the same happy occasion—also the Gregorian calendar, which differed then by thirteen days from the Julian calendar ruling in Russia. The total change amounted to twelve days: thirteen for the Gregorian calendar, minus one day for moving from the Asiatic date to the American date. The indigenous population was not consulted, of course. Nor could they care less. Thus the date line that previously ran along the Alaskan-Canadian frontier was pushed westward into the Bering Strait and clear of the western extremity of the Aleutian Islands. After reaching the open ocean, it rejoined the 180th meridian. It is unclear why the subject of the date line was not included in the terms of reference of the International Meridian Conference that convened in Washington, D . C , in October 1884. That would have been an excellent occasion to settle the issue of the date line, once and for all, and to agree upon a mechanism for future minor adjustments. In other words, to make the date line genuinely international. That golden opportunity was missed. George Davidson, an American geographer, astronomer, and surveyor (1825-1911) said at the turn of the nineteenth century: "There is no International Date Line. The theoretical line is 180 degrees from Greenwich, but the line actually used is the result of agreement among the commercial steamships of the principal maritime countries. 7 That situation has not changed, nor has the free-for-all tendency to reshape the date line. Changes—although by and large relatively minor—followed at an increasing frequency. In 1892 King Malietoa Laupepa of Samoa (longitude ca 172 degrees west) was convinced by his American friends and trading partners to discard the Asian date kept in his realm in favor of the American date that suited his kingdom's geographical position. He made the change on the 4th of July that year, and the 9000-odd persons living on the 76-squaremile, six-island group of American Samoa, twice celebrated the United States Independence Day. 8 The Pacific Islands fueled the perpetual saga of the ever-changing date line. In 1875 the British Admiralty expunged the nonexistent Morrell and Byers Islands 9 from its nautical charts. Consequently the kink in

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the line that had been especially designed to keep those islands within the dating framework of Hawaii was removed in 1910, returning the line to the 180° meridian, all the way to the equator and slightly beyond. Morrell and Byers Islands are entangled in a fascinating tale that warrants a deviation from the main body of our story. Once upon a time, in 1812, a seventeen-year-old New Yorker named Benjamin Morrell Jr. ran away to sea. Ten years later he assumed command of the 123-ton schooner Wasp, and for the next nine years he plied the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans aboard various vessels belonging to different owners. Shipmasters in those days were not the glorified truckers 10 they are today, but they used to trade on behalf of their owners, buying and selling their cargoes. Captain Morrell brought no commercial joy to his backers, and at the same time he earned enormous disrepute in the ports where he called. In 1825, to pacify one of his raging owners, he falsely reported the discovery of a small island northwest of the Hawaiian chain, and named it Byers Island, after that New York owner, James Byers. Flattery notwithstanding, Morrell was fired at the end of yet another financially dismal voyage. Morrell was a good captain, a bad merchant, and a frustrated discoverer. He also showed a keen interest in the seal trade. In 1832 he published the account of his voyages under the title A Narrative of Four Voyages to the South Sea. That book proved to be only tangential to the truth. Among other claims, Morrell boasted of being the first person to land on Bouvet Island 11 (on December 1822) and of harvesting several sealskins there.

Figure 10.1 Captain Benjamin Morrell (1795-1840?). The man who fooled the world and bent the Date Line single-handedly. Source: Frontispiece of his book, A Narrative of Four Voyages to the South Sea, North and South Pacific Ocean, Chinese Sea, Ethiopic and Southern Atlantic Ocean, Indian and Antarctic Ocean, From the Year 1822 to 1831 (1832).

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Although that landing is also reported in the British Admiralty's sailing directions The Antarctic Pilot, some U.S. scholars challenge it. Morrell also depicted in his accounts sighting several Pacific atolls, but he failed to mention that he had not been the first to cast an eye on them. His appetite for discovering nonexistent islands was rekindled when he reported the "discovery" of Morrell Island that he modestly named after himself. That "discovery"—according to his narrative—took place in July 1825, a few days after he had first landed at Byers Island. He described his island as "low-lying, four miles in circumference, covered by sea-fowl, sea elephants, and green turtle." Morrell carried on sailing for several owners, not lasting long with any of them. On May 28, 1830, while on one of his adventures—gathering beche de mer in Melanesia—his crew was attacked as it was building a shed to cure the sea-cucumbers, and thirteen men were killed and eaten by the natives. Morrell retreated to Manila, recruited a replacement crew, and returned to collect more beche de mer and avenge the death of his sailors. In late 1831 he was stranded in New York, looking for—and eventually finding—new backers for his novel Pacific adventures. The stories he spun about the economic potential of the islands he discovered always worked. There is no better prime mover than man's greed. In March 1834 he left for the Pacific aboard the decaying clipper Margaret Oakley, which became his second to the last ship. The con man, who had struggled all his life for recognition as a big-time businessman and discoverer, eventually wrecked the Margaret Oakley, fitted out another clipper, and is believed to have died of fever as a freebooter in Lorenzo Marques, Mozambique (now Maputo), around 1840. A thorough investigation, though, undertaken by the American charge d'affaires in Maputo in the early 1980s, produced no evidence of Morrell's death or burial in that country. Morrell's death—like his entire life—was shrouded in mystery and lies. In late 1875, Captain Sir Frederick Evans, Royal Navy, was appointed Hydrographer of the Navy. A few weeks after his appointment, he ordered British Admiralty chart 2683—The Pacific Ocean 12 —be purged of all doubtful islands and atolls. Precisely 123 specks of land were expunged, including three genuine islands that were later restored to their charting glory. Was that the silent coup de grace for Captain Benjamin Morrell's islands, fifty years after their bragged "discovery"? Apparently not. In the 1950s, globe maker Columbus Jordglob of Krauchenwies, Germany, the world's oldest publisher of globes still trad-

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ing, was reportedly producing German and Swedish-language desk globes showing Morell and Byersoa Islands. 13 Company officials are today unable to investigate that matter, because their archives suffered considerable losses and damage from air raids during World War II, and as a consequence of two moves during the second half of the twentieth century. In the late 1970s, 100 years after Hydrographer Sir Frederick Evans ordered the purge of the Pacific Ocean charts, the once renowned firm J R O Verlag of Munich, Germany, was still publishing terrestrial globes, including a 50-inch-diameter edition for German commercial firms,14 clearly showing Morrell and Byers Islands northwest of Hawaii. For lack of space, only Morrell Island's name—spelled Morell—was printed. Byers Island is there all right, in its alleged position, although unnamed. Captain Morrell, whether he is in heaven or in hell, surely had the last laugh. At the time when Byers and Morrell Islands were removed from being in the way of the date line, the portion of the line between Samoa and the Chatham Islands (population, 717 in 2001) was moved slightly eastward, so as to follow the meridian of 172° 30' west. Real fun, however, came in 1921 with the Wrangel Island affair. This rocky, barren, and frozen island, half the size of Puerto Rico, lies about 80 miles off the northeast coast of Siberia and is bisected by the 180th meridian. Captain Thomas Long, an American whaler, discovered the island in 1867 and found it inhabited by seals, polar bears, lemmings, and seabirds. Long named it after the Russian explorer Baron Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel (1797-1870), who had looked for it—in vain—during his 1820-1824 Arctic expedition. A group of Russians landed there in 1911, but they did not stay long. Conditions were too harsh. On September 16, 1921, the world awakened to a strange story indeed. A Swedish-Canadian polar explorer named Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879— 1962), acting on his own authority, navigated the s/s Silver Wave to Wrangel, landed on the island and claimed it for—the British crown. To make his claim valid, he brought with him several Eskimo settlers. Possession, he knew, was ninety percent of the law. Whitehall 15 was not impressed. It did not want to wrangle with the Soviet Union about Wrangel Island. The British Admiralty, however, quickly shifted the date line from its position east of Wrangel Island—which made it completely Russian—to the 180th meridian. The island was sliced into two date zones, as an initial recognition of a British-Canadian claim to at least its eastern part.

Figure 10.2 History of the International Date Line, 1845-1921. Note the kink in the line northwest of the Hawaiian Islands, made to accommodate Morrell and Byers Islands. Source: Notes on the History of the Date or Calendar Line, Hydrographic Department, Admiralty, London, November 1921. Sourced from the UK Hydrographic Office, http://www. ukho.gov. uk.

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Stalin—who at the time was busy consolidating his reign—was not amused. In 1926 he ousted the few remaining Stefansson's Eskimos and established the first permanent Russian colony on Wrangel. Reluctantly the Admiralty returned the date line to its pre-1921 position in the Chukchi Sea, well east of the island. The ambitious private-enterprise British colonization of Wrangel Island turned into a minute footnote in the history books. 16 Things were fairly quiet on the date line front for the major part of the twentieth century until the government of Kiribati threw a bombshell in 1994, announcing its redrawing of the line to an extent not seen since the Philippines and Alaska adjustments, 150 and 127 years earlier, respectively. Kiribati, an island nation in the equatorial Pacific, is a republic in the British Commonwealth of Nations and a full member of the United Nations. It comprises the Gilbert, Phoenix, and Line Islands and, on last count, consisted of 33 atolls—fewer than half of them inhabited—with a surface area of 277 square miles and a population of 85,000 souls. Most readers would imagine Kiribati to be a likable bagatelle, but they should bear in mind that the thirty-three atolls—some of which face the danger of disappearing with global warming—are spread across an ocean area of two million square miles, an area seven and a half times the size of Texas. Now, the International Date Line, since its inception, has cut the water surrounding that great republic into two, giving each half a different day and date. That division is alleged to have unleashed economic havoc on the nation's sixty-million-dollar annual GDP because the western part was always twenty-four hours ahead of the eastern part. Therefore only four days of official business could be conducted every week between the two parts. To put an end to this intolerable situation, President (Beretitenti, in the local language) Teburoro Tito decreed that, effective January 1, 1995, the International Date Line would run along the eastern boundary of his republic, instead of bisecting it. With a stroke of his golden pen, the Beretitenti pushed his section of the line eastward an unprecedented 30 degrees, from longitude 180° to 150° west. The international community has not taken the Kiribati adjustment seriously. World atlases still ignore Kiribati and show the International Date Line in that republic's vicinity as it has been for the past century—a straight line congruent with the 180° meridian. And so it shall remain. The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office made a note of this dramatic situation: "All islands of the Line and Phoenix

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Groups within the Kiribati Republic observe the same dates as the Islands of the Gilbert Group, even though they are on opposite sides of the International Date Line." This modern example of cutting the Gordian knot is reminiscent of Henry Ford's mantra: "They can choose any color [Model T] they want, as long as it's black!" Similarly, Kiribatis can have any date they want, as long as the date line is left intact. The Kiribati affair brings us to our final chapter in this section: "The International Date Line and the Millennium."

CHAPTER I 1

The International Date Line and the Millennium The claim to be the first territory to greet the new millennium has an intellectual, a cultural, and a commercial significance. John Wall, 1999

In the not-too-distant future, scholars and laymen alike will be amazed and amused at the anxiety that clutched the world, mainly the enlightened Western countries, toward the end of the twentieth century. They will laugh at the "Y2K bug"—the greatest con job successfully pulled since Laban conned Jacob into marrying the hated Leah (Genesis 29). It is only natural that that unprecedented exercise in intimidation and marketing was followed by another greedy deception that brought us the millennium festivities 366 days earlier than they ought to have taken place. One can only reflect with astonishment on how the whole world fell—hook, line, and sinker—for Y2K and the early millennium. The world was led to believe that the twenty-first century would begin at 00:00:00 hours, January 1, 2000 (or just after midnight on December 31, 1999), when in fact the new century—and the third millennium— began at 00:00:00 hours, January 1, 2001. The reason for that was that there was no year zero. Unlike human beings who are one year old throughout their second year of life, the calendar's Year One ended on the 366th day of counting. A baby aged 400 days is one year old, but the 400th day after the birth of Christ was in Year 2. Hence, the first century

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A.D. was completed on December 31, 100. The tenth century (and first millennium) A.D. were completed on December 31, 1000. The twentieth century (and second millennium) A.D. were completed on December 31, 2000. Pretty simple, though the world refused to adhere to it. It was too busy preparing for the earliest possible celebrations and the quickest possible cash flow. The beginning of the third millennium is supposed to mark the 2000th anniversary of the birth ofJesus Christ. The custom of reckoning dates from the beginning of the Christian era was a spin-off of the work by the monk-cum-scholar Dionysius Exiguus (self-proclaimed Denys le Petit—Denis the Small), who was entrusted by Pope John I to compile a set of Easter Tables. The tables then in use were reckoned from the accession of the Roman Emperor Diocletianus (A.D. 284-305), who was notorious for ordering the severe persecution of the Christians. Dionysius knew that calculating the dates of Easter would be no easy task— especially if done from scratch—but he chose to work his tables from the birth of Christ, and to discard the counting from Diocletianus, in order "not to link the memory of this ungodly persecutor to our new cycles." Dionysius presented his Easter Tables to the Pope in 525. He successfully worked out the year Jesus Christ was born and started counting from that point in time. Anno Dominihe named it—the Year of Our Lord. According to his calculations, A.D. 1 corresponded to the year 754 A.U.C. of the Roman calendar. A.U.C. stands for ab urbe condita—from the founding of the city (Rome). That date was unfortunately incorrect. Small Denis erred here and there on his 500-odd-year journey through history to Anno Domini. First, he followed the year 1 B.C. directly with the year A.D. 1, and did not name the year Christ was born in as year zero. Well, it was really not his fault. The concept of zero—invented in India and diffused by the Arabs—reached Western Europe hundreds of years after Denis's death. 1 Second, he missed the four years Emperor Augustus ruled under the name Octavius and omitted two years of Emperor Tiberius's reign. The bottom line is that a seven-year error was whacked into his reckoning. This tallies with the reckoning of most biblical scholars who—basing themselves mainly on the books of Matthew and Luke—agree that Mary's virgin birth took place in Bethlehem between the years 7 and 5 B.C.2 Denis's dating was done, of course, according to the Julian calendar, which was established about 40 years B.C., and which prevailed in the Roman Empire at the time.

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When Europe switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1582, another ten days were omitted from the calendar. Britain, of course, did not agree with Europe and went Gregorian only in September 1752. By then the price paid for conversion was higher—eleven days instead of ten days 170 years earlier. So, if we wish to celebrate the beginning of the third millennium of the birth of Christ, the counting errors accumulated since his birth were seven times the one-year error resulting from wrongly assigning the year 2000 to the new millennium. Despite all the honorable intents of linking our calendar to the miracle at Bethlehem, Anno Domini dating does not tie up to the birth of Christ at all. The reality is that by the year 2000 we were already several years into the third millennium after the birth of Christ. While we are unable to identify the precise year of the commencement of the millennium, we can point out the exact time of day it dawned upon us. We can seek, and find, an answer to the question: "when and where did planet earth first meet the third millennium?" The answer, though, is equivocal—it depends. A wide range of actors meddled in the burning issue of when and where the millennium begins. It was more than just a scientific exercise. The question involved politics, prestige, and profits. It was big business for the mini-nations concerned—a once-in-a-thousand-years special battle in the ongoing war for the tourist dollar. Some of the meddlers were harmless ignoramuses who should have tried harder to withstand the temptation to venture into uncharted waters; others were charlatans, prepared to use any trick to achieve their objective. Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, belongs to the first group. "The eyes of the world will be on Greenwich as the clocks strike midnight on December 31, 1999," he said. What a load of nonsense! Greenwich was never a starting point for any date reckoning. The millennium was not born in Greenwich and Mr. Blair was half a world in time and distance away from its cradle. Didn't Blair ever hear of the International Date Line? How unbecoming from the prime minister of the nation that has given us Newton, Flamsteed, and Halley? First among the tricksters was the President of Kiribati who—in his act of either chutzpah or desperation—pushed the International Date Line in the vicinity of his empire 30 degrees to the east. That was a distance of more than 2,000 miles, not bad for a country four times the size of the District of Columbia. Kiribati denies, of course, all accusations that the relocation of the line was driven by the desire to cash in on tourist

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dollars by making Kiribati the first country in the world to welcome the new millennium. It is left to the readers to draw their own conclusions, especially in light of Kiribati renaming its uninhabited Caroline Island— the most easterly atoll in the group—Millennium Island. Politicians aside, there are two ways of looking at the question of where the (false) millennium began: (1) At which place did the clock first strike midnight on December 31, 1999? and (2) where was the first sunrise on January 1, 2000? There is no doubt that the theater of events was in the South Pacific, but "where exactly?" is the question. Strictly speaking, we Figure 11.1 should be interested only in The Right Honourable Tony Blair (1953- ), British Prime Minister. Source: alternative (1), which takes into Image provided courtesy of The Prime Minister's Office, 10 Downing Street, London, consideration the longitude of UK. the place. Alternative (2) considers also the latitude as a factor responsible for the time of sunrise, but it does not really provide us with the true answer. It will be discussed here only as a matter of interest to the readers. In the eyes of the authors, alternative (1) has, in turn, two subalternatives. The yardstick can be either the recently man-made and never officially agreed-upon "International Date Line," or the 180° meridian, internationally accepted since 1884. The President of Kiribati has shown the world how the International Date Line can be prostituted, but he was not the first to do that. Tonga, some years ago, did a similar exercise in dating, whose sophistication would have shamed the shrewd Talleyrand. Admittedly that was long before the millennium celebrations were even thought of, but its outcome gave the tiny kingdom a "millennium advantage" over her neighbors.

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Considering the shenanigans made by all those small island groups and their bizarre claims for millennium superiority, the authors believe that this issue should be decided by the "natural line"—the 180° meridian that will not change its location for the foreseeable future—and not by the artificial date line, which changes at the drop of politicians' top hats. Therefore, the laurels go to Taveuni, Fiji's third largest island, whose longitude is exactly 180 degrees—Greenwich's anti-meridian. Tony Blair, did you hear that? Yes! Greenwich it was, but its anti-meridian, not the meridian! Some difference! As we have stated on the previous page, asking when and where the sun first rose on January 1, 2000, is completely irrelevant to the question of who was first to greet the millennium, for the simple reason that since 1884 the nations of the world have officially agreed that the civil day begins at midnight, not at sunrise. Nevertheless, let's look at that question. The beginning of new daylight or, as it is scientifically called, the local mean time (LMT) of sunrise, depends on a place's longitude and latitude. The dependency on the latter is the product of the 23° 27 tilt of the axis of rotation of the earth from the perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. This tilt gives us the seasons, and it also ensures that the time of sunrise (and sunset) along any particular meridian will differ with the latitude. For example, on January 1, which is only 10 days after the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere, most of Antarctica enjoys twentyfour hours of sunshine, and most of the Arctic zone is in complete darkness. In between are days and nights of different lengths as a result of sunrises and sunsets that do not occur at the same hour. Astronomers, and indeed any navigator conversant with celestial navigation, can determine precisely the LMT of sunrise on any day, anywhere in the world. All they need is a copy of the current nautical almanac. Calculations show that the furthermost the sun rose on January 1, 2000, was latitude 66° 03' south. Farther south the sun was continuously above the horizon and hence there was no sunrise on that particular day. So, the first place in Antarctica west of the International Date Line to experience sunrise on January 1, 2000, was the headland between Dibble Glacier (66° 17 south, 134° 30' east) in the Australian Antarctic Territory and Victor Bay (66° 20' south, 136° 30' east) in Terre Adelie, 3 the French proclaimed Antarctic region. That unique headland is in the Australian Antarctic Territory, just outside Terre Adelie. 4 How lucky the world is to have narrowly escaped France's claims for yet another primogeniture! The only living creatures present on the beach at

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the time to greet the millennium were a pack of elephant seals and a group of shrieking broody penguins. They were not impressed. None of them marched to the tunes of Waltzing Matilda. So, what was the first permanently inhabited place to welcome the sun on January 1, 2000? The answer to that is Pitt Island (population in 2001, 42 persons) in the Chatham Islands group, a New Zealand dependency at latitude 44° south, longitude 176° west (approximately). The best view was probably from the top of the 3187-foot Mount Hakepa. The first residents (as distinct from tourists) to experience that once-in-athousand-years sunrise were Eve and Ken Lanauze who own and run a farm on the eastern slopes of Mount Hakepa, facing the rising sun. Finally, who was the winner, Fiji or Pitt? The civil day January 1, 2000, started at Taveuni, Fiji, at 12:00 UT, December 31, 1999. The sun rose over Pitt Island at 16:34 UT, December 31, 1999. We rest our case.

