World Map Position: Why is North Up?

Ok so you proved a point. The thing I have noticed of late is how many parts of the globe are being obscured due to political and military sensitivities. Things used to be easy going but because of those who misguidedly use this service for their own ends we all have to suffer. Soon google earth will just be a pixelated blob of no use to man or beast. Have you noticed the latest censorship affected areas?

This is off topic but no, I haven't been flying around Google Earth too much lately. I've checked out a few US and Soviet military bases though. I didn't see any blocked out areas. Those areas that were blurry I assumed did not have either satellite or aerial photos available. I did notice though that the view of my place of work is still circa 2003.

I took a look last night 23rd and large areas had been obscured.

I just took another tour around it has mysteriously cleaned up, perhaps google read our posts.

Then we know at least someone is reading them.

I may take you to court for giving me whiplash injuries !

Wasn't too difficult reading that line.

Just hold a mirror above it and it comes out bottom-side-up and right-side-left.

We get so used to doing things the usual way. We once had a Japanese engineer assigned to our factory for two years. 'Took him about a week to get used to driving on the right side of the road. On the first day, he remembered to drive on the right side going to the mall. Coming out of the mall, he almost slammed into another car when he pulled out of the parking lot.

In a similar way, I once went to India and got into a taxi to take me to the hotel. I almost rose out of my seat when he got onto the highway. I had to resist the urge to twist my imaginary steering wheel.

I watched a program about driving exams recently . The piece from India was hilarious -as long as the learner is in the car (not even driving) with the Examiner ,they pass the test . One Examiner even took out 3 people at once for their license test.

People are routinely caught driving in the UK without the correct papers because the penalties are too lenient .eg The fine for not having insurance can be less then the insurance itself . Even killing somebody without any papers and drunk will only result in a couple of years jail . Pathetic . Really gets me angry.

I wonder if anybody following knows how it came to be that different countries have different sides of the road to drive on ?

Basically there was a left-handed guy called Napoleon who controlled 90% of Europe so he set riding/driving on the right [to keep sword hand on the same side as opposing traffic]. The Europeans invaded North America where in terms of land most of it was controlled by the French and the Spanish with only the English/British wanting to drive on the left so the majority won.

No it is very easy: we drive on the right side (the left side is the wrong side)

Mobutu once visited London and was impressed by the way traffic was managed, it must have been the fact that they drove on the left side so he wanted to swap it in Zaire, but could never figure out who should change first: the cars or the trucks.

Well I suppose the modern-day version of your sword hand is your gun hand so I guess there must be a lot of lefthanded drive-by shooters in the States

ex British colonies [Nigeria/Gambia] surrounded by ex-French colonies in West Africa changed to the right for safety reasons. Sweden changed to the right for the same reason but even though the UK should have after the war obviously that would have taken a lot of balls!

Had Germany succeeded in overcoming the Allied military 66 years ago, it is likely that many contributions to CR4 would be in German today.

It would have prevented those stupid questions on perpetum mobile, as education levels are quite high over there.

Just use the road rules that mainland China uses (right side of the road (right) driving). It is called the 'Law of Tonnage', he that is biggest has the right of way! Trucks over buses over cars over motorbikes over bicycles over pedestrians. The bigger cities aren't too bad, but when you get into areas where the delineation of the lines aren't too good it gets real interesting. You can be on a six lane street with 4 lanes going one way someone makes a left turn, they start from the far right side of the road, dive through all the coming and going traffic, yielding only to anything bigger than he is.

After several trips to Ireland (even driving in the fog and snow), generally I haven't had too much trouble with remembering which side of the road to stay on. The only times are when you get onto an unmarked road and there is nobody else there or if you have to make a reflex type emergency maneuver, the brain has a tendency to revert to right sid eof the road thinking and you can get in trouble real quick.

Sweden drove on the left until relatively recently (20-30 years ago). They figured that traffic would increase and that being on the same land mass would mean it would cause problems, so they picked a day and changed over. Iran did a similar thing at about the same time (from left to right).

