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Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC first proposed a system of latitude and longitude for a map of the world. His prime meridian (line of longitude) passed through Alexandria and Rhodes, while his parallels (lines of latitude) were not regularly spaced, but passed through known locations, often at the expense of being straight lines. [1]
The Greek Marinus of Tyre (CE 70–130) was the first to assign a latitude and longitude to every place on his maps. From the late 9th century CE, the Arabian Kamal was used in equatorial regions, to measure the height of Polaris above the horizon. This instrument could only be used in latitudes where Polaris is close to the horizon.
A geographic coordinate system (GCS) is a spherical or geodetic coordinate system for measuring and communicating positions directly on Earth as latitude and longitude. [1] It is the simplest, oldest and most widely used type of the various spatial reference systems that are in use, and forms the basis for most others.
The lines from pole to pole are lines of constant longitude, or meridians. The circles parallel to the Equator are circles of constant latitude, or parallels. The graticule shows the latitude and longitude of points on the surface. In this example, meridians are spaced at 6° intervals and parallels at 4° intervals.
The son of Aglaos, Eratosthenes was born in 276 BC in Cyrene.Now part of modern-day Libya, Cyrene had been founded by Greeks centuries earlier and became the capital of Pentapolis (North Africa), a country of five cities: Cyrene, Arsinoe, Berenice, Ptolemias, and Apollonia.
His chief legacy is that he first assigned to each place a proper latitude and longitude; he used a "Meridian of the Isles of the Blessed (Canary Islands or Cape Verde Islands)" as the zero meridian. Ptolemy (c. 150)
A highly important breakthrough for the accurate determination of longitude came with the invention of the marine chronometer. The 1714 longitude prize offer for a method of determining longitude at sea, was won by John Harrison, a Yorkshire carpenter. He submitted a project in 1730, and in 1735 completed a clock based on a pair of counter ...
Al-Idrīsī defined his maps differently. He considered the extent of the known world to be 160° in longitude, and divided the region into ten parts, each 16° wide. In terms of latitude, he portioned the known world into seven 'climes', determined by the length of the longest day. In his maps, many dominant geographical features can be found ...