Figure 1L2 Captain Dumont d'Urville (1790-1842) and his crew working frantically to free the Astrolabe from Antarctic ice, 1838. Far on the right, the Zelee racing to assist Source: Voyage au pole sud et dans POceanie . . . (1838). The Treasures of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Central Library.

P A R T IV

The Equator Equator: imaginary great circle around the earth, everywhere equidistant from the two geographical poles and forming the base line from which latitude is reckoned. The equator, which measures ca 24,902 miles (40,076 km), is designated as lat. 0°. It intersects South America, Africa, and Indonesia. http://www. infoplease. com/ce 6/world/A 081752 7. html

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CHAPTER 1 2

Crossing the Line In every book I ever read Of travels on the Equator A plague mysterious and dread, Imperils the narrator. Hilaire Belloc, The Modern Traveler, 1898

In 1955—several days before my twenty-first birthday—I crossed the equator for the very first time. I was the second officer aboard the m/v Yehuda, a 7000-ton deadweight, diesel-powered log carrier. In spite of my relatively young age, I had already logged nearly five years of Mediterranean and North Atlantic sea time, but I had never ventured into the tropics. It happened on my afternoon watch—12:00 P.M. to 4:00 P.M.—while we were en route from Libreville to Port Gentil in Gabon, then a colony in French Equatorial Africa. At 3:00 P.M., to the sound of six bells, the first officer—a "trusty shellback" 1 and veteran of several equator crossings—relieved me on the bridge. The first officer, or the mate, as he is addressed on ships following the British tradition, was more than the ordinary run-of-the-mill trusty shellback. He was actually a "golden shellback," a sailor who had crossed both the equator and the International Date Line. Why golden? Because the date line is situated in the heart of the realm of the golden dragon, which is in charge of that part of the world. Didn't you know all that? I was just a "polliwog," or "wog" for short. I hurried down the companionway, changed into dungarees, and joined the ship's company on

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the afterdeck for the line crossing ceremony. I left my two-gold-striped epaulets in my cabin. They were useless on this occasion. No polliwog— from a deck boy to an admiral—can pull rank before Neptune, the supreme sovereign of all blue waters. No exemptions, no discounts! In spite of the fifty years that have passed since then, I remember vividly the finest details of that event. I still keep the onboard handmade certificate testifying to my crossing of the line, together with my Master's ticket and my PhD degree. The ceremony commenced immediately after the afternoon coffee time, at 3:15 sharp. The whole complement was there, officers and crew, save for two officers-of-the-watch—one on the bridge and one in the engine room, both shellbacks, naturally. Neptune Rex, the King of the Sea, was seated on his throne, his wife, Queen Amphitrite, to his right. Their son, Prince Triton, was beside his mother, seated on a chamber pot from the ship's infirmary, a pacifier in his mouth. Amphitrite and Triton were actually Greek—Poseidon's wife and son—but we did not know the name of their Roman namesakes. Neptune was the tallest man in the crew, a 6-foot 6-inch left-handed motorman. He wore a toga made of a once-white tablecloth, sported a long yellowish beard made of fresh rope yarn, carried a brass crown on his head, and held a shinning trident in his left hand. The second cook, the fattest man aboard, was honored with the position of the queen. He wore a huge bra that had once belonged to a Jamaican lady of the night, and he all but filled its cups. The new mop on his head gave him grayish curls that well matched his homemade grass skirt, cut from a piece of an old mooring rope, broken to its fibers. In spite of being a fairly small crew of thirty-two men, eighteen of whom were polliwogs, the royal family was accompanied by a full and complete entourage. Noblesse oblige, I suppose. There were guards, one or two confidential advisers, the royal bath attendants, the barber—armed with a huge wooden "razor"—and little Davy Jones, the evil spirit of the sea and the guardian of Davy Jones's locker, where all sailors go when their time's up. Neptune Rex started by informing the captain that, as the ship was now entering his domain, he was assuming immediate command of the vessel and all her men. Everybody should obey his undisputable orders. The captain bowed submissively. Neptune then read the Roll of the Equator, specially written for the occasion by Sparkle, the radio operator. It was a somewhat long commentary on this ancient ceremony, which is

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as old as seafaring itself, and which is rooted in Viking and Phoenician religious rites. He explained that King Solomon's Ophir sailors were the first biblical characters to participate in the line-crossing rituals. 2 He then nodded for the action to begin. One by one, in order of the official crew list, the men—now wearing only bathing trunks—presented themselves to the bath attendants. I went first, and I was quite lucky to get a basic treatment only, either by reason of my rank or because the "bathers" had not yet got the hang of the procedure. My chest was smeared with a little industrial fish oil, the royal barber gave me a close shave, and a rotten egg was cracked open over my head. A week earlier the chief steward had donated twenty breakfast eggs for the ceremony. They had been stowed in a basket on the monkey island, under the tropical sun, protected from the thieving seagulls. One can imagine what a delicious shampoo those eggs provided. I then leapt into the makeshift swimming pool the carpenter had built that morning out of spare hatch covers and tarpaulins. I wiped off the oil and washed my hair, taking advantage of the clean water, and I emerged as a smiling, fully fledged shellback. The shorter the line of polliwogs became, the dirtier became the water in the pool. The bosun then connected a canvas hose to the fire line and gave each emerging shellback a good hosing, to the cheers of all present and to the delight of the "victim," who was grateful for the pressurized jet of seawater removing the dirt from his smelly body. King Neptune solemnly observed the ceremony, signaling with his trident from time to time to indicate whether a particular polliwog should be treated with more or less diligence. Participating was not compulsory, but everybody took part in the fun. The king then kissed his queen and son, declared the ceremony successful and over, and ordered beer for all shellbacks—old and new. The chief steward obliged and surprised the crew by serving different tidbits with the beer. That was quite a shock to everybody, as that particular steward—who liked to call himself "purser"—was the worst in the company, one of those stingy bastards who could have caused a mutiny aboard for refusing to add a can of tinned fruit to the "night lunch" of late-working hungry sailors on a night of departure. We threw the empty beer bottles over the side, went to scrub ourselves under a hot shower—and turned back to our daily routine. After dinner the captain handed each new shellback his certificate, signed by Neptune and witnessed by the captain, confirming his crossing of the line.

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There is no doubt that this particular line drill is anchored in ancient initiation procedures, but over the years—and especially aboard merchant ships—it is carried out for the sole purpose of entertaining the bored crews. The pretext is that all wogs should be clean and shaven before they are presented to King Neptune, and dirtying them will ensure the extra scrubbing required for the momentous occasion. Unfortunately it is also a good opportunity for settling old scores among crew members. Things can be quite different—and they sometimes get out of hand— on warships, where the intolerable habit of hazing still prevails. Following the action taken in 1997 by Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and Secretary of the Navy John H. Dalton, the U.S. Navy adopted a zerotolerance policy for hazing, by which crossing-the-line ceremonies "are only meant to celebrate and recognize the achievements of individual sailors or marines, or those of entire units." 3 All over the world, aboard more and more ships, this ancient tradition that refuses to die is deemed to be voluntary and to have one purpose only—to have fun.

CHAPTER 1 3

Who Did It First? The equator is only kind to the lazy or the very wise. Denis Saurat, Watch over Africa, 1941

Once a year, at least, I have a public encounter with the equator. There is a question I like to ask the students in the first class of my course, Merchant Ship Economics, just to test their way of thinking. "The equator is 24,902 miles long, that is, 43,827,520 yards," I say. "Let us imagine the earth along the equator is completely smooth, no valleys, no mountains, and we encircle the equator with a rigid belt 43,827,521 yards long, that is, one yard longer than the equator itself, placed equidistantly around it. Would a cat be able to squeeze its way through the gap between the surface of the earth and the belt?" Most students answer my question in the following manner: "One yard over 43,827,520 yards . . . hmm, well it is infinitesimal, isn't it? Even a worm won't be able to creep underneath." This answer does not indicate what those students know or do not know about the equator, but it sets off a red light in my mind regarding their approach to problems and to solving them. 1 The equator runs around the planet through nine countries 2 and three continents—South America, Asia, and Africa. Some local authorities in these countries mark the line with roadside signs, providing tourists with photo opportunities. School children there are unaware of the cat-underthe-belt question, but they are proud of the special line passing through their homeland.

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The question of how long man has been aware of the special meaning of the equator is somewhat difficult to answer. The priests of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt knew about the equinox—the two points at which the sun's orbit crosses the equator, when day and night are of equal length—and they used them in calculating their calendars. They did not know, however, that the earth was a sphere revolving on its own axis, and therefore they could not have imagined the equator, the ecliptic, and their relationship. Pythagoras, of a2 + b 2 = c2 fame (sixth century B.C.), was one of the first scholars to hold that the earth was a revolving sphere, and he must have thought of the equator. Eratosthenes and Hipparchus—whom we met earlier in this book—even calculated the length of the equator, to a highly reasonable accuracy for their times. There is no answer, though, to the question "Who was the first cartographer to put the equator on his maps?" It is believed that some time before Eratosthenes, astronomers had already given cartography its fundamental three east-west lines of reference, based on the annual movement of the sun in relation to planet earth. These were the great circle of the equator and the two small circles of the tropics—Cancer to the north and Capricorn to the south. Eratosthenes—according to written records, as none of his maps have survived—added several horizontal latitude lines 3 and nine vertical lines, all arbitrary. Hipparchus improved on that by spacing the parallels equidistant between the poles and the equator and drawing the north-south lines at 90 degrees to the parallels, equally spaced along the equator. Like Eratosthenes's maps, not a single cartographic work of Hipparchus has survived the vagaries of time. Ptolemy's map of the world, dated about A.D. 150, seems to be the oldest map showing the equator. Ptolemy's original map has long disappeared, but fortunately that smart Alexandrian Greek realized that while maps tend to disappear, books stand better chances of survival. He therefore wrote a comprehensive description of his map—an explanation of the cartographic projection he used and of all the charted data— in his book Geographia. That effort enabled accurate reconstruction of his map. The first attempts to do that were made in the twelvth to thirteenth centuries, but the best reconstruction is presented in the Ulm (Germany) edition of 1482. That map is so interesting and beautiful—although far from accurate—that its reproductions are sold in museums and bookshops all over the world.

Figure 13.1 Map of the world after Ptolemy, ca. A.D. 150. Note prime meridian at the far left—then considered the end of the known world. Source: The Harcourt Index.

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Another interesting question for which we have no answer is "When did man first cross the equator?" Did he or she notice they were passing from a northern latitude to a southern one, or vice versa? Did they know the significance of stepping into the opposite hemisphere? Did they care? Well, the fact is that hundreds of thousands of people live on three continents, practically on top of the equator, and they cross it daily, back and forth, without even noticing. In a way they are similar to Monsieur Jourdain, who for more than forty years spoke in prose without even knowing it.4 Written evidence of the apparent first venture of explorers-traders from the north toward ports situated beyond the equator is found in two places in the Old Testament. These are succinct descriptions of the joint venture between Hiram, the Phoenician King of Tyre, who provided the vessels and the crews to man them, and Solomon, King of Jerusalem, who was responsible for the finances and the auxiliary unskilled manpower. The time was mid-tenth century B.C., and the Good Book tells us: King Solomon built a fleet of ships at E'zion-ge'ber, which is near Eloth on the shores of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. And Hiram sent with the fleet his servants, seamen who were familiar with the sea, together with the servants of Solomon; and they went to Ophir, and brought from there gold, to the amount of four hundred and twenty talents and they brought it to King Solomon (1 Kings 9:26-28). This description is repeated nearly verbatim in 2 Chronicles 8:17-18, with the exception that the quantity of the imported gold reported in Chronicles is 450 talents instead of 420 in the Book of Kings. Where did the extra thirty talents come from? 5 Hebrew scholars were always very keen to smooth over any apparent discrepancy appearing in their holy scriptures. They could have explained this disparity as a scribe's error, but that would have reflected badly on the scribes and the quality of their work. The scholars' interpretation was therefore that the discrepancy lies in the talent being slightly reduced in weight over the several hundred years that separated the publishing of the two books. Well, if this is true, we are witnesses to a biblical example of inflation—the reduction in weight of the gold talent by approximately 7 percent. Pretty much like the silver dollar that started as 90 percent silver, and was reduced over the years to today's 40 percent silver content. 6 The scriptures also tell us that Solomon's ships went to Ophir, apparently somewhere on the East African seaboard.

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Once every three years the ships . . . used to come bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. (2 Chronicles 9:21). We do not know where Ophir was, but we know where it was not. It could not have been on the shores of the Red Sea, or on the coast of the Horn of Africa. That was too close to home, and the goodies carried aboard those ships were not produced or harvested there. They originated in today's Kenya, Tanzania, or even farther south. A quick look at the atlas brings us to a simple and irrefutable conclusion: Solomon's ships were the first to cross the equator. The Bible tells us that several more voyages took place, three years apart. The way the extravagant Solomon was going, he needed a continuous supply of gold. About 90 years later, Kingjehoshafat of Judah joined forces together with King Ahaziah of Israel in a similar joint venture that disastrously never got off the ground. All their ships were wrecked—apparently by storm—before they even set sail for Ophir (2 Chronicles 20:37). No Phoenician involvement in that venture is mentioned, and considering the poor maritime experience of the Hebrews, one can conclude that it was a case of bad seamanship that pulled the plug on Judea's revived ventures into East Africa. Next, an even greater story of crossing the equator was told by Herodotus (ca 484-435 B.C.) whom many call "The Father of History," while a few prefer "The Father of Lies." If we are to believe Herodotus, King Pharaoh Necho II of Egypt (610-594 B.C.) "sent forth Phoenician men in ships from the Red Sea, ordering them to sail back between the Pillars of Heracles, until they came to the Northern Sea (Mediterranean) and thus back to Egypt." The Pillars of Heracles was the Greek name for the mountains on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar. The Roman equivalent was the Pillars of Hercules. The story goes that the expedition sailed along the coasts of Africa, and, whenever autumn came, the crews put ashore, sowed the land, and awaited reaping time. After harvesting their corn they set sail again and continued their voyage. It took them two years to reach the Pillars of Heracles, and several months later they returned to Egypt. Herodotus goes on, saying: "They told things believable perhaps for others, but unbelievable for me, namely that in sailing round Libya (i.e., Africa) they had the sun on the right hand." Herodotus used to listen to stories, collect them, and write them down as history. This particular one was told to him about 150 years after the

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event, and its origin is not known. If the source was Egyptian priests, it could have been considered reliable, because it gave most of the credit to the Phoenician foreigners. However, that was not the case. The origin was Phoenician, from the ranks of which emerged some of the greatest explorers, as well as the greatest liars, in history. If this story is true, the members of the expedition crossed the equator southbound in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia and again northbound in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Gabon. Scholars, however, doubt the event ever took place, citing—among other reasons—lack of details, no mention of the leader's name nor of the disappearance of the Great Bear and the Pole Star beyond the horizon. These were the most important stars in the Phoenician heavens—they steered their ships by them—and their disappearance would have been quite an event. From the look of things, the only cast iron argument for the voyage would be the report of rounding Africa with the sun to the right, that is, to the ships' north. Well, one does not have to go all the way to the Cape of Good Hope to discover that under certain geographical and seasonal conditions, the sun crosses one's meridian to the north. The sailors of Egypt's Queen Hatshepsut (ca 1503-1482 B.C.) must have noticed that on their maritime expedition to Punt—"the land of aromatics and incense"—in ca 1490 B.C.7 It most probably happened while on a passage from Suez to the southern end of the Red Sea, between April and August, when the declination of the sun was larger than their latitude. King Solomon's sailors witnessed that peculiar sun's position some 500 years later. The arguments for and against the authenticity of that circumnavigation story pile up on both sides. Sensation-seeking scholars clutch at every clue, vague as it may be, in order to support their case. When the evidence is not there—they have no qualms about fabricating it or its interpretation. Serious—and cautious—scholars agree that Necho's expedition crossed the equator off Somalia, but they dismiss the circumnavigation story. "Not proven," they say. "It's an interesting story, indeed, a monument to man's endurance and . . . imagination." Strangely, while Herodotus left us details of the disputed story of the circumnavigation of Africa, and about the commercial trade between Carthage and West Africa, he was silent about what is alleged to be the most significant voyage of exploration of the fifth century B.C. The journey in question is that of the Carthaginian shophet 8 (ruler) Hanno. Its

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exact date is unknown, and its account was engraved on a bronze tablet dedicated to the Carthaginian gods and hung up in the Temple of Ba'al Hammon, the Chief God of Carthage. The tablet has long disappeared but the "18-line" 9 text has survived in Greek manuscripts, probably based on an ancient Greek translation from the Punic. At the moment there are only two copies left, dating back to the ninth and the fourteenth centuries.

Figure 13.2 Phoenician sea and land voyages—from North Europe to South Africa. Source: Courtesy Salim G. Khalaf Chapel Hill, NC. A Bequest Unearthed, Phoencia. http://phoenicia.org. The first of these manuscripts is known as the Palatinus Graecus 398, and it can be studied at the University Library of Heidelberg. The other

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text is the Vatopedinus 655; parts of it are in the British Museum in London and in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. That document contains fewer than 650 words, and over the centuries it has provoked several hundred thousand commentaries, explanations, and arguments. One caution though, before we proceed. Copies, translations, and other unauthentic documents should always be taken with a large grain of salt. It is definitely possible that some of the dramatic events depicted in Hanno's text, such as the crocodile-infested river, the fires expanding horizontally and vertically, and more, are the product of armchair geographerstranslators, writing hundreds of years after those events allegedly took place, and attributing to Hanno their own fantasies of Africa Incognita. Hanno's testimony is known as the Periplus, namely the narrative of the circumnavigation. Its short preamble reads: "The Voyage of Hanno, King of the Carthaginians, to the Libyan regions of the earth, beyond the Pillars of Heracles . . . ." Libya was the name given to Africa at the time, and consequently "the Libyan regions" had nothing to do with the state ruled today by the dictator Mouammar al-Qaddafi. The first "line" in Hanno's text is the most remarkable. It reads: The Carthaginians ordered Hanno to sail out of the Pillars of Heracles and found cities of the Libyphoenicians.10 He sailed with a fleet of sixty fifty-oared ships, and a large number of men and women to the number of thirty thousand, and with wheat and other provisions. Hanno's orders were to bring new colonists to four Carthaginian settlements recently established where the chain of the Atlas Mountains (in today's Morocco) reached the Atlantic Ocean and then, having founded a new colony at the tropics, to proceed and explore the coast of Africa as far as he could reach. Reading Hanno's first "line" turns the serious reader off immediately, unless he is a Baron Munchausen fan. The shophet-turned-admiral— who addresses himself as "king"—describes his fleet as comprising 60 penteconter vessels carrying 30,000 men and women. Just imagine the idea of shipping tens of thousands of people in the vessels of the period and the logistics required for such an exercise—living space, cargo space, food, water, and basic sanitation. That is not all, though. Simple arithmetic shows the fleet averaged 500 souls per vessel. Penteconters were open vessels of about 125 feet in

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length, 13 feet beam, and 5 feet depth. They were loaded with provisions for a very long voyage, building materials for dwellings to accommodate 30,000 persons, and trading goods. Five hundred passengers were beyond the carrying capacity of larger eighteenth century ships, let alone that of light open vessels built twenty-three centuries earlier. The bigger tonnage Mayflower carried only 102 passengers in 1620. u The Punics, also known as Libyphoenicians, were on many occasions short on facts and long on fiction, like their Phoenician brothers. Hanno's opening irritates intelligent readers straight away and leads them to expect much more nonsense as the story unfolds. The "sardine-can approach" should be applied to such tales: if one opens a can of sardines and finds the top fish rotten, he should trash that tin can straight away. There is no sense in tasting each and every individual fish in order to ascertain its quality. So why are we interested in discussing Hanno's voyage at all? For two reasons. First, it is fun. Hanno's narrative is so ambiguous that it provides no clues whatsoever to tie it to today's coastline. It is amazing—and rather entertaining—to see to what length some historians have gone with their science-fiction interpretation of that text, in order to "prove" their fallacious and sensational theories about the voyage and, consequently, to try to buy themselves some fame. Second, an examination of those who did not cross the equator will lead us more quickly to those who did. Scholars differ in their opinions on the value of the Periplus for the reconstruction of Hanno's voyage. Some say that except for a few omissions, the document provides precise data that permits a detailed reconstruction. Others disagree. Hanno provides distances in terms of a day's sailing, a variable unit that is uncertain anywhere, let alone in the unknown waters of West Africa. It is similar to the concept of distance used by the Bedouins in Israel's Negev Desert, where their unit is the number of paces covered by a wayfarer during the period between smoking two cigarettes. The key to any interpretation of what and where Hanno was doing lies with how many miles one assumes he logged daily. Conservative historians estimate that he averaged three knots, equivalent to three and a half miles per hour. Since the number of days his expedition lasted is given—and assumed to be true—they conclude that he did not venture beyond the Sierra Leone coast. More imaginative scholars propose an average speed close to six knots and conclude that the fleet reached Gabon's Cape Lopez. Each school of thought can find in the Periplus