The UK was still considering in the late 60s - the reason Spaghetti Junction (interchange on the M5 motorway at Birmingham) is so complicated is that is was the last junction to be designed such that it could be used for left or right hand driving. The decision to stay as we are was made some time after it was built and all subsequent junctions are one-handed.

The M4 -M5 Interchange at Almondsbury (first interchange in the country) is symmetrical - my Dad took a lovely (print) photo from a balloon some years ago. The closest I could find on the interweb was this.

As to why we drive left or right, the Napoleon answer was correct for why the French changed. Prior to that, all drove on the left, as this was the side from which one traditionally alighted from a carriage. At this time, the driver's seat was in the centre of the conveyance. He was called a Chauffeur because he had to get the steam up in the morning (back in the external combustion engine days).

the French emperor Napoleon tried, unsuccessfully, to overcome the British naval forces about 200 years ago. Had he succeeded, it is likely that British and Irish roads would have had a right-hand-drive heritage. Josephine has a lot to answer to!

Napoleon's error at Trafalgar was to piss his naval command off and undermine him [they would only had to have waited in Port for two days until storms decimated the English Navy]. Josephine was watching her hair that day

"Because you're worth it". Phew!

The right hand is normally one's sword hand -- so the sword hand would be on the far side of opposing traffic when driving on the right side of the road. The left side would be closest to oncoming traffic. This would be the shield side and this would make sense if they were still using shields in Napoleon's era. Of course if your sword hand (or shooting hand) was injured, that would put you out of action, so having it on the more protected side would make some sense.

Talking about juxtaposition. I recall a Late Night show with Johnny Carson where he held pictures of faces of famous people upside down. They were perfectly recognizable and normal looking until he turned the pictures around and you realized the mouths were upside down relative to the face. The faces looked rather gotesque right side up.

In the UK, the practice of driving on the left on the roads evolved because most people there are right-handed. In olden times, the scabbard for the sword was worn on the left side of the body, so that a man on horseback could easily draw his sword with his right hand, protecting his body with his right arm and the sword blade so as to defend his lady's honour. It is more difficult, time-consuming and potentially injurious to wear the scabbard on the right if one is right-handed. To defend her honour on horseback, horseriders would therefore pass oncoming ones right-side to right-side on the roads as a consequence, and as a result the UK has a drive-on-the-left heritage.

On the UK's inland waterways, the practice is otherwise. Boats pass port-to-port, i.e. one drives on the right. This is because the right-handed bargee would naturally place his right hand on the tiller, judging the passing distance by looking down the port side of the boat. Boats therefore pass oncoming ones on the right.

The Latin root-word for right-handed is 'dexter', from which derives the English word, 'ambidextrous', meaning 'able to use each hand equally. The Latin root-word for left-handed is 'sinister', which has today unfortunate undertones as a result of its change of meaning over time, and may give an insight as to why schoolchildren in the UK have for many decades been encouraged, sometimes against their natural preference, to use the right hand for handwriting as opposed to the left; certainly writing from left to right with the left hand is awkward as unless the paper is positioned in a certain way, the hand obscures the recently-written text.

Rumour has it that the Irish have a scheme to introduce driving on the right. They plan to phase it in over months, beginning with heavy trucks, then medium vans, and then following it on some time later with however many cars there are left...

Did you know that trains drive left. Everywhere in Europe and I assume the rest of the world. So there was no problem for the Chunnel.

It poses big danger on crossings: we tend to start looking left and go on, but the train comes from the right. Solution: never cross a railroad when you did not look 5 times, try to explain this to the elderly who need to be in time in church. But it helps solving the financial deficit ...

In the United States, most rail/road crossings are level, unlike the UK where, more often than not, a bridge is provided. It is common practice in the USA for drivers of large passenger-carrying road vehicles to slow to a stop before proceeding over a rail/road level crossing. Engineers need to be aware of the hazards that hauliers may encounter in delivering things that they have designed and had constructed. See Hixon_rail_crash as an example of what can go wrong.

