[tz] St Andrews meridian in the 17th century

Peter Ilieve peter at aldie.co.uk
Sun Oct 5 17:33:30 UTC 2014


On 5 Oct 2014, at 17:18, Lester Caine <lester at lsces.co.uk> wrote:

> It is this area that wy own interests lie, and it is not clear from the
> limited data provided on James Gregory if his meridian was actually
> associated with setting time anywhere other than St. Andrew? Just what
> was the spread of usage of common time across the UK back in the 17th
> century?

Yes, I noticed that the St Andrews press release didn’t say anything
about this meridian being used to define local time back then, even for
the town, let alone anywhere else. It only mentions astronomical
observations.

A couple of minor points:

The town, and hence the university, is St Andrews. It’s the saint who
is Andrew. Maybe your ? was just a typo.

It wasn’t really the UK in the 17th century. Scotland was a separate
kingdom, although under the same King as England post the union of the
crowns in 1603. Those kingdoms weren’t united until the union of the
parliaments in 1707.


		Peter Ilieve



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