Greenwich was voted the world's prime meridian
On this day · 13 October 1884
In 1884, delegates from 25 nations met in Washington and picked a brass line in London to anchor the entire planet's longitude.
On October 13, 1884, the International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C., voted to recommend that the line running through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich serve as the world’s prime meridian — zero degrees longitude. The tally was lopsided: 22 in favor, 1 against (San Domingo), with France and Brazil abstaining.
The conference drew 41 delegates from 25 nations, summoned to end the chaos of every country measuring longitude from its own capital. Greenwich won partly on merit and partly on momentum: most of the world’s shipping already used charts based on it.
France held out for decades, clinging to the Paris meridian until 1911.
The vote was only a recommendation, not a treaty, and adoption crept along for years. Still, that single resolution quietly fixed the grid we navigate by — every GPS coordinate and time zone traces back to a line through a London suburb.
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