In my country cars drive left ...but trains on the right (British heritage), being cause of accidents... To prevent doubts when crossing a railroad, here we do it at once, without looking ! Russian Roulette, what is that?

The technical problems for the Channel Tunnel trains were cerainly a challenge. The UK uses 750VDC third-rail shoe pick-up in the south and 25kVAC overhead wire elsewhere. France uses 25kVAC overhead wire not synchronised with the UK's 25kV, and at least until recently Belgium used 1500VDC overhead wire. To change over from one system to the other, seamlessly and at speeds around 200kph, must be quite interesting!

Trains have transformers to adapt all this.

I know that the voltage used in Belgium is 6kVAC. The 1500V DC must be something locally in a city (tram or trolley)

There are even more differences: the track width is different sometimes, and trains have to swap wheel units.

When I take the train from Brussels to Paris It goes +300 km/h, and you even don't notice that you cross the border. I assume that the used Voltage for High speed trains, going high speed is everywhere the same and transformers organise the voltage when using local tracks. (max 160 km/h)

The swapping wheelsets thing happens at certain frontiers. One solution is to release a locking device on Variable_gauge_axles to move the wheelsets to the new gauge. Fascinating.

Even at 300kph, it takes only 65 seconds for an Eurostar to come to a complete stop. What wonderful engineering that is!

Just checked - the Belgian voltage is 3kVDC. Sorry, no wish to be disrespectful. Blame 'Anno Domini'.

In the USA, all railroad tracks signals are set up for the train to travel on the right, except for the Chicago and Northwestern RR. The Chicago and Northwestern RR track was laid out by british engineers and they put up the signals for trains to travel on the left.

I believe that is also why we shake hands with our right hand - it prevents greeting and stabbing simultaneously...Interesting that other countries also shake with the right hand; must be a British export!

On the topic of north being up, I think a simply explanation would be to hold a compass in front of you, looking down at the face as one might look at a map. When you face north, the needle points upwards, hence it makes sense to depict north as up on a map

We shake right hands and eat with the right hand as in pre toilet paper times we used to clean ourselves with the left hand.

Hi Gwen. As do the Arabs!

I believe I am correct in saying :-

that all of the Roman Empire had to drive on the left, not only to keep swords free, but also to keep the whip of the charioteer in the middle of the road (on right handed people at least), where he was less likely to take off the eyes and ears of the people walking alongside!!!

This stayed till Napoleon changed it wherever he was conqueror... but Austria went back to the left until Hitler marched in and changed it again in 1938!!!

Driving on the right is a relatively modern failure of countries where Napoleon was the Boss, or where they moved to afterwards (USA).

Japan has always been driving on the left because of the need to keep the sword of the Samurai free of obstructions too.....I am sure that Roman influence did not reach quite that far, so that was a decision they made independently...

There are still about 56 countries that drive on the left - the correct side!!!

Remember more countries have driven on the left for far longer than anyone has driven on the other side!!!

Having lived most of my life outside of the UK, where I was born, I can now drive on either side of the road in either front seat where a wheel for steering is mounted! It is a skill that I require far less today, but stood me well in the past!

Passing in waterways follows different rules: to prevent misinterpretations, vessels pass each other as well as buoys following colour codes: outbound ships pass inbound facing red with red (left side of each vessel). Which way is the sea?: well leave read buoys at your left (red light)...and you'll find the way to it

Believe it or not, the reason why different countries drive on different sides of the road is because most people are right-handed.

In England back in them olden days, the story goes, most horse-drawn wagons carry people. The driver needed to be on the right side because the whip, which most drivers hold in their right hand, misses the passengers when he pulls back on the whip. The consequence of having the driver on the right becomes apparent when he encounters another wagon going in the other direction. In the narrow road, both drivers tended to move to the left so that they can watch each others horses and wheels and avoid getting entangled.

