{"id":4844,"date":"2010-08-01T06:45:19","date_gmt":"2010-08-01T11:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=4844"},"modified":"2022-06-04T09:01:13","modified_gmt":"2022-06-04T14:01:13","slug":"american-meridian-travel-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/american-meridian-travel-box\/","title":{"rendered":"My Travel Box – American Meridian Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My Travel Box article led to more interest than I expected both from longstanding and recent readers. It proves once again that I have no idea what resonates with a larger audience. So I’ll continue to write about what I find personally interesting and hope that a few of you join me for the ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Go ahead and take a quick look<\/a> if you didn’t learn about the Travel Box. That’s because I’m going to use it as the conceptual basis for the current article with a twist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mentioned that people in England would be at a severe disadvantaged if they wanted to play the Travel Box game. They live way too close to the Prime Meridian in Greenwich. Therefore they would receive an artificially low score by birth. Loyal reader Hamish commented<\/a> that maybe it would be more fair to use one’s own residence a a personal prime meridian. I agree. It’s a better indicator of actual east-west travel than an arbitrary selection at Greenwich. So let’s give that a try and see how it works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Personal Prime Meridian<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately a major meridian once existed near my home. There the American Meridian ran through the dome of the Old Naval Observatory in Washington, DC<\/a>. The United States used that meridian to anchor numerous state borders beginning about 1850. Later they switched to the universal standard circa 1884 when the International Meridian Conference agreed upon Greenwich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I live maybe a couple klicks west of the imaginary line. I can even see the dome of the old observatory from some of the taller buildings in my neighborhood. That’s a situation that would be similar to many geography-savvy residents of the greater London area with respect to Greenwich today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I pretended that somehow the Conference selected the American Meridian way back in 1884. Then I recalculated my Travel Box. The Old Naval Observatory sits directly atop Longitude 0.00\u00b0 in that scenario instead of 77.05\u00b0 West. Thus the hemispheric boundaries move nearly a quarter turn towards the west.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Changed Perspective<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So let’s move the Prime Meridian to Washington, DC and see what happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n