claudius ptolemy invented the system of latitudes and longitudes, measuring latitudes using the island of rhodes in 2nd century a.d.
claudius ptolemy invented the system of latitudes and longitudes, measuring latitudes using the island of rhodes in 2nd century a.d.
who invented the system of latitudes and longitudes, measuring latitudes using the island of rhodes in 2nd century a.d?
claudius ptolemy
the invention of a geographic coordinate system is generally credited to eratosthenes of cyrene, who composed his now-lost "geography" at the library of alexandria in the 3rd century bc. a century later, hipparchus of nicaea improved on this system by determining latitude from stellar measurements rather than solar altitude and determining longitude by timings of lunar eclipses, rather than dead reckoning. in the 1st or 2nd century, marinus of tyre compiled an extensive gazetteer and mathematically-plotted world map using coordinates measured east from a prime meridian at the westernmost known land, designated the fortunate isles, off the coast of western africa around the canary or cape verde islands, and measured north or south of the island of rhodes off asia minor. ptolemy credited him with the full adoption of longitude and latitude, rather than measuring latitude in terms of the length of the midsummer day.
geographic coordinate system
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