In the U.S., the situation was different. Being more of a rural country, the wagons carried produce rather than people and the drivers tended to sit on the left so that the whip (which happens to be on the right hand for most people) can reach all the horses in the team (between two to six horses in a team). Since the driver sits on the left, two wagons approaching each other need to steer to the right so the drivers can watch their wheels and prevent a collision.

I happen to be left-handed and I've known for a fact that we are a minority.

Shaking hands with the right hand came about because another soldier cannot stab you when you're holding his right hand (woe to him if he happens to shake hands with a lefty).

Another right-handed story is why do men stand to the right of the woman in weddings? The story goes that when warriors take a wife, he has to hold her with his left to leave his right hand free to fight off the other suitors.

I also remember reading something about Philip of Macedon hiring an elite group of soldiers who were all left-handed. The reason being that most soldiers knew how to fight a right-handed opponent but had less experience fighting lefties. Lefties, on the other hand fought righties most of the time.

Back to the original topic.

International pilots and astronauts probably have an advantage over us land and sea-lubbers. A pilot flies in and out of countries from various directions and needs to be able to recognize the coast from any direction. An astronaut looking down toward the Earth doesn't need to reorient himself to recognize a land mass. He can be looking at it from above, from below, from the left or right and he'd still recognize it.

I say again, it just takes some getting used to.

Addendum, I just ran a spell check and the word "righties" came up. I just invented a new word!

Actually, In the United States, we drive on the right in defiance of England, and for no other reason. our fore-fathers used spite as reason.

this applies to all race tracks as well!

...then may I remind you of a "common-phrase" that sometimes gets used when talking about "the America's" from Brits. We call it one of our "Revolting Colonies".......I am sure that the reasons are fully apparent!!!

I personally have, up until very recently though, only worked for US companies since leaving the Royal Navy in 1973 and although they are different to European companies, I cannot say better or worse, just different!!!

I even count many US citizens among my personal friends! The slight rivalries between the two countries are great, I have no problems at all with being a "Limey!"....or the butt of some of the American style of humour!!! It works out about equal at the end of the day, so who cares?

Have a great day (in spite of me!) all you US citizens who contribute/read CR4!!

I am guessing here but I think it more likely to do with the fact that more than 80% of Americans did NOT come from the UK , they were mostly other old world emigrants from all the countries that Napoleon took over for a time, so the majority were used to driving on the right.

I am sure all the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers are turning in their graves at the thought!!

If by any chance you have some better information to back up your spite theory, I would be very pleased to get hold of some links. thanks in advance.

If it was spite (?), then was this a first?

Andy, this is just one of the seemingly millioins of factiod statements I have read in my lifetime. If my memory serves me right, which most of the time it actually does, I read this about 18 months ago, I just can't remember where. seems funny but I can remember my address and phone number 40 years ago, but not what the movie was about last night. Relative importance and mind training. I will look for it and if I find it, I will share it. Yes, this goes way back to colonial days. I believe it actually started with race tracks and carried over to road use. Yes, spite was their guiding light! religious zelots, yes; above spite, absolutely not. Im not sure of any other similar incidents, but religion was certainly one thing set up to spite the motherland.

You could be right about spite, but why was English chosen (by a German immigrant I believe) instead of German as the USA's national language?......

I can even tell from the credits (alone) if an English speaking film was made in the USA or England, just by seeing how many German surnames come up from the crew......aprox 40% of USA Citizens originally stem from Germany!!! A lot do not even know where their names came from!!

There are two German-speaking towns here, on is called Nahariya, the other called Zichron-Yaakov, originally established by 19th century Christian-Templar and Prussian Junker families, later joined by German Jews. Haifa was a little Turkish fishing village until The Junkers established Bat-Galim, down town, from which it was later developed. The Allenby Brits came in 1915 to find a thriving commerce center there.

South Africans and Brits: Raanana (North of Tel-Aviv)

Russians: Karmiel

Moroccans: Beer Sheba, and Tiberius

An immigration country, you know.

William Pratt was my grandfathers name. A big, strong man. Hail the mother country! My Grandmother was a small german woman. Hail the mother country!