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enough evidence to support its thesis and produce creative and conflicting conclusions. However, given the type of vessels involved and the hostile currents and prevailing calms, the slower alternative seems more likely. We are not so much interested in the details of the voyage that are open to interpretation—and have brought about quite a scientific debate—but in whether or not Hanno crossed the equator. The narrative is very frugal regarding definitive landmarks along the disputed track. Places like the Horn of the West, or the Horn of the South, that are mentioned only in that particular narrative and nowhere else, may each be one promontory or another, hundreds of miles apart. Line 16 of the Periplus seems to provide a key milestone of the voyage, describing what looks like volcanic activity. There is only one volcanic area in West Africa and that is Mount Cameroon, which is still active today. The trouble is that Hanno's ships could not reach that area within the given parameters of time and space. This mystery is yet to be solved. This brings to memory the Israeli Naval Submarine INS Dakar that was lost in a tragic accident in the Eastern Mediterranean on January 25, 1968. Years of searching in different locations bore no fruit, and in 1997 a naval brain trust was assembled to reexamine the issue from scratch and to recommend the most likely search area. The principal author was privileged to be a member of that brain trust. The marine biologist on the team insisted on searching in a location 350 nautical miles away from the position where the submarine was finally detected. Considering the time and space constraints, the sub had to fly in order to land at that position, but the biologist completely dismissed the geographical limitations and the speed capability of the vessel, arguing those were mere "technicalities," while his conclusions were based upon "solid science." 12 Similarly, assigning an unrealistic speed to Hanno's vessels can bring them in 35 days to Cape Lopez, which is 42 miles south of the equator. Well, hurrah to Hanno, the Carthaginian line-crosser! Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) went even farther and wrote that Hanno's adventure took him to the "limit of Arabia." We do not know whether this was during the particular voyage in question, or on another journey. One can only marvel at what speed the penteconters logged if they circumnavigated Africa in 35 days. Scholars challenge the story of the erupting volcano, not only on the time-and-space count, but also on whether it existed at all: Were the

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Figure 13.3

INS Dakar departing Portsmouth, England, January 9, 1968. A mystery yet to be solved. Source: Courtesy Israeli Navy.

reported fires an eruption, or were they grass fires moving along mountain slopes? We do not really know. Hanno named that volcano Chariot of the Gods. How ironic! Eric von Daniken, the convicted Swiss criminal and guru of visitors from outer space, gave exactly the same name—Chariots of the Gods—to his first best seller, published in 1968! We put forward one simple question: Why should we believe the volcano story more than the story that the fleet departed with 30,000 colonists and crew? Hanno's last landmark [in line 17] was a bay, or a gulf, named the Horn of the South. There he realized his provisions were running too low for comfort, and he decided to turn back north. Classic historians match that Horn with Sherbro Island, off the coast of Sierra Leone, which seems to tally with a conservative reconstruction of the voyage. This is not good enough for modern sensation seekers who pull out their trump card over an island located in that body of water. [That island] having a lake, in which there was another island, full of savage men. There were women, too, in even greater number. They

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had hairy bodies, and the interpreters called them Gorillae. When we pursued them we were unable to take any of the men; for they had all escaped, by climbing the steep places and defending themselves with stones; but we took three of the women, who bit and scratched their leaders, and would not follow us. So we killed them and flayed them, and brought their skins to Carthage. Gorilla, we are told, is a word of native African origin, and as these lowland apes do not live in West Africa, but only in equatorial regions— from the Cameroons down to the Congo—Hanno must have reached beyond the equator. Well, this resounding statement is slightly flawed. Who knows what the meaning of the word gorilla was twenty-five hundred years ago? Here is what the Online Etymology Dictionary tells us about that word. gorilla—applied to the apes 1847 by U.S. missionary Thomas Savage, from Gk. gorillai, pi. of name given to wild, hairy people in Gk. translation of Carthaginian navigator Hanno's account of his voyage along the N.W. coast of Africa, ca 500 B.C.E. Allegedly an African word. Hanno's gorillas could have been chimpanzees that still flourish in Sierra Leone, 13 or even pygmies; who knows? We know only that there is no proof whatsoever that Hanno's "gorillas" have anything to do with the silver-backed, pensive, primates we see from time to time on the National Geographic and Discovery channels. On the basis of the little substantial evidence presented in the Periplus and by its interpreters, it appears that Hanno sailed as far as Sierra Leone, within 8 degrees of the equator. His epic voyage is therefore of no consequence to our story, but that odyssey was no hogwash. Hanno traveled over 3100 miles away from home, there and back, and that's by all conservative accounts. He went far beyond any person before him. It took the Europeans nearly 2000 years to repeat that feat, when the first Portuguese caravel reached Sierra Leone in 1460. In one summer Hanno discovered more of the West African coast than all the Iberian sailors of the late Middle Ages did in 150 years. Unfortunately he had no successors, and his daring voyage turned into a mere footnote in man's history book. So, who should be considered the first across the equator, leaving a significant impact on the history of man? The Portuguese? Perhaps, but

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let us check China first. Weren't the Chinese ahead of Europe in everything, from the invention of the magnetic compass, to gunpowder, to paper money, to porcelain, to chopsticks? They must have tried to explore the world too. Didn't they? Well, as in any good story, the answer is intertwined in fact and fiction. The fact is that they apparently did. The fiction is in the astounding details that cannot be verified. It all stems from two inscribed stones erected in 1431 at the Palaces of the Taoist goddess Celestial Spouse at Chiang-su, in the Fujian Province, and in Liu-Chia-Chang, south of Shanghai. The stones— rediscovered in 1930—were put up by Admiral Zheng-He, formerly spelled Cheng Ho 1 4 and nicknamed Ma Ho San Bao, to commemorate his life and achievements. Zheng—of Moslem parentage—was the chief eunuch 15 of Zhu Di, the third Emperor of the Ming Dynasty (reigned 1402-1424). Among other details, the inscriptions tell the story of seven naval expeditions that allegedly took place between 1405 and 1433, under Zheng's command, "to more than three thousand countries, large and small." The story goes that Zheng left in 1405 in charge of "a fleet of more than one hundred ocean-going junks, including 62 'treasure ships,' manned by 27,800 sailors and soldiers." The fleet allegedly brought back a great deal of goods, including a live East African giraffe that was presented to the emperor on November 16, 1416. If true, this would make it the largest and longest naval expedition in history—over 46,000 miles, nearly twice round the world. In between there were six more similar major expeditions—plus some minor ones—comprising "hundreds of ships, including 250 of the "treasure ship" type, and tens of thousands of sailors and soldiers." While the principal author of this book is experienced at warding off sensational theories of early discoveries 16 that appear from time to time to the joy of greedy and/or naive publishers, he has no intention of debating here the pros and cons of the China speculation, mainly because he does not know enough about it. However, he feels that the reader should be aware of the following facts. One cannot escape the similarities in the stories of Admirals ZhengHe and Hanno: inscription on tablets; Hanno allegedly commanded 60 vessels and 30,000 persons; Zheng-He had 62 "treasure ships" and 27,800 people. Nearly identical figures! There was a difference in the equipment, though. Hanno's major ships were 125-foot-long pentecont-

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ers, while each of Zheng's 62 "teak-and-mahogany 'treasure ships' was roughly 475 feet long, 193 feet wide and held 1000 crew." Records show that the largest wooden-hulled sailing ship ever built in the West was the 329-foot 6-inch-long, six-mast schooner Wyoming.17 She was of 6004 deadweight tons, and her length-to-breadth ratio was 6.58, unlike the unheard-of and impossible ratio of 2.46 for the Chinese ships, which would make every naval architect laugh out loud. Even Noah, whose engineering and design skills preceded those of Zheng's "treasure ships," by thousands of years, was a better naval architect. The dimensions of his ark were—in accordance with Genesis 6:15—length 300 cubits, breadth 50 cubits, and depth 30 cubits, very similar to the proportions prevailing today in the shipbuilding industry. A recently published book 18 brings Zheng's story to light and alleges that his fleets reached not only Southeast Asia, but also the shores of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, East Africa, and very far beyond. On some voyages, it is asserted, the fleets were split into smaller units that reached the east and west coasts of North and South America, the South Pacific, and Australia. The Chinese allegedly crossed the equator seventy-five years before the Portuguese, discovered America seventy-two years before Columbus, and were the first to circumnavigate the world, a century before Magellan-Elcano. There is no mention, yet, of landing on Antarctica and raising the Ming flag over the South Pole. The way things are going, one should not be surprised should such claims surface soon, with "new evidence" now being fabricated. The story, or really the legend, naturally attracted the attention of the press and of television in particular. These shallow media organs are always hungry for headlines, have no time to verify details, and do not wish to be encumbered by the facts. While there is no doubt that China could have sent a number of ships to explore the western Pacific and Indian Ocean in the fifteenth century, or even much earlier, many questions about the events described above remain unanswered. First, how come fleets of hundreds of ships, manned by tens of thousands of sailors and soldiers, with the intention of "impressing and intimidating foreign rulers," left no impact on any of "the 3,000 countries, large and small" that they visited, or on the ships they encountered at sea? How is it that they did not leave behind any local stories in foreign lands, no artifacts, no shipwrecks? 19 The alleged terms of reference for the emperor's ships were "to sail the oceans of the world and chart them." That made it the world's greatest ever mapping assault. So where

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are the charts? World libraries are monuments to the work of European and Arab cartographers since the age ofJesus Christ, but one cannot find a single 600-year-old Chinese map or chart. That is quite odd, to say the least. Let us look now at some of the hardware allegedly used on those magnificent voyages. We are told that a fleet of 250 gigantic "treasure ships" constituted the explorers' flagships. They are described as timber-built, nine-mast vessels, 475 feet long and 193 feet wide. Ignoring for a moment the nonsensical length-to-breadth ratio, modern ships of this length, having the proportional 70-foot breadth, are of about 18,000 tons deadweight. 20 If one could build them 193 feet wide, their deadweight would be over 40,000 tons and their weather decks as large as those of aircraft carriers! How could anybody build by hand wooden ships of that size, especially in the fifteenth century? Why should anybody be interested in such enormous vessels? Were they suitable for the meager overseas trade of the period? How were they rigged and maneuvered? Where are their remains, their drawings, their pictures? We are also told that at the time, China was not seeking conquests, but was only after trade. So why ship "tens of thousands of soldiers" all over the world? Did any proponent of that Chinese fantasy consider the logistical problems of operating such ships and fleets? How could they store drinking water and provisions for 27,800 persons aboard sailing vessels on cross-ocean, intercontinental voyages? What about sanitary, catering, health, and other facilities? The curtain fell on that Chinese penetration into the world—as we are told—at the time of the fifth Ming emperor, Hsuan-te (reigned 14251435), who succeeded the one-year reign of the fourth emperor, Hunghsi. The Court turned isolationist and lost interest in the outside world. Moreover—according to Menzies—mandarins opposing maritime expansion destroyed each and every written record of those epic voyages, "in order to nip in the bud of any dangerous attempt to begin those explorations once again." Quite a convenient end to a science fiction story told in reverse, wouldn't you say? So, with all due respect, as with the case of Hanno, we cannot crown the Chinese as the first northern hemisphere sailors to meet Neptune Rex, King of the Seas, in his equatorial dominion. We shall have to look elsewhere, in a less controversial paddock, and closer to home.

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Portugal's maritime thrust along the coasts of Africa—and toward the equator—in the early fifteenth century, heralded the dawn of Europe's Age of Exploration. The prime mover who devised and implemented the strategy of maritime expansion was none other than the infante (Prince) Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), the third surviving son of Portugal's King John I and Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. The history books glorify the infante for being a person of high influence, very much interested in ships, sailors, and faraway lands. We are told that his greatest achievement was establishing and running the world's first center for navigation studies, at Sagres, on Portugal's southwestern coast, adjacent to the famous landmark Cape San Vincent. It was regarded as a top-of-the-line institution, where the prince assembled the world's best geographers and navigators, for the purposes of research and teaching Portuguese captains the secrets of the art of path finding at sea. Navigation, it should be remembered, was at that time more of an art than a science. Prince Henry, according to all scholars, personified a watershed of history. He is credited with closing the door on the Middle Ages and opening the Modern Age. This assessment of the prince is only one facet of the story, for it does not consider his motives. Henry was a shrewd and ruthless businessman. As we shall soon see, his major motive was greed.

Figure 13.4 Macau postage stamp (issued March 4, 1994) featuring Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), the spearhead of European overseas colonization. Source:

Copyright Fundagdo Portuguesa Communicagoes. By permission. Image provided courtesy of DiedrikA. Nelson, Sioux Falls, SD. http://www.danstopicab.com.

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Europe's first Modern Age colonial push into Africa took place in 1415, when Portugal successfully attacked the Moorish port of Ceuta, now a Moroccan town on the Strait of Gibraltar. That conquest proved to be the first stepping-stone toward forming the great Portuguese overseas empire. The twenty-one-year-old infante distinguished himself in that battle, was knighted, and was made Duke of Viseu. All that was quite nice, but it was not enough for the ambitious prince, who knew he had zero chance of reaching the throne, and who was therefore looking for other opportunities. He was after something big— and he found it. In 1420 he was appointed the Grand Master (governor and administrator) of the Order of the Knights of Christ. 21 Although paper money did not yet exist in Europe, 22 within a few years the infante turned his position into a license to print money. Europeans have traded with Black Africa since Roman times, using trans-Sahara caravans that ran from Timbuktu to the Mediterranean. That lucrative trade was entirely in the hands of the Arabs. Prince Henry was quick to realize that carriage by water would be much cheaper, and monopolizing it would make Portugal—and him—very rich. His first step was to obtain exclusive access to shipping routes, and that he achieved by getting the Holy See on his side. Playing up his experience fighting the Moslems in Ceuta, and waving the flag of the Order of the Knights of Christ, it was easy for Prince Henry to convince Pope Martin V (1417-1431) that the penetration he was contemplating into Africa would be, by and large, religious. It would all be done for the glory of Christ and his faith, under the personal charge of the Grand Master of the Order himself. What could have been better than that? The Pope granted the Prince the right of presentation to all ecclesiastical benefits to be founded beyond the seas, together with the complete jurisdiction and disposal of church revenues that would be generated in those areas. The Vatican was the guardian of the imperialist frontier between the two Iberian adversaries, Portugal and Spain. In 1454 Pope Nicholas V reaffirmed Pope Martin V's bull (papal order) and gave Henry the Navigator another bull—virtually a divine right—for exclusive trade with West Africa "to help western Christendom against the Saracens, and subdue the pagans left untouched by Islam." The term "subdue" did not preclude slavery, but clearly excluded Moslems. The fight with the Moslems was put on the back burner. The Pope knew very well how far the Christian world could go just one year after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans.

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Prince Henry commenced his maritime business ventures—using Order of the Knights of Christ's funds—by sending ships from Lisbon in various directions. His captains discovered the Azores (1433), colonized Madeira, made a claim to the Canary Islands, but still could not go beyond Cape Bojador in West Africa. That cape is situated just south of the Canaries, in latitude 26° 28' north, and it was regarded at that time as the edge of the known world, with boiling seas and monsters beyond it. All attempts to round it had been foiled by unfavorable winds, currents, shoals, bad visibility, and fear. Gil Eannes, one of Henry's best captains, returned from yet another fruitless attempt in 1433, declaring the cape as insurmountable. 23 Henry exploded and sent the captain—who had started his career as Henry's household servant and shield-bearer—back to sea again and ordered him never to return to Portugal before rounding the cape. The prince's no-nonsense attitude worked brilliantly. Eannes not only sailed around the cape in 1434, but he also proceeded 200 miles south of it. He returned home to Lisbon with flying colors. The mental barrier was shattered forever. Nothing could have stopped Portugal after that, and within 100 years it became a world-class power with an empire to match. Exploration entered high gear in 1441, when Nuno Tristao and Antao Gongalves discovered the Mauritanian coast and laid the foundations of maritime trade with Africa. Returning to Lisbon later that year, they brought with them the first cargo of slaves from Rio de Oro. Portugal did not need the middlemen of Tangier anymore; the Order of the Knights of Christ presented it with its own slave market. Within a few short years the Dark Continent yielded gold, spices, ivory, and its most profitable commodity—an endless supply of slaves, slaves, and more slaves. The Portuguese were also quick to cash in on the large demand for sugar by growing sugar cane, manufacturing, and marketing that much-soughtafter commodity. Very soon exploration proved to be a highly lucrative venture, especially for the Order of the Knights of Christ and for the infante himself. In 1454 Henry changed his marketing mix. He sold the right to make two trading voyages to the upper Guinea Coast to the Venetian merchant Alvise da Cadamosto for a handsome fee. That arrangement worked out pretty well, and it was repeated in later years with other merchants, under somewhat revised terms. The monarchs and the business community loved it. There was money to be made for everybody, and the push south, along the coast, was put into higher gear. The profits

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from Henry's ships and leases went to the Order, and in 1460, just before Henry died, King Afonso V granted the Knights of Christ a huge prize—a five percent levy on all merchandise imported from the new African territories. That became a large, steady source of income, over and above leasing and other fees. The Order's ship finally came home. After Henry's death in 1460 the Crown took over the rights for trade with West Africa and continued leasing trading rights to businessmen. In 1469 it entered into an agreement with the wealthy Lisbon trader Fernao Gomes, by which—in consideration of the Crown giving Gomes exclusive trading rights for five years—Gomes undertook to pay the Crown an annual fee of 200,000 reis, to share his profits, and to explore 100 leagues of new coastline every year. Among Gomes's famous captains and discoverers were the Gulf of Guinea veterans Joao de Santarem, Pedro Escobar, and Lopo Gongalves, of whom we shall soon hear. Gomes's ships were the first to cross the equator. 24 By the time Prince Henry died, his business associates and proteges had explored the coast as far as Sierra Leone, inadvertently following in Hanno's steps. Off Cape Verde they altered course from south to southeast, to east, and followed the direction of the coastline. In 1461 they reached the Gold Coast (today's Ghana), and in 1472 Benin (in today's Nigeria). 25 Hugging the coast of the Gulf of Guinea enabled the sailors to still see the fading Northern Star, ebbing 4 to 5 degrees above the horizon. By then they were getting used to the southern heavens, particularly to the magnificent constellation of the Southern Cross. Traversing the equator was imminent. That event took place upon the discovery of the island of Sao Tome (latitude 00° 00' 30" north, longitude 06° 32' east) in late 1471. The discoverers were none other than Gomes's Joao de Santarem and Pedro Escobar, who ten years earlier had been the first to set foot on the Gold Coast. They reported that the island was uninhabited, had areas of extremely fertile volcanic soil, and enjoyed good rainfall. The first settlers, mainly convicts and exiled Jewish children and teenagers abducted from their families in Portugal, were shipped to Sao Tome in 1493. Ten thousand slaves were brought over from the adjacent mainland to work the sugar cane plantations, while the authorities turned the island into a large entrepot for the thousands upon thousands of slaves they shipped out of Angola and the Congo. The sweat, toil, and tears of those slaves turned Sao Tome, and the neighboring island of Principe, into one of the most prosperous cash cows in the Portuguese Empire. 26

