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most of the 25 attending countries finally agreed to use Greenwich, England as zero longitude. Greenwich became the world’s Prime Meridian.
The United States gets into the Game
But, long before the 1884 agreement the United States got into the game and created its own prime meridian, its own zero longitude. A good book on the subject is, “The Jefferson Stone: Demarcation of the First Meridian of the United States,” by Silvio A. Bedini. Some of the information below is derived from that source.
The story is that after gaining independence in 1776, many surveyors and mariners continued to use Greenwich, England, as the prime meridian. This really irked some Americans. Greenwich represented a connection to thenold ruler and they wanted to be totally independent of Great Britain. When it was determined in 1790 that Washington, D.C., was to be the Capital, Thomas Jefferson, directed by President George Washington to implement that decision, had a surveyor in 1791 run a meridian line. This turned out to a north-south line through the middle of Capitol Hill, back then called Jenkins Hill. It was a start.
Enter Pierre L’Enfant. In 1791, as part of his design for Washington, D.C., L’Enfant came up with an east-west line. It ran from the middle of
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