Hence the "Bar Sinister" in heraldry, which runs from top right to bottom left (a left handed slope), used to indicate illegitimacy.

Well, in regard to why people drive one way or the other: first motor vehicles had the driving wheel on one side, or the other... even it in the middle. Once they started to be mass produced, most had it on the left. In the early 30's, in USA cars started to be produced whith the wheel on the left (this was adopted by most countries, except UK and colonies). In the 90's Europe created the Euro.... but UK still uses the Pound.

On the other hand: most of the world, even the Brits! goes Metric (French invention) except USA where a mixture of Imperial and metric (ie: 1/10 of a mile) measures are used... weird!!!!

I hate to say it but you are not correct in what you say at all with regard to cars and the steering wheel position, it goes back to Roman times, drive on the left, driver on the right, to help keep the whip off the passersby and passengers behind the whip hand (at least with right handed people!).

The width of standard railroad tracks is similar in width to the Roman chariot wheels of 2000 odd years ago......from my head, it is 4feet 8 inches or so.

There are some people who swear that the Romans had nothing to do with the rail track, but there is a great similarity in the widths, though nobody can prove it one way or the other today....

I like the story personally, it fits nicely....Romantic!

There is a bizarre extension to the story , which links from Romans to the number and size of rocket boosters on the shuttle. (due to the size of railway tunnels). I'll look up a ref sometime , unless anyone knows it off-hand.

Brilliant!!

This is the link

Just read the whole thing and you will know how it all fits together.

Now that is plain mischievous Gwen , but also hilariously funny ! ROFLHO

Oh ye of little faith

Would I say something without back-up !

Sorry for late reply . I un-subscribed to thread.

Wow , glad I didn't ask why most people are right -handed .

At least the internet may balance things by encouraging left handed typing in young spotty men.

Being left-handed was seen as being "of the devil" or whichever evil being was popular at the time.

On a more practical note, left-handedness has always been frowned upon in military societies, since a south-paw in a battle line is a danger to his compatriots. Think pulling your sword in the "wrong" direction or leaving a big gap in the line because your shield does fit with the others. Anyone with left-handed tendencies was forcibly turned into a righty...in some cultures this force included removing the left hand.

When I first started sword training, I found a left-handed grip far more comfortable. I was "encouraged" to use a traditional right-handed grip!

In traditional Arab society the right hand is used to eat with, and the left hand for cleaning oneself of the results of eating. And never the twain should meet!

When I go to St. John (USVI) in March and every year, I have to drive on the left hand side of the road. All the cars there have the steering wheel on the left hand side of the car (just like in the states). When I got into the drivers seat there for the first time, I thought driving was going to be difficult. Instead it was sort of fun....felt like I was playing daredevil. The biggest problem I had was ignoring screams from my wife to get back on the other side of the road.

A hammer might help

She eventually acclimated and was able to overcome the urge to correct me. It rarely happens any more (3 years later)

Until recently, the United States Air Force used to maintain a base at Wethersfield. During the 1960s and 70s they used to put on an air flying display that used to attract families in road vehicles for miles around. As a mark of respect for the incumbents at the base the normal drive-on-the-left convention was replaced by drive-on-the-right for all visitors; it does take a little getting used to.

When driving a left-hand-drive car for the first time, it is not unknown to wind the window down for the first few miles instead of shifting gear. Until one gets used to it, that is...

I took a vacation with the family to Ireland once. Drove around the highways wondering why everyone was going so much faster than me until I discovered that the speed limit numbers meant miles per hour, even though the distances to towns were given in kilometers.

Driving on the other side of the road required some getting used to, especially right hand turns. I was constantly being screamed at until I pulled off the road, turned to my family and told them that that wasn't helping.

For bonus points, try riding in the front (passenger) seat of a British taxi going around a busy rotary!

Taxi drivers sit on the right so they can cut you up more effectively.

Hi Kris.