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Some scholars contend that because the southern tip of Sao Tome does not touch the equator—it is situated half a mile north of it—and as there is no concrete evidence that Santarem and Escobar actually circumnavigated the island, there is no proof that those two great sailors did indeed cross the line. To those skeptics, the first European to enter the southern hemisphere was Lopo Gongalves, who—at Gomes's service—reached Gabon's Cape St. Catherine in 1474. That cape is situated in latitude 1° 53' south, longitude 9° 19' east, and therefore there is no doubt that Gon^alves is definitely our man. He was the first European of the Modern Age to undoubtedly cross the line on a southbound voyage along the African coast. Period. Lopo Gon^alves did not bequeath much of a legacy of his activities in the southern hemisphere. He ventured forty leagues beyond the equator, and he left no impression on that coastline, nor did those jungle shores impress him. He reached Cape St. Catherine, had a good look-see to port and starboard, and turned back home. There was quite a voyage ahead of him— long and difficult. He knew his caravel could not go against the trade winds and the Canaries Current, and that after taking fresh provisions in Tenerife he would have to tack northwest, all the way to the Azores, and then run east for Lisbon's Tagus River—a very long sail indeed. We believe it is appropriate to conclude our tale of the pioneers who traversed the equator aboard their light ships by telling the story of Gongalves's successor, Diogo Cao, who in 1482 continued exploring the Gabon coastline. Cao was the first Portuguese to sail up the River Congo and down the coasts of Angola and Namibia, 1500 miles south of the equator. The background for Cao's mission was the new geopolitical situation in Europe after the fall of Constantinople (1453), whereby the hostile Turks cut the overland supply lines of spices to the Christian world. King Afonso V rested on the laurels of the trade with West Africa, and exploration during the last seven years of his reign fell by the wayside. Things changed practically overnight when his son, King Joao II (1481-1495) succeeded his father on the throne. Joao—while taking his first steps toward firmly establishing his autocratic monarchy—personally sponsored exploration, rather than simply granting licenses to members of the Lisbon oligarchy. He wasted no time, and in early summer 1482 he sent Diogo Cao— also known as Diogo Cam—on two consecutive voyages to the unknown south. The king knew Cao from way back and, though he was a commoner—both his father and grandfather before him were faithful ser-

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vants in the royal family's household—he trusted the thirty-two-year-old captain. On both voyages Cao took with him two engraved stone pillars surmounted by the cross of the Order of the Knights of Christ and carved with the royal arms. He intended to erect the pillars on prominent landmarks, as a symbol of Portuguse proprietorship of the lands he would discover and claim for his king. After a short stopover for stores and supplies at Elmina, on the Gold Coast, the course was set for Cape St. Catherine, where the ship resumed exploring the coast of Gabon. In May 1483 Cao discovered the mouth of the River Congo, where he erected his first pillar marker, padrdo in Portuguese, to mark the overlordship of his country. 27 He named the river Rio Poderoso, that is, Powerful River. 28 He then sailed south as far as Cabo de Santa Maria, in latitude 13° 25' south, where he put up the second padrdo, which is now displayed in Lisbon's national museum. He returned to Lisbon in April 1484 with four captured Congolese, including a local chief named Nsaku. 29 The king rewarded Cao for his discoveries, paid him handsomely, knighted him to the rank of Cavalier in the Royal Household, authorized him to add two pillars to his coat of arms, in memory of those he had erected, and in 1485 sent him back on a second voyage. His orders were short: Go south, young man; go south! He did, taking the hostages back home with him. 30 Cao ventured upstream into the Congo for a distance of almost thirty leagues (ninety nautical miles) until the cascades of Yelala and carved there a caption on a prominent rock face, reading: "thus far did the ship of the illustrious King John of Portugal come," and named himself and two of his officers. He then turned south and erected two more pillars. The last one's inscription reads: Since the creation of the world 6684 years have passed and since the birth of Christ 1484 years and so the illustrious Don John has ordered this pillar to be erected here by Diego Cao, his knight. It was placed on Cape Cross, on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, in latitude 21° 50' south. That was the farthest the king's knight had ever reached. It seems that after that Cao disappeared for good. There is no further documentation about him, except for a notation in the legend of the 1489 Map of the World published in Florence by German cartographer Henricus Martellus Germanus, 31 stating that Cao died aboard his ship

Figure 13.5 Diogo Cao erecting his padrao at the mouth of the Congo River, 1483. Source: Painting by Domingos Rebelo, 1945. Assembleia da Republica de Portugal, Arquivo Historico Parlamentar, Colectio do Museu, MUS 839. By permission.

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off Cape Cross and was buried not far from his padrao. On the other hand, Joao de Barros, Portugal's most acclaimed historian—and senior mandarin (1496-1570)—wrote that Cao returned to the Congo and took with him a native envoy to Portugal. There is no record, though, that he ever made it home. What a sad end to a young self-made man and a great explorer. History cannot recall when he died, where he died, how he died, or even where he was buried. What a shame! The curtain refuses to fall on Cao's drama. In 1884 Bismarck's Germany took the first steps to turn Namibia—then known as South West Africa—into a German colony that lasted until World War I. In January 1893, after proudly facing the South Atlantic Ocean for 408 years, Cao's padrao was stolen from Cape Cross. It was removed from its foundations by Captain Becker, the commanding officer of the Imperial German Navy's light cruiser Falke, and taken to the Oceanographic Museum in Berlin. Kaiser Wilhelm II, in his great kindness and grace, ordered a replica to be presented to the natives and erected in situ.32 This replica featured the Cao coat of arms and the original Portuguese and Latin inscriptions, but the Germans could not resist adding their own coat of arms on one of its faces with an inscription, in German, reading: Erected by order of the German Kaiser and King of Prussia Wilhelm II in 1894 at the place of the original which has been weathered through the years. Weathered through the years, but it was good enough for the Berlin Oceanographic Museum. . . In recent years Namibia has approached Germany several times requesting the return of Cao's pillar to its original site, but in vain. The last approach was made in 1998, with an appeal to feature the padrao in the Namibian pavilion of Lisbon's Expo 98.33 According to press reports, the German government has never replied to Namibia's Foreign Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab's written request. A replica pillar was displayed in the Lisbon exposition and—as far as Germany is concerned—Namibia should be more than happy with the present its people received from the benevolent Kaiser. This attitude is just another proof of this nation's relentless talent for tactlessness. 34

Figure 13.6 World map by Henricus Martellus Germanus, Florence, 1489. Legend at bottom left refers to Cao's death. Source: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. By permission.

End of Story The end of the matter; all has been heard. Ecclesiastes 12:13

Personal Comments by the Principal Author This book is a modest tribute to some of the great sailors and scientists whose perseverance, courage, and endurance made me, and many thousands of boys before and after me, beam our aspirations beyond the horizon, succumb to the lure of the sea, and sail away to pluck our dreams. Some of us were luckier than others. I was a shipmaster at twenty-five, and I fortunately sobered up after six years in command, to realize that in the second half of the twentieth century captains could no longer wed their passengers, nor hang mutinous crew members from the yardarm. There was no more fun in the job. Ships became nothing more than huge floating transport depots, rolling from A to B, and generating no real joy for those who drove them. Seagoing had lost its magic. Gone forever were the days of "join the navy and see the world." A young person who wanted to get away could fly around the shrinking world for $1500, sometimes for less. Serving aboard merchant ships became a waste of time, indeed a waste of life for the unfortunate ones who did not read the writing on the bulkhead and stayed on the bridge, or in the engine room, too long. The daring ones grabbed the bull by the horns, changed the course of their life and steered ashore, toward a whole new world of tertiary studies, sciences, business, and normal family life. I became a mature university student—while working full time-and I enjoyed every moment of my studies, much more than did my young

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peers, who devoted a great deal of their hours to having a good time— and rightly so. Walking down the aisle of the university hall in the procession of my first graduation I reflected: Academic studies are like sex; both are wasted on the young. I had other reflections too—on my former career. I asked myself, for the first time, what made a thirteen-year-old village boy, who had never stepped onto a boat, yearn to become a shipmaster? It was the books and the movies—Jules Verne, Jack London, and Joseph Conrad. There were other writers too, who, in hindsight, have proved to be unworthy of reading. That I discovered much later. Too many authors and scriptwriters focused on the heroism and sacrifices of the explorers, but turned a blind eye to the fatal impact the European discoverers inflicted on the indigenous populations wherever they reached. I remember one book I could not put down at the age of twelve—short biographies of several great explorers and conquistadors. It was translated into Hebrew from Russian, and the title—redesigned by the translator—was the equivalent of World Expanders.1 My late father—who had read the book as a boy in its original version—pointed out to me that the conquistadors came in the wake of the explorers. "Colonization and slavery followed discovery and exploration as night follows day," he said. He also showed me that by transposing two letters in the Hebrew title of that book, it was transformed to the equivalent of World Destroyers, a title that, in his view, was much more appropriate to the aftermath of the Age of Exploration. I was not impressed. My childish thoughts were with the courageous navigators, who stood on the quarterdecks of their ships in westerly gales, scanning the misty horizons with their shiny brass terrestrial telescopes, and barking orders to change tack for another attempt to round Cape Horn. My first grandchild, Aylon Zechariah, had his third birthday when I was halfway through this manuscript. I hope one day he will become an explorer of life, like his grandfather, and I can't wait for the day when I can sit down with him and yarn about the great explorers. I shall tell him sea stories of men made of steel and sailing ships made of wood, of my own small-time adventures aboard radar-less Liberty ships fogbound in heavy traffic in the North Sea, of typhoons in the South China Sea, and of negotiating narrow West African creeks infested with shoals and crocodiles. My generation was lucky to go through the technological changes from hand steering by magnetic compass to satellite navigation, and I am not sure my grandson would ever appreciate the meaning of making

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landfall on New York's Ambrose lightship (decommissioned in 1968), after a sixteen-day, stormy Atlantic winter passage from Liverpool, England, without taking the sextant even once out of its polished mahogany box. He would point at the watch-cum-GPS strapped to his wrist and ask me: "Were your owners that stingy, grandpa, and you so poor, that you could not afford fifty bucks for this basic necessity?" Would I have an answer for him besides a kiss and big hug? At fifteen—if he would wish to spare the time—he would read some volumes from my private library and become amazed and amused at 2500 years of astronomy, geography, and cartography. He would never comprehend the superhuman efforts that were invested in crossing the equator, measuring a meridian, determining the longitude, and reaching the "International" Date Line. It took humanity about 2200 years, between outlining the concept of meridians and calculating the longitude. The world finally achieved uniformity in the geographical and navigational fields because of superior U.S. technology, the leadership the Americans exerted in the Washington 1884 Meridian Conference, and U.S. support of the United Kingdom—in spite of France and its heelers. It took humanity over 5000 years to come to a uniform system of weights and measurements, though without universal agreement. The United States, the greatest economic and military power ever, still goes it alone, only partly supported by its staunch ally, the United Kingdom. This situation will not change in the foreseeable future. Europe can scream until it's blue in the face, but the United States will carry on leading the world—unmetric. Does this book convey any message? Yes, a message of hope, the prayer that the devotion and the courage of its protagonists, from Flamsteed to Elcano to Isabel Godin, to name but a few, will filter through to our descendants. Geographical exploration of planet earth is practically over, finished, done with, but the frontiers of space, medicine, biology, and other sciences are still endless. They are waiting for Aylon Zechariah and his generation, who no doubt will perform just as well as their ancestors, if not better.

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Notes

Introduction 1. The last (1996) known address of the International Flat Earth Society was P O Box 2533, Lancaster, CA 93534. Phone: 805-727-1635. No fax, no e-mail. Readers are invited to join, although it seems the society is presently inactive. 2. According to salvage industry sources the debris of the Titanic—found September 1, 1985—is spread out over a relatively large area, but the primary pieces of the vessel are located at 41° 44' north and 49° 5T west (approx.). That is bearing 155.5° and 324 nautical miles off Cape Race Lighthouse. 3. This is how it is in Europe and in most of the northern hemisphere best part of the year. In the southern hemisphere the sun is also on the meridian at noon, but in general, it is toward the north.

Chapter 1 The Lemon or Orange Debate 1. Colbert established the Academie in 1666. In 1699 Louis XIV made it a royal institution under his protection and moved it to the Louvre. 2. Pythagoras (sixth century B.C.) was one of the first to hold that the earth and the universe are spherical in shape. He was no geodesist, though. 3. King Ptolemaeus III Evergetes appointed Eratosthenes director of the famous Great Library at Alexandria in 236 B.C. Eratosthenes became blind in 195 B.C. and committed suicide by starvation a year later. 4. 250,000 Greek stadia, which equate to 46,250 km. 5. The formula of the pendulum is t = 2%J\/ g, where t = period; 1 = length; g = gravitational acceleration. Unknown to Picard, g varies slightly with latitude, for the reason that—you guessed it—the earth is not a perfect sphere. 6. Picard's results were quite good. He calculated the terrestrial radius in Paris (latitude 49 degrees north) to be equivalent to 6372 km. Present measurements are 6378 km and 6357 km for the equatorial and polar radii, respectively.

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7. The earth is an oblate spheroid, of course, whose measure of polar flattening became more and more accurate over the years. That value was 1/230 according to Newton, 1/293.465 in Norie's Nautical Tables at the time the principal author went to sea in 1951, and 1/298.257 according to the Toronto Colloquium of the International Association of Geodesy, September 3, 1957 8. As the French call the Strait of Dover. 9. Cassini's geodetic-proposed foot was equal to 1/6000 of a minute and was identical to the ancient Greek foot. 10. A previous map, based on the work of Cassini I, Picard, and La Hire, that took place between 1676 and 1681 and included observations of eclipses of Jupiter's moons, was published by La Hire in 1693. The observations—and the map—corrected the difference of longitude between Paris and Brest from 8 degrees 10 minutes to 6 degrees 54 minutes. It practically slashed the area of the realm by one fifth. In 1682, upon hearing this, Louis XIV took delight in saying that he was ill rewarded for all the support he had given to his astronomers. 11. The Royal Society (full name: The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge) was established in 1660 and is the oldest continuously active scientific society in the world. 12. LeRoy, France's most eminent horologist (1717-1785), won in 1770 the Academie des Sciences's prize for his horloge marine (marine clock). Although his design was to remain in use for 200 years, he never produced a commercially viable timekeeper.

Chapter 2 Measuring a Meridian Mark I: What Is the Shape of the Earth? 1. By the end of the eighteenth century, France was the pioneer and world leader in geodetic surveys. Great Britain began its surveys only in 1784, and the United States in 1807 Needless to mention, notwithstanding its late entry, the U.S. achievements in this field are immense and unequaled elsewhere. 2. Another influential figure who pushed for those meridian-measuring expeditions was the highly influential Swedish scientist Anders Celsius, who happened to be in Paris at the time, as part of his four-year grand tour of Europe's scientific establishments. Celsius—whom we shall soon meet—was appointed a member of the expedition to the Arctic region. 3. Established in 1672 by Donneau de Vize as the Mercure Galant, it changed its name to the Mercure de France in 1728. 4. Louis XV ascended to the crown in 1715, at the age of five, and reigned until 1774. 5. The historical meeting between Henry Morton Stanley and David Livingstone in Ujiji (now Tanzania) in which the former greeted the latter with the famous words "Z)r. Livingstone, I presume," took place in November 1871. 6. Lima was founded as the City of Kings on January 18, 1535, by Francisco Pizarro, who was a member of the first European expedition to cross the Isthmus of Panama and to discover the Pacific Ocean (September 29, 1513).

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7. Louis Godin was elected a pensionary member of the Academie at the unusually young age of twenty-one as a result of compiling highly important astronomical tables when he was twenty. 8. In later years, both de Ulloa and Juan reached the rank of Captain in the Spanish Navy and had distinguished scientific and public service careers, as we shall soon see. 9. The Republic of Panama was carved from Colombia in 1903 in a peaceful U.S.-backed coup whose sole purpose was to guarantee U.S. control of the about-to-be-built Panama Canal. 10. Some indigenous communities suspected the expedition was after the lost treasure of Atahualpa, the last ruler of the great empire of the Incas (1502-1533). 11. Bouguer and La Condamine measured 3 degrees 7 minutes 1 second of the meridian, which amounted to approximately 176,940 toises. Godin and Juan measured 3 degrees 26 minutes 52.75 seconds of the meridian, which amounted to approximately 195,725 toises. The difference between the two measurements was approximately 7 toises, which is 13.6 meters, or 3.7 of 100,000. This is an exceptional result, not only for the primitive measuring instruments of the year 1740, but also for an early twentieth century work! Both final figures were later reduced to sea level. 12. That was the first-ever use of spherical trigonometry in geodesy. 13. It is impossible to quote a flattening figure from one arc alone, because it produces one equation with two unknowns—the two major radii of the earth. The minimum number of arcs required for that calculation is two. 14. San Marcos University (now Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos) is claimed to be the oldest university in the New World. It was set up as a Dominican seminary in 1551. 15. Maldonado was born at Riobamba, on the southern slopes of the Chimborazo (today's Ecuador), in 1704, and died in London, 1748. 16. Francisco was assassinated on June 26, 1541, by supporters of Diego de Almagro, his colleague-turned-enemy, whom Francisco had executed three years earlier. 17. Guadalupi & Shugaar (see Bibliography), as well as the Encyclopedia Britannica, describe that vessel as a brigantine. This is an error made by writers who are ignorant of ships and the sea. Brigantines came about only in the eighteenth century and were shipyard-built two-masted deep-sea sailing ships. Pizarro could have never turned out such a product, nor did he need one for his river navigation. 18. The Pizarro family adorned the annals of the destruction of South America with two more half-brothers. Juan died in battle against the Incas in 1536, and Hernando, who was Francisco's natural brother, was sent to Spain in 1539 to plead the latter's case against Almagro. He was jailed for twenty years and it is said he lived to a hundred. 19. This subject will be dealt with in Chapter 3: "The Pendulum Interlude." 20. That he later did. He became a great explorer and discoverer of flora and fauna, as well as an expert in Peruvian and Amazonian native languages. He

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published at least ten books in twenty-five volumes, including his own illustrations and maps. 21. See, for example, Searching for Isabel Godin by Celia Wakefield, Chicago Review Press, 1995, reviewed as "a haunting true tale of love." Also Die Liebe der Isabel Godin, by Peter Baumann, Langen Mueller Verlag, 2000. 22. Swedish for "the polar circle." 23. The French Academy—Academie Francaise—should not be mistaken for the French Academy of Sciences—Academie des Sciences. The former is a society concerned with maintaining the purity of the French language. Richelieu established it in 1635 and its membership is limited to forty "immortals" at a time. 24. Mme. du Chatelet (1706-1749) did much to free French thought from subservience to Cartesianism. She published many works, including the first French translation of Newton's Principia Mathematica, for which she specially learned English. She died in childbirth to Saint-Lambert—her last lover. At her deathbed were Saint-Lambert, Voltaire, and . . . her husband. How typically French! 25. Voltaire's influence no doubt assisted Maupertuis to become an "immortal." In later years, however, their relations soured and they became enemies. 26. Clairaut was the only one of his parents' twenty children to reach adulthood. He had a younger brother who, at the age of 14, read a mathematics paper to the Academie in 1730. This younger brother died two years later. Both boys were taught mathematics and sciences at home by their father. What a great family of geniuses the Clairauts could have been! 27. Originally, Celsius assigned 0 degrees to boiling water and 100 degrees to the freezing point of fresh water. After his death of tuberculosis in 1744 the scale was reversed to its present form. 28. In those days the term "astronomical observations" was used in its widest possible scope and included geographical measurements, meteorological observations, and so forth, disciplines that are nowadays not considered astronomy. Indeed the invention of the Celsius temperature scale was the result of Celsius's weather monitoring observations at a time when thirty-five different scales were in use. 29. The dates in Sweden, as in all chapters of this book, follow the Gregorian calendar. That calendar was twelve days ahead of the calendar in use in Sweden and Finland at the time of the expedition. The Gregorian calendar was introduced in Sweden in 1753. 30. The Reaumur temperature scale was established in 1730 by the French physicist Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur (1683-1757). Its principle was that the freezing point of water was 0 degrees and its boiling point 80 degrees. While the Reaumur scale has been discontinued, it was never officially abolished in France in favor of the Celsius scale. 31. Le Comte de Maurepas was disgraced by the king in 1749, after a personal quarrel with Mme. de Pompadour. Louis XVI recalled him from exile upon his accession in 1774 and appointed him his chief confidential advisor. 32. Maupertuis's Principle of Least Action established that every activity or process in nature obeys nature's own principle of economy. For any activity, simple

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or complex, nature's infinite intelligence spontaneously and instantaneously computes which path will consume the least effort for that activity. 33. Different sources indicate different dates, including May 15 and December 14, both 1713. According to his Certificate of Baptism—which exists—he was born on December 14th and baptized on December 29th. 34. As was Sir George Everest (1790-1866), one of the world's greatest surveyor-geodesists, who measured the great arc from India's Cape Comorin to the Himalayas. Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world, was named after him in 1863. 35. The deviation to Rio was not as big as it may seem. To avoid the calms off the Gulf of Guinea, sailing vessels proceeding from Europe to the Cape of Good Hope used to bear very much west, toward South America, before altering course for the Cape. Pedro Alvarez Cabral, commander of a Portuguese armada sailing to India, under instructions drawn by the great Vasco da Gama, bore a bit too much to the west and discovered Brazil—claiming it for Portugal—on April 22, 1500. 36. Lacaille wrote in his journal that the original intention was to put in for repairs at Santiago, Cape Verde Islands. However, as Captain d'Apres could not establish their longitude correctly, they missed Santiago and had to proceed to Rio, 2700 nautical miles and eighteen miserable days in the doldrums away. 37. Parallax is the difference in direction of an object caused by a change in the position of the observer. Parallax is used in astronomy to calculate the distance to a celestial body. Hiparcus was the first to determine the parallax of the moon in 150 B.C. His result was only 2% different from modern value. 38. J. R. Smith wrote: "Lacaille's results were vindicated and the original discrepancy found to be due to deviation of the plumb line." 39. Maclear wrote: "With his means, and in his day, Lacaille's result from 16 stars was almost identical with mine of 1133 observations on 40 stars made with a powerful and celebrated instrument." 40. His application for membership of the Royal Society is available in the archives. It has two citations, one in French, one in English. The former, dated Paris May 23, 1759, is signed by three French members, including our acquaintances, La Condamine (ex Peru) and Clairaut (ex Lapland). The English citation reads: "We, whose names are underwritten, concur in recommending Abbe de la Caille, as a man, whose merits and labours for the improvement of Astronomy are universally known, and therefore highly deserving of the honour of becoming a Member of the Royal Society" (Signed: M. Maty; Tho Birch; J a Short). 41. Note the relative position of the Russians and Englishmen in the original and the translated versions. In later editions the English title was simplified to Measuring a Meridian. 42. The USS Nautilus first went to sea under nuclear power in January 1955. 43. In Mills, D. L.,(1955). 44. The first one-and-a-half stage Atlas missile was fired full range in November 1958.

