ancient greece invented the system of latitudes and longitudes in 2nd century a.d.
ancient greece invented the system of latitudes and longitudes in 2nd century a.d.
who invented the system of latitudes and longitudes in 2nd century a.d?
ancient greece
in calculating latitudes of climata (latitudes correlated with the length of the longest solstitial day), hipparchus used an unexpectedly accurate value for the obliquity of the ecliptic, 23°40′ (the actual value in the second half of the 2nd century  was approximately 23°43′), whereas all other ancient authors knew only a roughly rounded value 24°, and even ptolemy used a less accurate value, 23°51′.
hipparchus
there is only one surviving copy of , which is kept at the strasbourg university library. a latin translation is kept at the biblioteca nacional de españa in madrid. the book opens with the list of latitudes and longitudes, in order of "weather zones", that is to say in blocks of latitudes and, in each weather zone, by order of longitude. as paul gallez points out, this excellent system allows the deduction of many latitudes and longitudes where the only extant document is in such a bad condition as to make it practically illegible. neither the arabic copy nor the latin translation include the map of the world itself; however, hubert daunicht was able to reconstruct the missing map from the list of coordinates. daunicht read the latitudes and longitudes of the coastal points in the manuscript, or deduces them from the context where they were not legible. he transferred the points onto graph paper and connected them with straight lines, obtaining an approximation of the coastline as it was on the original map. he then does the same for the rivers and towns.
muhammad ibn musa al-khwarizmi