Yes, this poses the queston of do Australians in Sidney say down to Darwin or up to Darwin? I am one of the fortunate people to have visited Australia many times, but this question never seemed to happen, so if there is any Australians on CR4 who could answer this question I would be very gratefull.

Spencer.

Hi vulcan. I read your message and you do have a point! I have a working model of our solar system and if I put it on my table it is orientated vertically. If someone in New Zealand has the same model his would look vertical to him also. Veiwing an object is subject to relative to what? To us an ant is very small, but to a dust mite the ant would be gigantic. So what is south and what is north? It depends on how we are looking at it. Spencer.

For those too lazy to follow Vulcan:

New Zealand, upside down, looks a bit like the 'other foot' of Italy.

Australia, magnified and tilted clockwise by a few degrees, looks a bit like Africa.

The UK looks like someone sitting down on the top of France, embracing Ireland and looking over his shoulder. The British School of Motoring [BSM] embraced this, and added a steering wheel between the Lleyn Peninsular and Cardiganshire and used the graphic in its adverts.

The 'Visa' credit card emblem, upside down, looks like the old flag of South Africa.

I wonder how many people could identify their own country if it was shown to them upside down?

I turn aerial photos from the North upside down (i am from South Africa) otherwise my brain interpret the shades incorrectly. (valleys as hills etc).

The original western maps showed Jerusalem as the center of the world, and everything was referenced to that.

You mean like this one:

You can purchase this one, and many other "inverted" maps at http://www.odt.org/

Hi steve. How can anybody postulate that North is up and South is down or vice- versa! If one is following a compass anywhere in the world then north-south or east-west is in a horisontal plane to where you are. This plane would be parallel to the earths surface which is of course a slight curvature to the traveller. Up is towards the heavens and down is towards the ground you are standing on. when I was younger I used to navigate ships sailing the oceans and this was always the the rule. Up was up the mast, and down was in the bilges. Spencer.

More specifically , 'down' is toward the nearest significant gravitational body . This definition would define things in orbit. Paradoxically a 'down' is a hill .

Do two ideas and two ideas always equal four ideas? We agree that 2+2=4 until we begin to think about the objects to which the this theorem applies. It's empirically true for fingers, apples and other objects whose identity doesn't change in the process of counting. What about clouds in the sky? Maybe the necessity we encounter is an illusion. The suspician is reinforced when examining this proposition-the sum of the interior angles of a triangle equals 180 degrees-which is true for triangles drawn on a sheet of paper but not for a triangle drawn on the surface of a sphere. Analytic truth may not be true in an empiraical sense at all.

I have many other questions like this: why is Monday the first day of the week? Why is the + pole of the battery possitive and not NEGATIVE? Why are Time Zones measured from Greenwich and not from Tombuktu? Why do the Brits drive on the right lane of the road, while we do it on the left?

I hate those guys who invented all the CONVENTIONS that rule or lives!

Hi r7ddoc,

If I have it right Monday is not the first day of the week, Sunday is. Okay, so now I guess your next question would be:"Why is Sunday the first day of the week?"

Greenwich, where the hell's that? Oh yes, now I remember, the Cutty Sark and all that. Guess the Brits thought they were the centre of the "known" world, and hence had proprietorial rights on the placement of the internationally recognised Datum lines. Reckon the same goes for cars.

Cheap shot, I know, but could you imagine the cock up if an Army went to attack and all the different Generals etc where on different time zones????? To say nothing of business. I think the applied principle here for convention is that everyone around the world knows what to expect at any given time anywhere else in the world.

If all else fails, revert back to the long time adage of CHAKIDE:"Who CARES!"

When you refer to the christian week sunday is the resting day so it is the seventh day.

In islamitic and jewish regions sunday is the first day.

It is all a principle of conventions.

Hey howzit Gwen, long time no see. Oh sorry its me that's been away.

Agreed! Different conventions cause all sorts of nonsense like Jihads, Holy Wars, Bloodbaths, Genocides and all kinds of mayham that Mankind is renowned for.