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Chapter 3 Measuring a Meridian Mark II: How Long Is One Meter? 1. "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." Charles Dudley Warner, 1890. Warner (1829-1900) was a friend, a neighbor, and a collaborator of Mark Twain. 2. In 1657 Christiaan Huygens of Holland successfully applied the pendulum, with its natural period of swing, to timekeeping, making possible the construction of fairly constant and predictable clocks. 3. The earth being an oblate sphere, her radius in Paris is shorter than the radius at the equator. Hence g is greater at Paris and 1 is longer. See the pendulum formula in endnote 5, Chapter 1. 4. The length of the pendulums at the equator and Paris were 439.15 lignes and 440.5597 lignes, respectively. A toise was divided into 864 lignes and was equal to 1.9490363 m. 5. The length of a minute of arc along a meridian varies from about 6046.4 feet at the equator to about 6107.8 feet at the poles, owing to the shape of the earth. Its approximate mean value of 6080 feet, being the value at latitude 48 degrees, is termed the Nautical Mile. 6. The difference of longitude (D. Long) between the two cities is 0 degrees 11.4 minutes. The difference of latitude (D. Lat) between them is 9 degrees 40 minutes, approximately 11% of the total distance from the pole to the equator. 7. The Terror did not spare even scientists. Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry was beheaded in May 1794 in the Place de la Revolution (now Place de la Concorde). The mathematician Lagrange said the day after that execution: "It required only a moment to sever that head, and perhaps a century will not be sufficient to produce another like it." 8. A three-volume original edition of this book was offered for sale on the Internet in July 2005, by abebooks.com, for the modest price of US$ 43,386.17 9. The original document is reportedly now in the Columbia University Library. Noted along the upper left corner of the letter are words, added by the Minister of War or his deputy, indicating the request was granted. 10. The National Convention dispersed the former Academie on August 8, 1793, as unrepublican. 11. See Adler's "The Measure of All Things" listed in the References. 12. In an e-mail to the principal author on December 17, 2002. 13. See Chapter 11, "The International Date Line and the Millennium." 14. The 1960 definition was based on the wavelength in vacuum of the 2pl05d5 radiation of krypton 86. The 1983 definition ignores the fact that the speed of light is affected by the gravitational field and is, therefore, probably not the final definition of the meter.

Chapter 4

From Hipparchus to Pulkovo

1. Ptolemy's maps are long on information obtained from dead reckoning and travelers' tales but short on accuracy and new scientific and cartographic data. There are also considerable contradictions between the maps and the text of the

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Guide. It is amazing that Ptolemaic-style maps were still published more than a century after Columbus, Magellan, and Elcano had disproved Ptolemy's conceptions. Some of his errors appeared in maps up to the nineteenth century. 2. It is conjectured that the Phoenicians discovered Madeira, although there is insufficient evidence for that. The Canaries have been known since Roman times. The name, Canaria, is mentioned in the writings of the Roman historian Pliny the Elder. Its origin is not in canary birds but, as Pliny puts it, from the multitude of large dogs [canes in Latin). 3. Both names are used in the text of this book. The French call it He de Fer. The name means iron in Spanish, Italian, and French, respectively. Since there are no iron deposits on the island, the origin of the name is unclear. It extends about 18 miles by 15 miles, and it is the smallest of the main islands of the Canary group. 4. Joan Blaeu was the second in a dynasty of cartographers. His most acclaimed project was the eleven-volume Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (or Atlas Maior, as it became known), first published in 1662. This work contained 3000 pages of text and almost 600 double-page maps. It was—and still is—the most extraordinary work within this category ever produced. The Blaeu printing house in Amsterdam's Gravenstraat was destroyed by fire a year before Joan's death. The few maps and plates that remained were dispersed gradually. 5. Compass variation is the maritime term. Scientists call it magnetic declination. It is defined as "the difference in direction between true north as determined by the earth's axis of rotation and magnetic north as determined by the earth's magnetism [Kerchove, p. 411]. 6. Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612) was the first in a dynasty of map publishers during the Dutch Golden Age of Cartography. He became a major publisher after republishing Mercator's Atlas in 1606. 7. With all due respect to the discoverer of the New World, it seems improbable that earlier Portuguese deep-sea navigators, who were engaged in routine observations of the Pole Star and parallel sailing, could have failed to observe the phenomenon. 8. Captain Joao de Castro (1500-1548) was the son of Alvaro de Castro, governor of Lisbon, and a pupil of the celebrated mathematician Pedro Nunes. He had a distinguished maritime career, rising to the rank of Commander of the Fleet, during which time he discredited the relationship between magnetic variation and longitude. He was also the first to note that iron objects onboard caused the compass needle to deviate. In 1548 he was appointed viceroy of Portuguese India, but several months later he died of ill health, at Goa, Portuguese India, in the arms of St. Francis Xavier. 9. Pulkovo village lies 11 miles south of St. Petersburg. The observatory that opened there in 1839 was completely destroyed in World War II, but it has been rebuilt to become Russia's chief astronomical establishment. Up to the 1917 revolution, all Russian maps were based on the Pulkovo meridian, which is 30 degrees 19 minutes 39 seconds east of Greenwich. 10. Laplace had one of the greatest scientific minds in history. A university student at sixteen, and a professor at Paris's Ecole Militaire at eighteen, he did

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outstanding work in math and astronomy. Napoleon appointed him Minister of the Interior and fired him after six weeks for "bringing the spirit of infinitesimals into administration." He then elevated him to the senate and later made him a Count of the Empire. 11. Charles Piazzi Smyth was an uncle of Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the legendary founder of the World Scouts Movement.

Chapter 5

Greenwich—The Ultimate Prime Meridian

1. Seller's milestone in British chart publishing was the Atlas Maritimus, a collection of sea charts made to order (1670). His English Pilot followed soon after that. In later years Seller was found guilty of conspiring to kill King Charles II, but was reprieved, possibly at the behest of the king's brother James, the Duke of York. He is credited with establishing the market for English-language maps and charts and encouraging the growth of the cartographic industry in seventeenth century England. 2. Topographic maps are called ordnance maps in the United Kingdom. 3. Flamsteed's regulator is on display at Greenwich, in the exact room it was used. 4. That was just a de facto Greenwich meridian, with no significance of a prime meridian, yet. 5. Halley observed the comet of 1682, now named after him. His calculation of the comet's orbit and prediction that it would return in 1758 was the first application of Newton's laws of motion. 6. Professor Sir Henry Savile (1549-1622) founded in 1619 prestigious chairs for geometry and astronomy at Oxford. His rationale for the chair of geometry was "because this discipline is almost totally unknown and abandoned in England." 7. The other famous Haley, Bill, the father of rock music—"Rock Around the Clock" (1955) and "See You Later, Alligator"—appropriately named his band The Comets. 8. Its next perihelion passage will be in the year 2061. 9. Stan the Statistician. 1998. See http://www.adweb.co.uk/stan/index.cfm?OurStan=7 10. Tea is a name for the main evening meal in England. 11. Aberration is an astronomical phenomenon in which the apparent position of a star in the sky does not correspond to its true direction from the earth. The discovery of aberration is one of the most important in the whole field of astronomy and provoked a succession of investigations that culminated in Einstein's theory of relativity. 12. Bradley never married and had no children. 13. Lord Frederick North, later the 2nd Earl of Guilford, had been in British politics since the age of twenty-two, when he was elected a member of parliament for Banbury. Appointed prime minister in 1770, he was responsible for the retention of the Tea Duty and the Coercive Acts of 1774, in response to the Boston Tea Party. The results are well known.

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14. Nelson became vice admiral on January 1, 1801, and in that campaign was second in command under Admiral Sir Hyde Parker. Nelson took no notice of Parker's signaled order to disengage from battle, by putting his telescope to his blind eye. Subsequently Parker hesitated to advance up the Baltic, a decision that was severely criticized by his superiors. He was fired and succeeded by Nelson within a month. 15. For the benefit of the young readers who were born into electronic calculators and have never seen one: a slide rule is a device for rapid calculations, consisting essentially of a rule with a sliding piece moving along it, both marked with graduated logarithmic scales. 16. More accurately: "Poverty iz the stepmother ov genius," Josh Billings: "Affurisms: His Sayings" (1865).

Chapter 6

Greenwich Goes International

1. A group of astronomers from Bologna then suggested Jerusalem as home of the prime meridian. Folly sometimes correlates directly with education. 2. They were, in alphabetical order: Austria-Hungary, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Great Britain, Guatemala, Hawaii, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Mexico, Netherlands, Paraguay, Russia, Salvador, San Domingo, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United States, and Venezuela. 3. San (Santo) Domingo is today's Dominican Republic. In 1884 it was under the cruel and corrupt rule of Ulises Heureaux, who was assassinated in 1899. In the voting on the seven final resolutions of the conference, San Domingo was the most negative. The tally shows: three ayes, one nay, and three abstentions. 4. Then under the reign of King Kalakaua (1874-91), elected as pro-American against the candidacy of Queen Emma, who was pro-British. 5. I am indebted to the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, for the original text of the conference protocols. 6. The London Times of October 15, 1884, reacted to that with typical British understatement: "We do that state no wrong in saying that its decision in regard to the question is likely to be of limited practical consequences." 7. At the same time France declined to refer to Greenwich Mean Time and used instead the term "Paris Mean Time retarded by nine minutes 21 seconds." 8. Which was wrong, of course, as the millennium started at midnight, December 31, 2000, and not at midnight December 31, 1999, as was celebrated worldwide. 9. France adopted the English word picnic and gave it its own spelling, to make it look French.

Chapter 7

1 984 Beats 1 884—GPS

1. And luxury it was! Just compare getting a ship's position, correct to within 3 feet at the flick of a switch, to shooting six stars with a sextant—only at twilight and when skies are clear—followed by elaborate thirty-minute calculations and plotting of position lines, all for one-mile accuracy, at best.

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2. Gilles Gantelet, spokesman for Loyola de Palacio, the European Commissioner in charge of Project Galileo. (International Herald Tribune, March 27, 2002) 3. WGS 84 is the reference frame used by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) for all its mapping, charting, surveying, and navigation needs. 4. Used-as a system, but it does not mean that most maps and charts are referenced to WGS 84 datum. 5. In 1989, WGS 84's prime meridian was congruent with the zero meridian of ETRS89 and together they defined the International Reference Meridian (IRM), which is practically constant at 336 feet east of Airy's prime meridian. 6. That is, 5.31 seconds of arc. 7. A datum (pi. datums) is set when land surveyors or geodesists take a spheroid and fix it to the earth at one particular point. A spheroid would be selected whose size and shape best fit the curvature of the area of the world in which they were working. As one moves away from this point, errors pile up and force the surveyor to switch to a different datum. When this happens, maps (or charts) no longer tie up. (Information received from United Kingdom Hydrographic Office-UKHO.) 8. Institut Geographique National, France's national mapping agency, is the equivalent of the U.S. Geodetic Survey and the U.K. Ordnance Survey. I G N was established after the defeat of the French Army in 1940, as a civilian replacement of the Geographic Service of the Armed Forces, created in 1887 9. Double scale longitude is an old French cartographers' practice. Charles Pierre Claret de Fleurieu (1738-1810) placed at the top of the English edition of his New General Chart of the Atlantic or Western Ocean and Adjacent Seas (London, 1777) two longitude scales: one based on Greenwich, the other on Paris. A third scale at the bottom of the chart shows time in hours and minutes, in effect another way of indicating longitude. He even marked off latitude, with its fixed reference points of the equator and poles, in two different scales. Latitude on the left-hand margin of the chart is measured in degrees, whereas latitude on the right-hand margin is expressed in marine leagues. 10. While day-by-day life aboard ships is usually run according to Zone Time, the chronometer and the radio station's clock always show UTC, or Z-time in navigators' jargon. The latter is also called Zulu Time or Zebra Time, using the phonetic alphabet. The origin of the term Z-time is from the way Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838)—astronomer, mathematician and author of The New American Practical Navigator (Newburyport MA, 1802)—divided and designated the world's time zones. His alphabetic designation labeled the segment of 15 degrees of longitude between 7.5 degrees west and 7.5 degrees east of Greenwich as zone Z. The time for that zone became known internationally as Z-time and is widely used by ships and aircrafts for navigation and communication. 11. A recent visit to Greenwich Observatory has shown that brass strips now mark the location of all four Greenwich meridians.

Chapter 8

Time and Tide Wait for No Man

l.Judah's King Ahaz Kings 20:11].

(743-728 B.C.) had a sundial fitted in Jerusalem [II

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2. The first important passenger railway, The Manchester and Liverpool, was opened in 1830. By 1838 there were in Britain 500 miles of track and eighty-nine railway companies. 3. The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) coordinates UTC. Readers will remember this institution from our discussion of the meter. 4. A time gun used to fire just as the ball dropped in St. Helena. One wonders how accurate the chronometer time was on that isolated and remote island without the verification by radio time signals. 5. Greenwich's contribution to finding the longitude at sea was not something to write home about. Its astronomical calculations were complex, sometimes inaccurate, and unsuitable for mariners. The longitude problem was eventually solved outside the scientific community, by Harrison's invention of the chronometer. On its first sea trial, an eighty-one-day voyage from England to Jamaica (1761-62), the prototype H-4 lost only five seconds. That was equal to the error of one and a quarter minutes of longitude (1' 15"). 6. The R G O (Royal Greenwich Observatory) now operates in Palma the ING (Isaac Newton Group) of three telescopes, the large 4.2-m W H T (William Herschel Telescope), the medium INT (Isaac Newton Telescope), and the small J K T (Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope). It also runs an array of smaller telescopes.

Chapter 9

The Paradox: Lost by Magellan, Found by Fogg

1. They came from nine countries, including one Englishman—master gunner Andrews, of Bristol. 2. The Treaty of Tordesillas (signed June 7, 1494) amended Pope Alexander VI's line of demarcation between Spain and Portugal from 100 leagues west of Cape Verde Islands to 370 leagues. Spain was given the world west of that line and Portugal everything east of it. Pope Julius II sanctioned the treaty in 1506. The line of demarcation on the other side of the globe was agreed upon in the Treaty of Saragossa (1529). 3. Magellan's objective was not to circumnavigate the world, but to reach the Moluccas going west, fill his ships with spices, and return home by way of the Pacific. It was the safest manner to avert the Portuguese, but also the longest, most difficult, and most perilous course. 4. More on Captains Joao de Santarem and Pedro Escobar in Part IV, "The Equator." 5. That coat of arms can be seen on the monument erected in honor of Elcano at his birthplace, the port of Guetaria, in the Basque country, on the shores of the Bay of Biscay. 6. Plus Ultra was the motto inscribed on the coat of arms of the monarch of the time, Carlos V (1500-1558). 7 In 1588 Drake was appointed a vice admiral under Lord Charles Howard of Effingham. His battle plans to attack the Armada before it left Spain were not approved until it was too late. He may have suggested the fireship attack on the Spanish ships at Calais, and he certainly played the leading role in the attack off Gravelines, which finally shattered the Armada.

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8. The Hoe is Plymouth's southern waterfront. It offers superb views across the natural harbor that is Plymouth Sound, all the way to Fort Bovisand in the east. Drake knew the tides that dictated the time of his departure, and he was therefore in no hurry to finish his game. 9. As was the tradition of the day, Doughty was allowed the courtesy of taking communion, and he and Drake dined together and reportedly were very friendly. Doughty prayed for the Queen and the success of the expedition and then knelt to place his head on the block. 10. A hind is the female of the deer, chiefly the red deer, in and after her third year. 11. Cape Flattery (latitude 48 degrees 23 minutes north ; longitude 124 degrees 45 minutes west) was named by Captain James Cook in March 1778. It is a wellknown sailors' landmark, as are Hawaii's Diamond Head and Bishop Rock in the Scilly Islands. 12. Francis Pretty, one of Drake's gentlemen at arms, wrote in his account of the voyage: "We found in her great riches, as jewels and precious stones, thirteen chests full of reals of plate, fourscore pound weight of gold, and six-and-twenty ton of silver." 13. The authenticity of a brass plaque discovered near San Francisco in 1936, allegedly recording Drake's landing there, has been questioned. Nevertheless, "Drake's Brass Plate" has become a prominent exhibit at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 14. According to Robert H. van Gent (see Bibliography), the earliest reference to the circumnavigator's paradox is found in the works of the Syrian prince and geographer-historian Isma'il Ibn Ali Imad ad-Din Abu I-Fida (1273-1331). Another early reference can be found in the works of French theologian-cumphysicist-cum-philosopher Nicole (Nicholas) Oresme (1322?—1382). 15. First published in the Saturday Evening Post, November 27, 1841, as A Succession of Sundays. 16. Translated from French by George Makepeace Towle.

Chapter 10

International Date Line—Truth or Myth?

1. See Admiralty Manual of Navigation, Vol. I. 2. The aircraft's speed would be approximately 1036 miles per hour, or 1.6 mach at 40,000 feet. 3. What is the date aboard a NASA shuttle that circles planet earth every 90 minutes? We shall leave this question to our readers to consider. 4. Today's Indonesia. 5. William Dampier (1652-1715), a buccaneer, shipmaster, and explorer, was the first to report this situation in his journal, after a stopover in the Spanish colonies of Mindanao and Guam, 1687. 6. That deal was, of course, the best purchase of real estate in human history. The price came to a fraction under two cents per acre. Just imagine the Cold War with the Soviets holding Alaska.

