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Updated: June 7, 2025
How grossly erroneous geography was till very lately, in some even of its most elementary parts, and those, too, in relation to what ought to have been the most accurately known portion of Europe, may be judged from these two facts, that till near the close of the last century, the distance from the South Foreland, in Kent, to the Land's End, was laid down in all the maps of England nearly half a degree greater than it actually is; and that, as we have formerly noticed, "the length of the Mediterranean was estimated by the longitudes of Ptolemy till the eighteenth century, and that it was curtailed of nearly twenty-five degrees by observation, no farther back than the reign of Louis XIV."
He knows that I cannot abide stars, having very good reason to hate them, as you shall hear: In 1807, being attached to the Bureau of Longitudes, I was part of the scientific expedition sent to Spain, under the direction of my friend and colleague, Jean-Baptiste Biot, to determine the arc of the terrestrial meridian from Barcelona to the Balearic isles.
They had made accurate geographical, astronomical, and meteorological observations of the regions visited. They had carefully measured latitudes and longitudes and noted the variations of the magnet.
In eleven days she sailed 3562 miles, with four days logged for a total of 1478 knots. Making allowance for the longitudes and difference in time, this was an average daily run of 378 sea miles or 435 land miles. Using the same comparison, the distance from Sandy Hook to Queenstown would have been covered in seven days and nine hours.
Hipparchus also framed a catalogue of the stars, and determined their places with reference to the ecliptic by their latitudes and longitudes. Altogether he seems to have been one of the greatest geniuses of antiquity, and his works imply a prodigious amount of calculation. Astronomy made no progress for three hundred years, although it was expounded by improved methods.
After the wondrous discoveries of Columbus had set the Old World into a state of excitement, the finding of new lands appears to have become the romance of that day, as the exploration by land of unknown regions has been that of our time; and in less than fifty years after the discovery of America navigators were searching every sea in hopes of emulating the deeds of that great explorer; but nearly a hundred years elapsed before it became known in Europe that a vast and misty land existed in the south, whose northern and western shores had been met in certain latitudes and longitudes, but whose general outline had not been traced, nor was it even then visited with anything like a systematic geographical object.
It is exceedingly difficult, or rather impossible, to trace the steps of the travels of Rubruquis, for want of latitudes, longitudes, and distances, and names of places.
He says: "I saw and knew all their charts. They were all cunningly falsified, with longitudes and latitudes distorted, and land-features drawn in at places and stretched out at others to suit their purposes, etc., etc., and when they found out that I understood their little pranks they made strenuous efforts to get me to enlist in their service, and made me advantageous offers, which, however, I scorned to accept."
Down the lane of music and chatter and drink he passed slowly, like a man just wakened, assailed by Oriental noise and smells, jostled by the races of all latitudes and longitudes, surrounded and solitary, unheeded and self-conscious. With a villager's awkwardness among crowds, he made his way to a German shipping-office.
All our interior longitudes have been and are determined differentially by comparison with some point in this country. One of the most frequent points of reference used this way has been the Cambridge Observatory. Suppose, then, a surveyor at Omaha makes a telegraphic longitude determination between that point and the Cambridge Observatory.
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