There I go, ranting again.

Have a great day.

I was away for a week too, easter holidays. Those things I like in religions: you get day's off.

When you look to the shit happening to the world fed by religion, you would believe Marx: "Religion is the Opium for the crowds, it should be forbidden". It only turned out that the system he proposed was not an improvement for the crowds.

That's a fact. Any "religion" that advocates the taking of another life in the name of the said religion, should perhaps be looking for their god in place further south of north than they currently suspect their god to be residing.

The Hippocratic oath has the first guiding principle: "First, DO NO HARM!" Okay, I know I'm drifting off the subject, but remember this only, The Truth Shall Set You Free.

Okay, I gotta go now, convention says I should get back to work, and conventionally complete my month end data update, to e-mail the conventional excel format document to a conventionally thinking boss, sitting in a conventional office in Durban, doing...............well, conventional work!

As long as you get paid in a conventional way there is no problem.

I have to continue my daily conventional duties too, keeping the answers short.

Hi Gwen,

Like it or not, Monday is the first day because ISO says so!

Hi mongoose. We Brits were the first people to make really accurate maps and sea charts of the world way back then and we had to start somewhere. The actual 0 datum line goes through the Greenwich observatory on the Thames river, this is where the ships set sail from with the first accurate chronometer. These with the Dutch were the really great mariners who had to have an accurate timepiece to navigate the world with such accuracy that there charts are still in use today. Their starting point was at Greenwich so this is the reason for the 0 meridan starting there. Spencer.

Hi Spencer,

King Henry of Portugal (AKA The Navigant) established Algarves in Portugal as the first 0 actual datum line about 100 or 200 years before you did!

You are mixing your Henrys my friend, according to Wikipedia, King Henry of Portugal lived from 31-1-1512 to 31-1-1580 (yes he died on his Birthday, what a present!).

Henry the Navigator lived from 4-3-1394 to 13-11-1460......he was known as Prince Henry the Navigator or the Seafarer.

To quote from Wikipedia again:-"The old view that Henry's court rapidly grew into the technological base for exploration, with a naval arsenal and an observatory, etc., has long ago been debunked.There was no observatory or "school" of navigation, although Henry did possess geographical curiosity and therefore employed cartographers."

Also he never went on any voyages either!!! He was more of a sponsor....

Also Wikipedia have made no mention of an attempt to start a 0 meridian in Portugal, maybe they forgot about it!! I checked other sites, but could not find a mention either, but I may not have been as exhaustive as I should have been....perhaps if you have a good link that you could post I would be most grateful.

Come on guys ! Anybody who ever made a map put themselves at the centre of the world .

In regard to your posting: Polinesians call themselves something like Oopite te enua (the navel of the world): does this ring any bell?

Hi Andy,

sorry for the delay in replying to your mail but I was travelling for my company...

In regard to our "friend" Henry: yes, indeed, he probably never boarded a vessel, but he actually established a navigation shool and encouraged the exploration of "new worlds"

Portugueese sailed along the Atlantic coast of Africa, being the first European in crossing the Equator, later they surrounded this continent discovering "Zipango" (Japan). Both countries established a quite long term business relationship.

Did you know that many japanese words are of portugueese origin? Pao (bread) is an example...

Let me recommend you my "Bible": there is a book (about 15 years old) called The Discoverers by Isaac Borstein (Boorstein?). Try to get it, it is the best book iI have ever read!!!!

There is also a interesting thiriller / novel written by a Spanish author called "La carta Esférica (The Espherical Chart), where the subject of ancient Zero Meridians is discussed. Translations into German or English are probably available!

PS: Ich spreche auch Deutsch (for the rest of the forum: this means I also speak German)

I always understood that the Greenwich thing came about with the introduction of the railways. The railway operators had to have a nationwide standard time instead of the varying local times which were set by using the position of the sun overhead to determine noon. Greenwich was used because the Royal observatory was there & the practice spread because Britain was busy conquering the world then instead of trying to give away control of our country as we are now.

http://www.geog.port.ac.uk/webmap/hantsmap/hantsmap/meridian.htm is worth a look, as is the story of Thomas Harrison, passionately described in the book 'Longitude', by Dava Sobel.