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7. As quoted in R.H. van Gent's paper (see Bibliography). Davidson was a very prolific scientist. He headed U.S. astronomical expeditions, charted the U.S. Pacific coasts and Alaska for navigation purposes, and published several books. 8. Robert Louis Stevenson settled in 1890 in today's Western Samoan island of Upolu. He lived at his estate Vailima (Five Rivers) with his wife Fanny—who was ten years his senior—his mother, stepdaughter, and stepson Lloyd Osbourne, with whom he collaborated on several novels. Stevenson gained the affection of the natives, who called him Tusitala—the storyteller—and he died at Vailima in 1894, age 44. 9. Their reported positions were: Byers Island, 28° 32' north, 177° 04' east; Morrell Island, 29° 57' north, 174° 31' east. 10. No offense! The principal author speaks from experience. He was a glorified trucker, too, in his younger years. 11. Bouvet Island—now known as Bouvetoya—was discovered on January 1, 1739, by the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lozier Bouvet, sailing aboard the ship Aigle. In spite of lying for ten days off the island, Bouvet was prevented by rough weather from circumnavigating, landing, and accurately charting the island's location. He therefore left unanswered the question of whether it was an island, or part of the fabled Southern Continent. Bouvetoya (latitude 54° 24' south, longitude 03° 25' east) consists of a single volcanic cone, 2560 feet high, and it has an area of 19.5 square miles. It is the most isolated piece of land on the earth's surface, and it was placed under Norwegian sovereignty on January 23, 1928. 12. Superseded by chart 4002 in January 1995. 13. That is the Swedish spelling. The authors located one such undated globe, scale 1:38,000,000, at Sydney, Australia. It was edited by a Dr. R. Neuse, assisted by Kartograf (cartographer) Cluther. For reasons unknown Mr. Cluther did not draw the date line on that particular edition. 14. I am indebted to Mr. Werner Bittner, the Archives Manager at Deutsche Lufthansa AG's headquarters, Cologne, Germany, for locating in his archives one such globe—used at the time by his company for publicity purposes. Mr. Bittner was quick to state unequivocally that Lufthansa was not the publisher of that globe and hence was not responsible for its contents. J R O (Joh. ROth) Verlag went out of business in 1991. If its business management was as good as its mapping, there is no wonder it disappeared practically without a trace. 15. The seat of the British government. 16. In February 1933, while trying to establish whether merchant ships could navigate the Northeast Passage, the Soviet icebreaker Chelyuskin, en route from Murmansk to Vladivostock, was crushed by pack ice not far from Wrangel Island. The crew and passengers—104 men, women, and children, including a two-year-old baby—were marooned on the ice. In a very complex operation, under most difficult Arctic conditions, seven Soviet airmen landed their small primitive aircraft on the ice and ferried away the ship's company, three or four at a time, 140 miles to safety. The seven were the first to receive the newly released medals of Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest Soviet award for distinguished service (April 16, 1934). Another recipient of that award was Ernst

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Frenkel, the Chelyuskin's Chief Radio Operator, whose dexterity in dismantling his equipment, and reassembling and maintaining it on the ice, contributed most to the successful rescue of his fellow mariners. Frenkel was the last to be plucked from the ice on April 9, 1934. A plan to save time by flying Russian pilots to Alaska and buying rescue planes there was rejected by Stalin. As far as he was concerned, if the rescue could not be an entirely Russian operation, the survivors would be left to die. The 118 submariners of the disabled Russian nuclearpowered submarine Kursk paid with their lives for this pig-headed attitude in August 2000, when their government declined Western assistance. While communism is dead and buried, the contemptuous Russian disregard for human life continues unabated.

Chapter 11 The International Date Line and the Millennium 1. Various sources date it to between the eighth and twelfth centuries. 2. It also seems to support observations made by Kepler about Matthew's dating of the Star of Bethlehem. 3. Terre Adelie lies between the meridians 136° east and 142° east. This high, ice-capped land was first sighted on January 20, 1840, by French Captain Dumont d'Urville, in command of the Astrolabe and the Zelee. He named it after his wife. It was brought under the sovereignty of France by a French decree of April 1, 1924. 4. The south magnetic pole—the point where a free compass needle will stand on end—is situated near the Adelie Coast. In 1998 it was in position 65° south, 139° east (approximately), about 1600 miles from the south pole. It presently moves about 4 miles a year in a north to northwesterly direction.

Chapter 12

Crossing the Line

1. According to tradition, a seaman who has crossed the equator is called a "shellback" or "trusty shellback." One who has not is termed "polliwog" or "wog" for short. 2. See more about King Solomon's sailors and the equator in Chapter 13. 3. See Navy's SECNAVINST 1610.2, available on the Web.

Chapter 1 3

Who Did It First?

1. The answer is, of course, 1/271 yards = 5.73 inches. An average-sized domestic cat, with its tail down, would make it. 2. Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Kenya, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo, and Gabon. 3. Those included the parallel of Alexandria and the one going through the Pillars of Heracles and the Island of Rhodes. It is worth mentioning that the 36th parallel cuts through those two locations, and Eratosthenes's latitude measurement was quite accurate. 4. In Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Would-be Nobleman) (1670), Act 2, Scene 4.

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5. The Hebrews' talent is estimated at about 94 pounds weight. The difference in weight was therefore 2820 pounds. That's a heck of a lot of gold! 6. The first circulating dollar coins were minted in 1794. In 1904 the mint ran out of silver, and production ceased until 1921. There was a similar stoppage between 1928 and 1934. The last circulating coins were minted in 1970. They contain 40% silver and 60% copper-nickel. 7. Reliefs on Hatshepsut's temple in Egypt's Deir el Bahari, in west Thebes, depict that expedition. Five ships with thirty rowers each are said to have brought back incense, myrrh, and other exotic merchandise. Punt, according to scholars, was either on the African side of the very bottom of the Red Sea, or on Somalia's northern coast, both well north of the equator. 8. Shophet in the Phoenician and Hebrew languages is a judge, hence Sefer Shophtim, The Book ofJudges, in the Old Testament. 9. Some of the "lines" are actually paragraphs. 10. At approximately the same time, Hanno's brother Himilco was sent on a voyage of exploration to Northern Europe and visited Brittany, Cornwall's Tin-land, and probably the North Sea. According to some scholars, Hanno and Himilco were the sons of the Shophet Hamilkar who commanded the Carthaginians at the battle of Himera, against the Sicilian Greeks, in 480 B.C. When that battle turned in favor of the enemy, Hamilkar, in a vain last effort to retrieve the situation, threw himself into a fire, hoping to be accepted by the gods as a scapegoat in place of his army. It did not prevent defeat. Himilco succeeded his father as shophet in 480 B.C. Hanno came into office about twenty years later. 11. It is perturbing to read an article on the Web, where a historian says: "Several commentators state that the number of 30,000 colonists, men and women, is a gross exaggeration, whereas it is perfectly reasonable." It makes one wonder whether the learned writer has ever set foot aboard a watercraft. 12. On May 28, 1999, Nauticos Corporation of Hanover, MD (since sold to Oceaneering International of Upper Marlboro, MD), located the Dakar lying at 10,000 feet. Her sail was later raised, together with some instruments. They are now displayed at Haifa's Naval Museum. 13. On the very same trip on which the principal author first crossed the equator, local traders operating from canoes in Sierra Leone's Freetown Harbor were offering foreign crews young chimpanzees for sale. The asking price was 30 cartons of cigarettes per head. The going price of an ordinary macaque-type monkey was one carton. 14. Prior to 1958, the Chinese government used the Wade-Giles system to transliterate Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet. After 1958 the government switched, and the rest of the world followed, to the pinyin system of transliteration. Since then China's capital city is called Beijing (pinyin) instead of Peking (WadeGiles) and Zheng-He (pinyin) instead of Cheng Ho (Wade-Giles). 15. The nickname Ma Ho San Bao meant "Three-Jeweled Eunuch," and it referred to the shrunken remnants of his severed testicles and penis that he carried in a jeweled casket beneath his cloak. Those manhood treasures were to accompany him to the next world where once again he would become a whole man. 16. See a critique of the book "The Secret Discovery of Australia", published in The Great Circle, Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History, Vol. 6, No. 2, October 1984.

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17. Percy & Small of Bath, Maine, built the Wyoming of yellow pine in 1909. She foundered with all hands aboard on March 11, 1924, east of Pollock Rip Lightship, MA. 18. 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, by Gavin Menzies, Bantam, London, 2002. 19. Many old wrecks have been found over the years, across the world, including those of ancient Phoenician, Greek, and Roman vessels. It is alleged that Emperor Zhu Di's fleet comprised over 4000 merchant and war ships, including more than 1600 new buildings. Amazingly, the remains of not a single Chinese ship of that era have ever been found. 20. For example, the Dutch m/v Maria Green, built in 1998, has a length of 469 feet, breadth 71 feet, deadweight 17,540 tons (Lloyd's Register of Ships, 2003-04). 21. The Order of The Knights of Christ sprang out of the Portuguese branch of the Order of the Temple (Knights Templars). In his bull (papal order) of 1323, Pope John XXII turned all the Templars' assets over to the new order. 22. The first paper money appeared in China about A.D. 700. The Bank of England was the first European institution to issue banknotes in 1694. 23. According to a letter written by Portugal's King Afonso V (reigned 1438-1481), dated October 22, 1433, as many as fourteen expeditions, sent between 1421 and 1433, had failed to conquer the cape. 24. When that lease expired, King Afonso V did not renew it. He preferred to keep the business in the family, and he granted the monopoly to his son, Joao (later King Joao II). 25. The Principal author remembers navigating the Escravos and Forcados Rivers on the way to the ports of Sapele and Warri in Nigeria, to load timber and palm kernels in the 1960s. Escravos and Forcados mean, in Portuguese, "slaves" and "hanged on the gallows," respectively. Those names lay bare what the "enlightened" Europeans, and the Portuguese in particular, were doing in Africa for many years. 26. Notwithstanding the introduction of cocoa, the islands' economy went into a deep decline in 1909, when British and German chocolate manufacturers boycotted the islands' produce on the grounds that the practice of employing indentured labor was virtual slavery. This took place forty-four years after the 13th amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery throughout the Union! Portugal had apparently not yet heard of abolitionism. 27. The exact location of that marker was Punta de padrao, also known as Shark Point, on the south bank of the river's mouth. The Dutch practically destroyed this pillar when they entered the Congo in 1642, but fragments still exist on location. 28. Since 1971 the river has reverted to its old name, Zaire, corrupted from the native name Zadi, meaning "great water." 29. Cao took the hostages only after local natives captured four of his own men. 30. In fact, he took only three. Nsaku, who was baptized in Portugal and was given the name Joao da Silva, was entertained at the royal household, and returned to the Congo only in 1490 with another explorer, Goncalo de Sousa. 31. Martellus worked in Florence with the map publisher-cum-engraver Francesco Roselli. An anonymous donor donated that 6-foot-by-4-foot map to the Yale University Library in 1961. A quarter-size handmade version is kept in the British Museum. This map follows the misconception that has existed since the time of Ptolemy, by which the distance by land between the edge of the west and the edge of the east is

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very long and therefore the distance by sea between Spain and Chipango (Japan) is very small—maximum 3500 miles. It is believed that Martin Behaim, the producer of the world's earliest extant terrestrial globe (Nuremberg, 1492), based his work on Martellus's world map. Columbus also used that map to convince his royal backers to support his voyages of discovery. Had the truth been known about the distance from Spain to Asia, Columbus would have never got under way. 32. There are in fact two stone crosses standing today on Cape Cross. The Monuments Council of South Africa decided that the German replica had been erected in the wrong place and that it was wrong not to have an exact replica of Diogo Cao's pillar. Therefore, a plaster cast was taken of the original (now housed in a Munich Museum), and a second padrao was constructed out of local dolerite. 33. Expo 98 took place in Lisbon from May 25 to September 30, 1998. 34. Barbara W Tuchman, The Guns ofAugust.

Epilogue 1. The original Russian title reads Stolietie otkrytii v biografiiakh zamiechatel'nykh moreplavatelei. It was written by Eduard Andreevich Granstrem and first published in Russia in 1893 (Library of Congress Control Number 54055190, Call Number G175.G67).

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Coast of Africa: http://www.win.tue.nl/~engels/discovery/africa.html Conquistadors: http://www.pbs.org/conquistadors/ Crossing the Line: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~lswartz/ crossing_the_line.pdf Degree Measurement by de Maupertuis in the Tornionlaakso Valley 1736-1737: http://www.rovaniemi.fi/lapinkavijat/maupertuis/information.html Etymology Dictionary: http://www.etymonline.com GPS: http://gps.faa.gov Greenwich Web Site: http://greenwich2000.com History of Geodetic Surveying in South Africa: http://w3sli.wcape.gov.za/Surveys/Mapping/svyhist.htm International Celestial Reference Service: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/ICRS_doc.html International Date Line: http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/idl/idl.htm International Earth Rotation Service: http://www.iers.org/ International Meridian Conference: http://www.greenwichmeantime.com/info/conference-finalact.htm

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Internet Sites

International Terrestrial Reference System: http://lareg.ensg.ign.fr/ITRF/ International Time Zones: www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/teaching/hm/projects/ international%20TimeZones.pdf Metric System-Chronological History: http://www.shaunf.dircon.co.uk/shaun/metrology/chronology.html National Geodetic Survey: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: http://www.noaa.gov/ Official U.S. Time: http://www.time.gov Order of the FCnights of Christ: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03698b.htm Ordnance Survey: http://www.ordnancesurvey.gov.uk Phoenicia Web Sites: http://Phoenicia.org/pics/proutes.html http://phoenicia.org/carthanewworld.html Prime Meridian: http://www.geog.port.ac.uk/webmap/hantsmap/meridian.htm United Kingdom Hydrographic Office: http://www.ukho.gov/uk/ U.S. Naval Observatory, Astronomical Applications Department, The International Date Line: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/international_date.html U.S. Naval Observatory, Astronomical Applications Department, First Sunrise of the New Millennium: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/first_sunrise.html Voyage of Hanno: http://www.metrum.org/mapping/hanno.htm WGS-84:http://164.214.2.59/GandG/tr8350_2.html

Index Page locators in italics indicate figures. The use of an n with a page number refers tonote a on that page.

Aberration, 198nll (chap. 5) Abu I-Fida, Isma'il Ibn Ali Imad ad-Din, 202nl4 Ab urbe condita dating system (A.U.C), 152 Academie des Sciences, xi, 11, 14, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 39, 42, 43, 45, 51, 54, 68, 69, 71, 75, 90, 194n23 Academie Francaise, 43, 194n23 Academie Royale des Sciences, Achille (ship), 59 Adams, J. C , and Universal Day, 106 Addington, Henry, 98 Admiralty, British, 141, 142, 146 charts, 112, 113 and date line, 144, 147-149 andWGS84, 111, 200nn3-5 Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in Southern Africa, The (Verne), 60-61 Afonso V (king), 181, 182, 206nn23-24 Africa. See also Meridian measurement activity, in Africa Congo, discovery of, 182-184, 183, 206n27 Hanno, circumnavigation stories of, 168-174

map of northwest Africa, 83 Namibia, colonization of, 184-185 Phoenician circumnavigation stories, 167-168, 169 Portuguese trade, 178-180 Sao Tome, discovery and settlement of, 181 Ahaz (King ofJudah), and sundial, 200nl Airy, Sir George Biddell, 57-100 and Astigmatism, 99 and Cambridge University, 98 and Greenwich Observatory, 99 knighthood, 100 poverty and education, 98 Alaska, date line change of 1867, 144 Alexander I, Czar, 59 Alexander VI, Pope, 201 n2 (chap. 9) Alexandria (Egypt), 59, 62, 191, 204n3 (chap. 1) Allotte, Sophie, 60 Almagro, Diego de, 193nl6 Amazon expeditions of Godin des Odonais, Jean, 40 of La Condamine, Charles Marie de, 30, 35, 36-37 of Orellana, Francisco de, 30-35

218 Amazon expeditions (continued) Portuguese control of river, 34 Amazonia, 29 Anaquito, Battle of, 35 Andrews, master gunner, 201 nl Angola, 181, 182 Anno Domini, counting errors, 152, 153 Antarctica, 21, 142, 155, 176 Antarctic Pilot, The, 146 Antarctic voyages, 156 Apparent solar day, 116 Arab cartographers, 177 Arab scientists, 84, 152, 179 Arctic, The. See Meridian-measuring expedition, to the Arctic Armstrong, Neil, 84 Around the World in 80 Days (Verne), 138-139 Arthur, Chester, President, 102 Asia, date line change of 1844, 143 Astrolabe (ship), 156, 204n3 Astronomer Royal. See under Great Britain Astronomical regulator, 92 Atahualpa (last ruler of Incas), 193nl0 Atlas Major, 197n4 Atlas Maritimus, 198nl Atomic clocks, 117-118 cesium, 117 Aurora, 46 Australian Antarctic Territory, 155 Axis of rotation. See Poles Ayala, Ana de, 34, 35 Azores, Islands, 84, 103, 180, 182 Ba'al Hammon, Temple of, 169 Baal, Robert, 26 Babbage, Charles, dismissal by Sir George Biddell Airy, 99-100 Baden-Powell, Sir Robert, 198nll (chap. 4) Ballard, Robert, 3 Bank of England, 206n22 Bao, Ma Ho San. See Zheng-He, Admiral Barbosa, Beatriz, 133-134

Index Barros, Joao de, 185 Battle of Copenhagen, 97 Beaumont, Bouthillier H., de, 102 Becker, Captain, 185 Behaim, Martin, 207n31 Benin, 181 Berger, Aylon A., 188, 189 Berlin Academy of Sciences, 17, 51, 52 Bessel, Friedrich Wilhelm, 76 Bestbier, Captain, 55 Biblical citations, of crossing the equator, 165-166 Blaeu, Joan, 197n4 Blair, Tony, 154 and third millennium celebrations, 153 Bliss, Nathaniel, 96 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 97 Bonaparte, Prince Charles, 42 Boston Tea Party, 198nl3 Bouguer, Pierre density of the earth, measurement of, 29 and La Figure de la Terre, 29 meridian measurements of, 49 Peru, meridian measurement expedition to, 23, 31 returning home, 30 Bouvet Island, 145, 203nll Bouvet, Jean-Baptiste Lozier, 203nll Bouvetoya. See Bouvet Island Bowditch, Nathaniel, and time zones, 200nl0 Boyle, Robert, 11 Bradley, James disputed papers, 96 and friendship with Halley, 95-96 and Oxford University, 96 prime meridian and British topographic surveys, 114 Bradley Line, destruction of positions, 114 Brahe, Tycho, 12, 86 Brazil discovery of, 195n35

Index and International Meridian Conference, 103, 104, 105 seizing territory from Ecuador, 23 unsuitability for meridian measurement, 22 Brigantine (type of sailing ship), 193nl7 British East India Company, 93 British Museum, The, 170, 206n31 British Nautical Almanac, 96-97 adoption of Universal Day by, 106 Burleigh, Lord (Sir William Cecil), 135 Byers Island, 144-145, 146-147, 203n9 Cabral, Pedro Alvarez, 195n35 Cacafuego (ship), 136 Cadamosto, Alvise da, 180 Calendar, Gregorian, adoption in Europe, 153 adoption in Great Britain, 153 adoption in Sweden, 194n29 Calendar, Julian, 144, 152, 153 Calendar line, 141 Cam, Diogo. See Cao, Diogo Cameroon, Mount, 172 Camus, Louis, 44, 45 Canada, time-zone system, 117 Canary Islands, observatory, 123-124 origin of name, 197n2 Cao, Diogo, 181-184, 183, 206nn29-30 Cape Cross pillar stolen, 185 death, 183, 185 erecting pillars, 183 first voyage, 182 in Namibia, 183 and River Congo, 182 second voyage, 183 and taking hostages, 183, 206n29 Cape Bojador, 180 Cape Cross, 184-185, 207n32 Cape Flattery, 202n 11 Cape Lopez, 172 Cape of Good Hope, 55, 81, 101, 129, 143, 168, 195n35 Cape St. Catherine, 182

219 Cape Verde Islands, 34, 84, 85, 130, 137, 181, 195n36, 201n2 Carlos V (king), 34, 132, 133, 201n6 Cartagena, 26 Carthage circumnavigation of Africa, 168-174 Northern Europe, exploration of, 205nl0 Cartography, 1. See also Maps the Amazon, early map, 35 double scale longitude, 200n9 Halley, contributions of, 95 lines of reference, fundamental, 164 mapping project of eighteenth century, 17, 18 Ptolemy's maps, 82, 83-84, 164 Carvajal, Gaspar de, 32 Casamayor y Bruno, Isabella de. See Godin des Odonais, Isabel, 38 Casamayor y Bruno, Pedro Manuel de, 39 Cassini, Alexandre Henri-Gabriel, 18 Cassini, Cesar-Francois (Cassini III), 16-17 Cassini, Giovanni D. (Cassini I), 14-15, 20,44 Cassini, Jacques (Cassini II), 15-16 Cassini, Jean Dominique, 74-15 meridian measurements of, 49 Cassini, Jean Dominique (Cassini IV), 17-18 Castro, Alvaro de, 197n8 Castro, Joao de, 197n8 Cathay, 85 Catholic Church counting of dates, role in, 152-153 Henry the Navigator, papal order for, 178-179 during the Middle Ages, 11 Celestial Spouse, palaces, Chiang-su, 175 Celsius, Andres, 45, 46, 192n2 and Celsius Observatory, 50 Celsius temperature scale, 45, 46, 194nn27-28, 194n30 Cesium clocks, 117-118

220

Ceuta, 179 Charles II (king), 87, 90, 122, 198nl Charles II, establishment of Astronomer Royal, 91 Charpentier, Suzanne Francoise, 17 Chatelet, Emilie du, 44, 51, 194n24 Chatelet, Marquis Florent du, 44 Chatham Islands, 147, 156 Chelyuskin (icebreaker), disaster and rescue, 204nl6 China alleged 15th century discoveries, 175, 177 equator crossing story, 174-177 and paper money, 175, 206n22 transliteration system, 205nl4 treasure ships, 175 Chinese 1421 fleet, remnants, 177 Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet, 205nl4 Chipango, 85, 207n31 Chirac,Jacques, 111 Chronometer, 201 n5 (chap. 8) accuracy, 119 Circle, types of, 3, 4 Circulus Urbanianus, 38, 84 Circumnavigation of Africa, first, 167 Circumnavigation of globe alleged Chinese, 176 date paradox, explained, 132, 137-138, 141-142, 202nl4 first, 9, 127-134 first by an Englishman, 133, 134-137, 201-202nn7-9,202nl3 loss/gain of 24 hours, 137 Clairaut, Alexis, 44, 45, 51, 194n26 Clermont (ship), 61 Coca River, 32, 34, 35 Cohen, William S., U.S. Defense Secretary, 162 Colley, Sir George, 62 Colombia, seizing territory from Ecuador, 23 Columbus, Christopher and double logbook, 85

Index magnetic variation, 84-85 and Martellus's World Map, 207n31 Columbus Jordglob, globe maker, 146 Compass, 84-86, 175, 188 Compass variation. See Magnetic variation Concepcion (ship), 128 Congo, discovery of, 182-184, 183, 206n27 Congo River, 182-185 Conquistador (ship), 25 Conquistadores, 31 Conrad, Joseph, 188 Constantinople, fall of, 182 Constellations of southern hemisphere, 55-57 Contarini, Gaspari, 132, 137, 141 Cook,James, 21, 101, 202nll Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), 88, 118, 200nl0 Coordinate systems European Terrestrial Reference System 1989 (ETRS89), 112 International Terrestrial Reference System 2000 (ITRS2000), 111-112 latitude/longitude system, 3 World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84), 109, 111-112 Copernicus (Nicolaus Kopernik), 11, 67 Coralie (Ship), 60 Creationists, 2 Crosthwait, Joseph, 93 Dakar, INS (Israeli submarine), 172, 173, 205nl2 Dalton,John H., U.S. Secretary of the Navy, 162 Dampier, William, 202n5 d'Apres, Captain, 55, 195n36 Date line, international Alaskan change of calendar date, 144 and British Admiralty, 147-149 definition of, 142 early charting of, 142-143 in fictional work, 138-139

Index explanation of (see Date paradox, of circumnavigation voyages) and International Meridian Conference, 103, 122, 144 is not international, 142 Kiribati, redrawing of, 149-150 map of history, 148 Philippine Islands, change of calendar date, 143 Samoan change of calendar date, 144 Tonga, history of, 154 Wrangel Island and, 147, 149 Date paradox, of circumnavigation voyages, 132, 137-138, 141-142, 202nl4 Datum (geodesy), 12, 54, 71, 112-113, 200n7 Davidson, George, 155, 203n7 Day, Apparent Solar definition of, 116 Mean Solar, 116-117 Sidereal, 116 Daylight saving time (DST) and Britain, 121 and the EU, 121-122 first adoption of, 121 history of, 121-122 and U.S. legislation, 122 Dead reckoning navigation, 81, 196nl Deceleration of earth's rotation, 118-119 Decimal system, of angular space and of time, 66, 105, 106, 107 Declination, Sun's, 92, 168 Deflection of the vertical error, 57 Delambre, Jean Baptiste Joseph, 70-72 and James Smithson, 74, 196n9 post-Metre des Archives career of, 74-75, 196n8 Del Cano. See Elcano, Juan Sebastian Denis the Small. See Exiguus, Dionysius Descartes, Rene, 11-12, 49 Dionysius Exiguus, Easter Tables of, 152 Dollar coins, 205n6 Doughty, Thomas, 135, 202n9 Drake's Bay, 136

221

Drake, Sir Francis, 133, 134, 201-202nn7-9, 202nl3 and California, claiming for Queen Elizabeth I, 137 death of, 137 and Doughty, execution of, 135 and knighthood, 137 and mutiny, 135 and the Pacific Ocean, entering, 135-136 and Plymouth, returning to, 137 and South American ports, sacking, 136 and Spanish ships, capturing, 135 Drouin, Vandeuil, Charlotte de, 17 d'Urville, Dumont, 156 Dutch East India Company, 22, 55 Eannes, Gil, 180 Earth density, measuring, 29, 99 Earth rotational time, 118-119, 121. See also Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) Ecuador, expedition to (see Peru, meridian measuring expedition to), 26 Peru, secession from 23 and the Province of Orellana, 35 Spain, independence from, 23 Effingham, Lord Charles Howard, 201n7 Elcano, Juan Sebastian, 9, 127-134 and bringing the Victoria home, 127 death, 133 second voyage to the Moluccas, 133 El Dorado, 31-32 Elizabeth (ship), 136 Elizabeth I, 134, 137 Ellipse, 10 Emma (Queen of Hawaii), 199n4 Encyclopedists, 11 England. See also Great Britain France, rivalry with, 11, 19-20 and the Industrial Revolution, 11

222 Equator, 2-3, 4 Carthaginian crossing of, 168 definition of, 157 and early cartography, 12, 82, 164 early crossing, Chinese, 174-179 early crossing, Hanno, 172-174 early crossing, King Solomon's fleet, 165 geographic location of, 163, 204n2 (chap. 13) Line Crossing Ceremony, 159-162 La Mitad del Mundo monument, 28 Phoenician crossing of, 167-168, 169 Portuguese crossing of, 180-181 Equator crossing ceremony, background, 159-162 and U.S. Navy, 162 Equatorial countries, 164-165 Equinox, 164 Eratosthenes of Alexandria, 12, 164, 191n3 (chap. 1), 204n3 (chap. 13) Escobar, Pedro, 181 Espinosa, Gonzalo Gomez de, 129 ETRS89, 112, 113, 114, 200n5 European union daylight saving time, 122 European Terrestrial Reference System 1989 (ETRS89), 112 Galileo system of GPS, 111 Evans, Sir Frederick, purging doubtful islands from Admiralty charts, 103, 146, 147 Everest, Sir George, 195n34 meridian measurement, role in, 57-58 Exiguus, Dionysius, and Anno Domini, 152 Easter Tables of, 152 Exotic animal trade, 205nl3 Expo 98, 185, 207n33 E'zion-ge'ber fleet, destruction of, 165 FAA, 112 Falke (cruiser), 185 Ferdinand VI (king), 30

Index Ferro. ^ H i e r r o Fighting women of the Amazon, 34 Fiji Islands, 155 Fitting sphere, relation to oblate spheroid, 16 Flamsteed, John, 90 and Cambridge University, 91 and Historiae Coelestis Britannica, 93 and King Charles II, 91 moving prime meridian, 92, 93 Newton & Halley, feud with, 93, 94 regulator, 92, 198n3 Flat Earth News, The, 2 Flat Earth Society. See International Flat Earth Society Fletcher, Francis, 137 Fleurieu, Charles Pierre Claret de, 200n9 Fleury, Cardinal, 21 Florida Occidental, La, 37 Fogg, Phileas, 127, 138, 139 Foot, geodetic, Cassini's, 192n9 Fortunate Islands. See Canary Islands France attempts to force metric system on other nations, 73, 74, 103 and common system of weights and measures with Britain, 68, 69, 74, 103 debating the shape of the earth, 11, 12, 13 early leadership in geodesy, 11, 12, 192nl first topographical map, 17 and Fulton's submarine, 61 Greenwich meridian, adoption of, 108 and implementing International Meridian Conference resolutions, 107-108 influenced by Rousseau, 68 Institut Geographique National, 200n8 and International Meridian Conference, 103-108 mapping project of eighteenth century, 17, 18

Index

223

measurement units, disparity of, 65-66 meridian measurements in, 16, 54 meridian-measuring expeditions of Louis Godin, 21-30 meridian-measuring expedition to the Arctic, 42-50 La Meridienne Vert, 108 metric system, development of, 69, 72-73 Paris, terrestrial radius in, 191n6 and prime meridian at Hierro, 86 rivalry with England, 11, 19-20 seventeenth- and eighteenth-century science, 11 sovereignty over Terre Adelie, 155, 204n3 topographic maps, 114, 200n9 and weights and measures, 65, 66, 68,72 Franklin, Benjamin, 115, 121 Frederick I (king), 46 Frederick II, and national observatory of Sweden, 86 Frederick the Great (king), 51 French Academy (Academie Francaise), 194n23 French Academy of Sciences. See Academie des Sciences

French Revolution, 71, 72, 196n7 Frenkel, Ernst, 203nl6 Frere, Sir Bartle, 62 Fulton, Robert, 61 Gabon, 22, 159, 168, 172, 182, 183 Galilei, Galileo, 66-67 Galileo system of GPS, 111 Gama, Vasco da, 195n35 Gasca, Pedro de la, 35 Gates, Bill, 60 Gaulle, Charles de, 65 Gellibrand, Henry, 86 Gent, Robert H. van, 202nl4 Geodesy Descartes, theory of, 11-12

ellipsoidal era, 13 spherical era of, 12 Geodetic surveys, pioneers of. See France, early leaders in geodesy George III (king), 69, 74 George, Prince of Denmark, 93 Germany Cao's Padrao, 185 colonization of Namibia by, 184-185 Ghana, 181 Gibraltar, Strait of, 167, 179 Gill, Sir David, 59-60, 62 Global Positioning System (GPS) technology accuracy of readings, 112, 200n7 and Clinton, President William, 110 early development of, 109-110, 199nl (chap. 7) European Terrestrial Reference System 1989 (ETRS89), 112, 200n5 Galileo system, 111 North American Datum NAD83, 113 orbit arrangement, 110 OSGB36 prime meridian, 113-114 Selective Availability policy of the U.S., 110 triangulation work, impact on, 63 and UTC (see Coordinated universal time) World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84), 109, 111-112, 200nn3-5 GMT See Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) Godin des Odonais, Isabel, 39-42, 40 and trek to Cayenne, 41-42 Godin des Odonais, Jean, 25, 193-194n20 scientific achievements, 25, 39 post-expedition life of, 38-42 Godin, Louis, 193n7 Lacaille, work with, 55 meridian measuring expedition, to Peru,21-30

224

Gold Coast, 181, 183 Golden Hind (ship), 134-137 Gomes, Fernao, 180 Goncalves, Antao, 180 Goncalves, Lopo, 181 GPS. See Global Positioning System (GPS) technology Grade (French degree unit), 114 Great Britain Admiralty charts, compatibility with GPS, 112 Astronomer Royal, 87, 88, 90, 91, 93, 95,97 British Nautical Almanac, 96-97, 106 circumnavigation of the globe, 133, 134-137, 201-202nn7-9, 202nl3 and common time, 117 and Daylight Saving Time, 121-122 double summer time, 121 leading world astronomy, 93 mapping, 59, 113 metric use in, 74 national grid, 96 Principal Triangulation, 113 railway system, 201n2 (chap. 8) seventeenth- and eighteenth-century science, 11 Universal Day, adoption of, 106 Great circle, 3, 4 Greek stadia, 191 n4 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), 88, 199n7 Greenwich meridian, 5 Flamsteed, John, role in establishment of, 91-93 fourth shift of, 97, 99 and International Geographic Congress (IGC), 101-102, 199nn2-4 International Meridian Conference, 103-108 international recognition of, 89-90, 103-108

Index Mark II, establishment of, 94 Sellers, John, role in establishment of, 89-90 third shift of, 95, 96-97 Greenwich Observatory, 87 Airy, Sir George Biddell, role of, 99 architecture of, 92, 94-95, 97 Bradley, James, role of, 95-96 equipment at, 92, 94, 99, 198n3, 201n6 (chap. 8) establishment, 122 and finding longitude, 201n5 Flamsteed, John, role of, 91-93 Halley, Edmund, role of, 93 modern navigation, lack of current relevance for, 122 Newton, Sir Isaac, role of, 93 post-World War II relocation of, 123-124, 201n6 prime meridian, establishment through, 103-104 Gregorian calendar, 194n29 movement from Julian Calendar, 153 Gurirab, Dr. Theo-Ben, 185 Haley, Bill, 198 Halley, Edmund Bradley, James, influence on, 95-96 and cataloging stars, 94 comet observation, 95, 198n5, 198n8 and friendship with Newton, 94 and Historiae Coelestis, 93 and magnetic maps, 95 and magnetic variation, 86 and Oxford University, 93-94 and sloop Paramour Pink, 94 Hamilkar, 205nl0 Hanno and Chariot of the Gods, 173 circumnavigation of Africa, 168-174 and gorillas, 174 tablet of, 169 Harrison, John, 22, 201 n5 Hatshepsut (Queen), equator crossing during reign of, 167, 205n7

Index Hatten, Sir Christopher, 135 Hawaii, Kingdom of, 199n4 Hazing, 162 Hellant, Anders, 46, 50 Henry the Navigator (prince), 777-180 and African trading, 179 and papal trading rights, 178-179 and Sagres center for navigation studies, 178 and slavery, 179 Herodotus, equator crossing stories, 167-168, 169 Hero of the Soviet Union, medal, 203nl6 Herstmonceux Castle Observatory, 123 Hertz, 12, 66 Heureaux, Ulises, 199n3 Hierro, placement of prime meridian at, 83-84, 86 Himera, battle of, 205nl0 Himilco, 205nl0. See also Hanno Hipparchus, 82, 164 Hiram, King of Tyre, 165 Hire, Philippe de la, 192nl0 Historiae Coelestis Britannica (1725-1729), 93 History of scientific discourse during the Middle Ages, 11 during the Renaissance, 10, 11 in the sixteenth century, 9-10 Hollandia Nova, 21 Holy, 67, 179 Hondius,Jodocus, 197n6 Hong Kong Noonday Gun, Hong Kong, use of time guns, 720-121 Hooke, Robert, 92 Horn of the South, 172-173 Horn of the West, 172 Howard, Charles, Lord of Effingham, 201n7 Hsuan-te (Chinese Emperor), 177 Huygens, Christiaan, 196n2 Hydrographer of the Navy, 146

225 Ibn Ali Imad ad-Din Abu I-Fida, Isma'il, 202nl4 ICBM, 63 He de Bourbon, 58 Incas, 31, 193nl0 Incendio (ship), 25 Incroyable pique nique (incredible picnic), 108 Industrial Revolution, British contributions to, 11 Infante. See Henry the Navigator (prince) Inquisition, 10 66, 76 Institut Geographique National (IGN), 200n8 Instruments, of meridian measurement of the Arctic expedition, 48 astronomical regulator, 92 at Greenwich Observatory (see Greenwich Observatory, equipment at) transit instrument, 92 International Atomic Time (TAI), 118-119 International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), 73, 201n3 (chap. 8) International Date Line. See Date line, international International Earth Rotation and Reference System Service andITRS2000, 111-112 time, monitoring of, 118 International Flat Earth Society, 2, 191nl (Introduction) International Geographic Congress (IGC), 101-102, 199nn2-4 International Herald Tribune, 111, 200n2 International Meridian Conference delegates, 103 resolutions, 104-107 resolutions, decimal system, 107 resolutions, implementation by France, 107-108 resolutions, prime meridian, 104-105 resolutions, universal day, 105-107

226 International Terrestrial Reference System 2000 (ITRS2000), 111-112 Islamic scholars, contribution to sciences, 11 Isogonals. See Isogonic lines Isogonic lines, 85-86. See also Magnetic variation Israel, loss of submarine, 171-172, 205nl2 James II (king), 89 Jardines Trading Company, 120 Jehoshafat, King ofJudah, 167 Jenner, Edward, 37 Jewish children, abducted from Portugal, 181 Joao II, 182 John I, Pope, 152 Johnson, Charles K, 2 Jones Harold Spencer, 123 Journal du Voyage Fait Par Ordre du Roi a L'equateur (A Journal of a Voyage Made by the King's Order to the Equator) (La Condamine), 36 J R O Verlag of Munich, 147 Juan y Santacilia, Jorge, 37-38, 39 Julian calendar, 144, 152, 153 Julius II, Pope, 201n2 Kalakaua (King of Hawaii), 199n4 Kennedy, J.F., 63 Kepler, Johannes, 11, 15, 16, 204n2 Kilogram, 73. See also Metric system of measurement Kiribati dateline, 149-150 third millennium celebrations, 153-154 Knights of Christ, Order of the, 206n21 trading rights, 179-181 Kursk (submarine), 203, 204nl6 Lacaille, Abbe Nicolas Louis de astronomical observations, 55-58 cataloging stars, 55-56

Index post-expedition career, 58 in Rio de Janeiro, 55, 195n36 Royal Society, application to, 195n40 La Condamine, Charles Marie de Amazon expedition of, 30, 35, 36-37 back in Paris, 36-37 meridian measurements of, 49 Peru, meridian measurement expedition to, 23-25, 27-28 rubber, reporting on, 29 and smallpox, 37 La Coruna (ship), 133 Lagrange, Joseph-Louis, 196n7 Laistre, Genevieve de, 15 Lanauze, Ken, 156 Land surveying, introduction of concept, 59. See also Triangulation work Laplace, Marquis de common prime meridian, advocacy for, 88 and Napoleon, 197-198nl0 Lapland. See Meridian-measuring expedition, to the Arctic Latitude, 3,4,20 local mean time, effect of, 155 navigation, role in, 81-82 pendulum, effect on, 67 Lavoisier, 196n7 Leap second, 118-119 Legendre, Adrien-Marie, 71 Le Glorieux (ship), 55-56 Leibniz, Gottfried, 11, 51 Leinberg, Yrjo, meridian measurement project of, 52 Length to breadth ratio (ship's), 176, 177 LeRoy, Pierre, 18, 192nl0 Liberty ships, 188 Libya (name for Africa), 167, 170 Libyphoenicians, 170, 171 Lima, 22, 30, 31, 37, 55, 192n6 Line Crossing Ceremony. See Equator crossing ceremony Line, The. See Equator Livingstone, David, 192n5

Index Loaisa, Garcia Jofre de, 133 Local mean time, 155 London,Jack, 188 London Times, The, 116, 199n6 Longitude, 4, 5-6 bi-directional counting of, 105 board of, 75, 98 definition of, 5-6, 82 finding, 82, 84, 86, 87, 91, 96, 122 local mean time, effect of, 155 navigation, role in, 81-82 Louis XIII (king), interest in prime meridian, 86 Louis XIV (king), and Paris Observatory, 14, 191 (chap, lnl) Louis XV (king), 18, 192n4 mapping project of eighteenth century, 17, 18 meridian-measuring expeditions of Louis Godin, 21-30 Louis XVI (king), 18, 68-69, 71, 194n31 Louis XVIII (king), 18 Louisburg Fortress, 37 Louis Philippe (king), 73 Lufthansa, Deutsche, AG, 203nl4 Macie, Elizabeth Keate, 74 Maclear, Sir Thomas, role in meridian measurement, 58 Madeira, discovery of, 197n2 Madison, James, and prime meridian, 102 Magalhaes, Fernao de. See Magellan, Ferdinand Magellan, Ferdinand, 9, 129, 130 Barbosa, Beatriz, wife, 133-134 death of, 128 and mutiny in Port San Julian, 102 objective, 128, 201n3 (chap. 9) Strait of, 128, 135 Magnetic variation, 84-85 Maisons, Jean-Rene de Lonqueil de, 20 Maldonado y Sotomayor, Pedro V , 28, 31, 35-36, 193nl5

227 Malietoa Laupepa (king of Samoa), 144 Malvasia, Marquis Cornelio, 14 Maps of Blaeu, Joan, 197n4 globes, 146-147, 203nnl3-14 GPS compatibility, 112-114 of Halley, Edmund, 95 International Date Line, history of, 148 by Martellus Germanus, Henricus, 185, 206n31 Morrell and Byers Islands, removal from charts, 144-147 ordnance maps, 198n2 of Philippine Islands, 131 of Phoenician voyages, 169 Ptolemy's, 82,83-84, 164, 196nl of world, after Ptolemy, 165 Maraldi, Jacques-Philippe, 17 Margaret Oakley (ship), 146 Maria Green (ship), 206n20 Marinus of Tyre, and placing of prime meridian, 83 Martellus Germanus, Henricus, 185, 206-207n31 Martin V, Pope, 179 Maupertuis, Pierre-Louis Moreau Arctic meridian-measuring expedition, 42-50, 48 mission's return home, 50 post-expedition career, 51-52 Principle ofLeast Action, 52, 194n32 Maurepas, Le Comte de, 50, 194n31 Mauritius, 58 Mayflower (ship), 171 Mean solar day, 116 Mean solar time, 116 Mean time, 116 Measurement systems. See individual systems Mechain, Pierre Francois Andre, 71, 72-73 errors in measurement, 75, 76 post-Metre des Archives career of, 75