Railway Time originated as a time standard across the UK with the arrival of the railways. A standard was desperately needed, as in the early nineteenth centrury a businessman in Bristol wanting to catch the three o'clock train to London had to be there a good 11 minutes before the hour, otherwise it would have left without him. For many years, station clocks were set to match the timekeeper carried by the guard of the first train to leave London after ten o'clock in the morning.

I have always tried to set last orders by local time and not GMT, being from the South West that gives me at least an extra 10 mins.

It's probably even better in Eire!

It was John Harrison who invented the acurate chronometer that enabled longtitude to be calculated not Thomas. Sorry to be pedantic but he in fact enabled Britania to rule the waves and deserves the gratitude of many seafarers.

You are true on the reason for having a national unified time system: in the pre railroad time there was no central time, all was referred to local time.

For Belgium the local time difference was 15' (east to west) as soon as trains started to cross the country, the train Arlon-Ostend left at 8.00 and arrived at 12.00 but he drove 4h15. It got worse in the inverse. From that moment we had the standard Brussels time. Later it got corrected to the international timing and shifted to the Berlin/Vienna time (winter/summer). We should have the Greenwich time zone but Hitler decided that we belonged to Berlin.

Strangely it got never corrected after the war, They took of the money we earned during the war but left us with the "ausweiss" and the time.

HMMM... WRONG: the "Greenwich thing" as you call it has little to do with railroads (all of UK is within the SAME time zone). The need of establishing a "ZERO" was for sailing, as sailors used the local time (wherever they were) to establish the LONGITUDE (this actually means: how far am I from the coast). Only after cronographs were invented, longitude could be precisely established!

Do you imagine a vessel carrying a clock driven by a counterweight?

It would certaintly be a confusing and chaotic place without all those conventions.

The former MP Tony Benn used to keep an upside down map in his office (printed that way ) to 'keep a perspective' . I don't know where/if you can get one now .

Perhaps early map makers , in the Northern Hemisphere , considered things that way because it's the way they looked for the Pole star.

Then again , 'down-under' would be confusing otherwise.

Message to forum thread:

Yes, convention, convention, reference standards...

However, there are two conventions I don't subscribe to - or at least use the reverse as a discussion tool:

1. I draw Organisation Charts upside down, that way showing the Producers at the top, supported by the Management Structure.

2. I always refer to People, not Human Resources.

In terms of the time reference Greenwich Mean Time (sic), there is an over-arching standard Universal Time Coordinated ("UTC") which differs from GMT by a varying amount up to 15 seconds I believe.

What would I know from Down Under anyway.

The Chinese were first in discovering the magnetic fields, and a side always marked the average between the exit of the sun and the dusk, by convention of use and constumbre called NORTH, that was? - until I do not arrive there. With Columbus already North was called, if tapeworm compass, was fault of Marco Polo.

The Greeks had magnetite but they did not know like applying it.

How call North Pole and put up, the convention of use and constumbre the sailors.

Organising the world in a north south direction was already known by the romans.

They used the sun to find the reference for the direction of their roman roads (we still use them)

Later when the first maps have been drawn, a convention has been made that the north was the upper side. (Mercator was one of the first to find a decent way for mapping)

The name "North" seems to be Chinese.

Which percentage difference is their between the northern and southern hemisphere, most of the people live north of the equator?

In fact: why bother on these issues, changing it will only confuse people. Handy to know that the upper side of a map should be north. Local maps are in a lot of cases different to fit in the region.

North is up because, hold your breath... that is what we call up.

A digresion

I remember some time ago a suggestion that the USA would not experience as many tornados if they drove on the left side of the road, I wonder how true this would be? I suppose these tornados always rotate anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere, is that correct?

We could also stop calling them Tornado, the statistics would go down like hell.