228

Medieval scholars, 10 Mercator, Gerhardus, 81, 197n6 Mercator's projection, 82 Mercure de France, 21, 192n3 Meridian. See also International Date Line; Prime meridian definition of, 4 through Dunkirk and Barcelona, 61, 70,73 Greenwich (see Greenwich meridian) history of concept, 5 measurement of (see Meridian measurement entries) Pulkovo, 197n9 quadrant, length of, 73, 75 Meridian arc, length of one minute of, 196n5 Meridian conferences. See International Geographic Congress (IGC); International Meridian Conference Meridian Hill, 102 Meridian measurement by Cassini, Jacques (Cassini II), 15-16, 20 by Delambre and Mechain, 71, 72-73 Dunkirk-Barcelona, 61, 70, 73 Eratosthenes, 12 errors in, 75-76 in France, 16, 54 in Lapland, 42-43, 46, 48, 75 by Jean Picard, 12-13, 20, 21 in Peru, 21-30 values of, 193nll Meridian measurement activity in Africa Lacaille, Abbe Nicolas Louis de, 5457 triangulation work, 55, 59 by United States of America, 62 Verne, Jules, fictional work of, 60-62 Meridian-measurement expedition to the Arctic, 42-50, 48 of Leinberg, Yrjo, 52

Index Maupertuis, Pierre-Louis Moreau, 43 Planstrom family, impact on, 52-53 of Svanberg, Jons, 52 Meridienne Vert, La (The Green Meridian), 108 Meter, 73 calculation error in, 75-76 definition of, 196nl4 treaty of, 73-74 validation of, 76-78 Metre des Archives, 73 Metric Convention of 1875, 73 Metric system, 216 acceptance, France, 72, 73, 88 acceptance, Holland, 73 acceptance, Spain, 73 British partial adoption of, 102-104 development of, 69, 72-73 French demand for adoption, 104 of measurement, 66 rejection, 73, 76, 77 relation to meridian, 9, 10, 69-72, 102 units, 73 validation of, 76-78 Mexico, land bridge, 143 Middle Ages, regression of scientific discourse, 11 Millennium, the new. See also Third Millennium celebrations, 108, 120 and Fiji, 155-156 and first sunrise, 154 and first territory to greet, 152 and Greenwich, 153, 155 and Kiribati, 150, 153-154 and politics, prestige, and profits, 153 and Tony Blair, 153 Miller, Sir John Riggs, 68-69 Ming Dynasty, 175, 176, 177 Missile technology, 63 Moliere, 204n4 (chap. 13) Moluccas (Spice Islands), 129, 133, 137, 128, 135, 201n3 (chap. 9) Moore, Sir Jonas, 91

Index Morrell and Byers Islands, 144-147 reported position, 203n9 Morrell, Benjamin, Jr., 745-146 death of, 146 Mountbatten, Philip (prince), 124 Mouton, Gabriel, 66 Munchhausen, Baron, 170 Murdoch, Rupert, 3 Namibia colonization of, 184-185 requesting return Cao's pardrdo, 185 Napo (Ecuador), 34-35 Napoleon Bonaparte, 97 National Geodetic Survey (NGS), 113, 216 National Maritime Museum, 124, 199n5 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 113, 216 Nautical Almanac, British, 96-97, 102, 106 Nautical charts, and compatibility requirements for GPS usage, 112-113, 114 Nautical mile, 69, 196n5 Nauticos Corporation, 205nl2 Nautilus (submarine), 61-62, 195n42 Naval architecture brigantines, 193nl7 Chinese vessels of 15th century, 175, 176 Penteconters of Hanno, 170 Navigation circumnavigation of globe (see Circumnavigation of globe) coordinates, use of, 81-82 GPS technology, reliance on, 112-114 Nelson, Admiral Viscount Horatio, 199nl4 Neptune, 160-162, 177 New Albion, 136 Newsweek, 65 Newton, Sir Isaac, 13, 20 conflict with Flamsteed, 93

229 Principia Mathematica, 15, 44, 194n24 Nicholas V, Pope, 179 Nigeria, 181, 206n25 Noah's ark, 65, 176 North American Datum (NAD83), 113 North American time-zone system, 117 North, Lord Frederick, 198nl3 Northwest Passage, 22, 135 Nsaku (Congolese Chief), 183, 206n30 Nueva Andalucia, 34-35 Nunez, Blasco, 35 Nutation, 96 Oblate spheroid, relation to fitting sphere, 16 Observatories and prime meridian. See also Greenwich Observatory Canary Island, 123-124 Celsius Observatory, 50 global growth of, 86-88, 87 at Pulkovo Village, Russia, 197n9 Swedish national observatory, 86 Octogon Room, 92, 124 Ophir, 161, 165-167 Ordnance maps, 198n2 Ordnance Survey, 113-114, 216 Orellana, Francisco de in Brazil, 31-34 prosecution in Spain, 34-35 Orellana Province (Ecuador), 35 OSGB36 prime meridian, 113-114 Outhier, Reginald, 45, 51 Oxford University, posthumous publication ofJames Bradley's work, 96 Oyapok, River, 40 Padrao, 183-185, 206n27, 207n32 Palatinus Graecus, 398. See Periplus, The Palos, 85 Panama establishment of, 193n9 isthmus of, 26, 129, 192n6 Panama Canal, 193n9 Paper money, first, 175, 179, 206n22

230 Parallax, 195n37 Parallels, 3, 4 Paramour Pink (ship), 94 Paris Mean Time, 199n7 Paris Observatory, 14-18, 54, 71, 75, 114 Parker, Admiral Sir Hyde, 199nl4 Peach, Samuel, 96 Peel, Sir Robert, 99 Pelican (ship), 134, 135 Penalosa, Juan de, 35 Pendulum, 12 application to timekeeping, 196n2 formula of, 191n5, 196n3 principle of, 67-69 Penteconter, 171 Perihelion passage of Halley's comet, 198n8 Periplus, The, 171-174 Peru and the Pizarro brothers, 31-34 seizing territory from Ecuador, 23 suitability for meridian measurement, 22-23 viceroy, 22 Peru, meridian measuring expedition to, 21-30 and disagreements, 26-28 and scientific observations, 28-29 Pharaoh Necho II, 167 Philip II, interest in prime meridian, 86 Philip V, role in French meridian measurement expedition, 25-26 Philippine Islands date line change of 1844, 143 map of, 131 Phoenicians, 197n2 Piazzi Smyth, Charles, 88 Picard, Jean, 12-13 meridian measurement, 20, 21, 49 universal foot, measure of, 66 Pigafetta, Antonio, 127, 132 Pillars of Heracles, 167, 170, 204n3 Pillars of Hercules. See Pillars of Heracles Pipping, Peter Johan, 47

Index Pitt Island (Chatham Islands group), 156 Pius VII, Pope, 98 Pizzaro brothers, 31-32, 35, 192n6, 193nl8 El Dorado, search for, 31-33, 35-36 Pizzaro, Francisco, 22, 32, 34, 192n6, 193nl7, 193nl8 Pizzaro, Gonzalo, 35 Pizzaro, Hernando, 193nl8 Pizzaro, Juan, 193nl8 Planstrom family, 52-53 Platinum, 29 Pliny the Elder, 172, 197n2 Plus Ultra, 201n6 Plymouth, 134, 137, 202n8 Poe, Edgar Allen, 138 Pointis, Baron de, 26 Polar Circle, 43, 53, 194n22 Polar flattening, measurement of, 16, 28, 51, 192n7, 193nl3 Poles, 2, 10, 20 length of a degree compared to the equator, 20 south magnetic, 204n2 (chap. 11) tilt of, and seasons, 155 Polliwog, 159-161, 204nl Pompadour, Madame de, 17, 18, 21, 194n31 Portugal circumnavigation of Africa, 177-182 control of Amazon Basin (see Amazon, Portuguese control) control of spice trade, 143 discoveries in West Africa, 179-185 enemy of Spain, 180, 201n2 (chap. 9) Knights of Christ, Order of the, 206n21 Prime meridian, 5 Airy's, 114 American, 102 Bering Strait, 102, 103, 144 Bithynia (Rhodes), 101 Bradley's, 96-97, 114 England, shift to (see Greenwich meridian)

Index Europe, relocation to, 86-88 Flamsteed's, 92 French proposal, 103 and GPS, 109, 111-112 Great Pyramid, 88 at Greenwich (see Greenwich meridian; Greenwich Observatory) Halley's, 95 at Hierro, 83-84, 86 Hipparchus and, 82 international confusion, 102-104 Jerusalem, 88, 199nl latitude scale on, 84 Lizard Point, 89 La Meridienne Vert, 108 national adoption, at observatory locations, 87-88 OSGB36, 113-114 and Ptolemy of Alexandria, 82, 83-84 Rome, 84, 102 St. Paul's Cathedral, 89-90 Toledo (Spain), 86 Washington, DC, 102, 103, 189 WGS84(GPS'), 109, 111-112 and zero variation, 86 Principal Triangulation of Great Britain, 113 Principe Island, 206n26 Principia Mathematica, 15 translation into French, 44, 194n24 Prudent (ship), 45, 47 Ptolemaeus, Claudius. See Ptolemy Ptolemy of Alexandria, 5, 6 and Geographia, 164 and Geographike Huphegesis, 82 maps of, 82, 83-84, 164, 196nl Puerto Francisco de Orellana, 35 Puisieux (ship), 58 Pulkovo, 88, 197n9 Punics. See Libyphoenicians Punt, 168, 205n7 Puteanus, Erycius, 84, 138 Pythagoras, 164, 191n2 Qaddafi, Mouammar al, 170

231

Quito, 22-23, 27-28, 30-32, 38-41 Reaumur, Rene Antoine Ferchault de, temperature scale of, 194n30 Reinel, Pedro, 84 Renaissance, the, scientific discourse during, 10, 11 Revenge (ship), 134 Rhodes Island, 101, 132, 204n3 Rhodes, Sir Cecil, 62 Richelieu, Cardinal, 86, 194n23 Richer, Jean, 67 Rickover, Admiral Hyman, 62 Rietz, Carl Magnus Du, 47 Riobamba, 39, 41, 193nl5 Robespierre, Maximilien, 18, 72 Rodgers, C.R.P., 107 Rosario (ship), 134 Roselli, Francesco, 206n31 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 68 Royal Greenwich Observatory, Herstmonceux, 123 Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, 192nll Rubber, 29 Russia sale of Alaska, 144 and Wrangel Island, 147, 149, 203nl6 Rustem, Effendi, 106 Saint-Lambert, Jean Francois de, 44, 194n24 Samoa, date line change of 1892, 144 San Antonio (ship), 128 San Domingo, 199n3 and International Meridian Conference, 102-106 San Francisco, authenticity of Drake's landing, 202nl3 Sanlucar de Barrameda, 127-128, 132 San Marcos University, 29, 55, 193nl4 San Pedro [boat), 32, 34 Santarem, Joao de, 130, 181-182, 201n4

232 Santiago (Cape Verde Islands), 131-132, 195n36 Santiago (ship), 128 Sao Tome, 130 discovery and settlement of, 181 indentured labor, 181 slave entrepot, 181 Saragossa, Treaty of. See Treaty of Saragosa Satellite-Derived Positions Note, 113 Satellite technology, 109. See also Global Positioning System (GPS) technology in meridian measurement, 75 Saturday Evening Post, 202nl5 Saturn, Cassini rings, 15 Savile, Sir Henry, 198n6 Science fiction, by Jules Verne, 60-62, 61 Scurvy, 128, 130, 133 Seasons, causation, 155 Seconds pendulum, 68 SECNAVINST 1610.21,204 (chap. 12n3) Seller, John, 89-90, 198nl Shape of the earth, controversy over, 2, 9. See also Geodesy Sharp, Abraham, 93 Shellback, golden, 160 Shellback, trusty, 160, 204 (chap. 12nl) Shenton, Samuel, 2 Sherbro Island (Sierra Leone), 173 Shipwrecks, 206nl9 Shophet, 169, 170, 205n8,10 Sidereal day, 116 SI (Systeme International) units, 78 Sierra Leone, 171, 173, 174, 181, 205nl3 Silver Dollar, 165 Silver Wave (ship), 147 Slave trade, Portuguese, 179, 180, 206n25 Small circle, 3, 4 Smith, J.R., xi, 10, 13, 16, 49, 77, 195n38 Smith, Richarda, 98 Smithson, Hugh, 74 Smithsonian Institution, 74

Index Smithson, James, 74, 196n9 Smyth, Charles Piazzi. See Piazzi Smyth, Charles Snell, Willebrord, 12 Solar days, 116, 118 Soloman (king), 161 ships, 165, 167, 204 (chap. 12n2) South magnetic pole, 204n4 (chap. 11) South West Africa (German Colony), 185 Soviet Union. See Russia Spain attempt to colonize Amazonia, 34 conquistadors, 31 economy and South America, 143 French meridian measurement expedition, role in, 25-26 trade with Far East, 143 Spanish Armada, 201n7 Spherical trigonometry, 193 Spheroid, types of, 13 Spice Islands. See Moluccas Stalin, Joseph, 149, 203nl6 Stanley, Henry Morton, 192n5 Star charts, creation of, 92 Star position tables, creation of, 92 St. D'Anville (ship), 23 Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 147, 149 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 203n8 St. Helena, 94, 120, 201n4 (chap. 8) Struve, Wilhelm, 59 Sugar cane, 180, 181 Summer Time. See Daylight Saving Time (DST) Summer Time, double, 121 Sundials, 115 Sunrise, calculation of time, 155-156 Surveying. See Land Surveying Svanberg, Jons, meridian measurement project of, 52 Sweden Arctic meridian measuring expedition, role in, 46 and Celsius Observatory, 50 Gregorian calendar in, 194n29

Index and International Meridian Conference, 103, 105, 106, 107 national observatory, 86

233

Time gun at Hong Kong, 120-121 at St. Helena, 120, 201n4 Time, measurement of. See also International Date Line Taipan, 120 Ab urbe condita dating system Talent (weight), 165, 205n5 Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de, 68-69, (A.U.C), 152 154 Anno Domini dating system (A.D.), Telescope 152-153 invention of, 86 atomic clock, 117-118 transit instrument, 92, 99 chronometer, use of, 119, 201 n5 Temperature measurement common system, need for, 116-117 Celsius scale, 194nn27-28, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), 194n30 Reaumur scale, 194n30 88, 118, 200nl0 Tenerife, 182 day, 116 Tenner, Carl von, 59 daylight saving time, 121-122 Terra Australis Incognita, 21, 136 earth rotational time, 118 Terre Adelie, 204n2 (chap. 11) Easter Tables, 152 Terror (French Revolution), 196n7 leap second, 118-119 Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. See Atlas Major, local mean time, 155 North American time-zone system, 197n4 Third millennium. See also Millennium 117 second, 117 and Anno Domini dating system solar days, 116, 118 (A.D.), 152 sunrise, local meantime of, 155 correct counting of dates, 151-153, third millennium (see Third 199n8 millennium) economic and political issues of world standard time zones, 124 celebrations, 153-155 year, 116 time of first sunrise, 155-156 Titanic (ship), 3, 191n2 (Introduction) Y2K, 151 Tito, Teburoro (President of Kiribati), Three Sundays in a Week, 138 149 Tierra del Fuego, 136 Toise, 49 Timbuktu, 179 Topographic maps, 102, 113, 114, Time 198n2 definition of, 115 USAanfGPS, and International Meridian Tordesillas, Treaty of. See Treaty of Conference, 105 Tordesillas international unit, 117 Tornio, 46-47, 49, 50, 53 mean, 116, 165, 199n7 triangulation exercises in, 47-49 and railroads, 105, 117 Tornio River, 46-47 signal, 120 Tornionlaakso Valley, 46, 50, 52 standard, 105, 124 Transit instruments, 92, 99, 104, Z (see Z-Time) 113-114, 123, 124 Time ball, at Greenwich, 119-120

234 Transliteration systems, 205nl4 Treasure ships, 175-177 Treaty of Saragossa, 201n2 (chap. 9) Treaty of the Meter, 73-74. See also Metric system of measurement Treaty of Tordesillas, 201n2 (chap. 9) Triangulation work in Africa, 55, 57-58, 59-60, 62-63 of the Arctic meridian measuring expedition, 47 of Delambre, Jean Baptiste Joseph, 71, 72-73 of Gill, Sir David, 59-60 and Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, 63 in Great Britain, 113 by Lacaille, Abbe Nicolas Louis de, 55,57 Maclear, Sir Thomas, 58 of Mechain, Pierre Francois Andre, 71, 72-73 of the Peru meridian measurement expedition, 26-28 science of, 12 Trigonometry, spherical, 193nl2 Trinidad (ship), 128-129, 132 Tristao, Nuno, 180 Tropic of Cancer, 164 Tropic of Capricorn, 164 Twain, Mark (Samuel Clemens), 196nl 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Verne), 61-62 Ujiji (Tanzania), 192n5 Ulloa, Juan Antonio de, 37 Ulrike Eleonora, Queen, 46 United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO), 112, 149,200n7 United States of America Alaska, acquisition of, 144 Army Mapping Service, meridian measuring project, 62-63 daylight saving time, 121-122 Department of Defense (DoD), 110, 200n3

Index GPS development, 110 in International Meridian Conference, 102-108, 122 meridian measurement activity in Africa, 62-63 metric use in, 74 National Geodetic Survey (NGS), 113 nautical charts, 113 Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO), 113 and Panama Canal, 193n9 prime meridian, role in establishing, 102 support of Great Britain, 104, 105 time-zone system, 117 zero-tolerance policy for hazing, 162 Universal Day, 105-107 and astronomers, 106-107 and fourth Greenwich meridian, 99 international debate, 106-107 and Moslem prayers, 106 Urban VIII, Pope, 66, 84 U T C See Coordinated Universal Time UTl (Earth rotational time), 118-119, 121 Variation, magnetic. See Magnetic variation Vatopedinus 655. See Periphus, The. Venezuela, 22, 34, 199n2 Verne, Jules Gabriel, 60-62, 61, 138-139 Victoria (ship), 34, 128, 130-132 arrival at Sanlucar de Barrameda, 127 at Cape Verde Islands, 130 Victoria, Queen, 58, 100 Voltaire, Francois-Marie Arouet de, 44, 194n25 on Maupertuis, 51 Wade-Giles system of transliteration, 205nl4 Washington, DC, 102, 120, 122, 144 Wasp (ship), 145

Index Wegelius, schoolmaster, 47 WGS84, 111, 200n3-5 Whitehall, 147 Wilhelm II (Kaiser), 185 Willet, William, 121 William III (king), 89 Wog, 159-160, 204nl World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84), 109, 111-112, 200nn3-5 World standard time zones, 124 Wrangel Island affair, 147-149 Wrangel Island and the icebreak Chelyuskin, 203nl6 Wren, Sir Christopher, 92 Wynter, William, 134, 136 Wyoming (schooner), 176, 206nl7

235

Xavier, St. Francis, 197n8 Y2K bug. See under Third millennium Yehuda (ship), 159 Zaire, 206n28 Zebra Time, 200n 10 Zelee (ship), 156 Zero, concept of, 152 Zero-tolerance policy for hazing, 162 Zheng-He, Admiral, 175, 205nl4 Zhu Di, Chinese Emperor, 175, 206nl9 Z-Time, 200nl0 Zulu Time, 200nl0

About the Authors

AVRAHAM ARIEL is a freelance writer who has been associated with ships and shipping all his life. A deck boy at 16, the youngest shipmaster in Israel at 25, and an academic at 55, Ariel was born in Israel and lived for 20 years in Australia. He has an MBA and a PhD from the University of New South Wales. He is a seafarer, businessman, inventor, educator, and author of six books. N O R A ARIEL BERGER began her professional career as a journalist in Australia and then worked in Israel. She moved to the business side of the media after going to business school and working for the Telegraph newspaper in the UK. After a position as Strategic Planner for an advertising agency, she is now Assistant Director of Marketing for a donoradvised fund in New York. She has a BA in communications (journalism) and an MBA from the London Business School.