Oi! There's the Old Time-Space Line!

The Shepherd Gate Clock at the Royal
Observatory, Greenwich

If aliens from outer space happened to swing by the earth and had to guess what the most important city on the planet was, what do you think they would they pick?  OK, perhaps that question was overly broad so let's be more specific.  What city do you think they would choose as Earth's center of time and space?  To an alien visitor, a town just outside of central London called Greenwich may not the be most obvious choice and yet this place is indeed our planet's officially designated "center of time and space". 

During a visit in 2007 to London, one of my favorite cities on Earth, I decided to check out this so-called "center of time and space" for myself.  In early October, England's infamous "non-weather" was mostly sunny during my time there although the clouds had crept back on the particular day of my visit.  A convenient and as is turned out, extremely scenic way to get to Greenwich from central London is via ferry.  I hopped aboard a "river bus" at the docks in Westminster and enjoyed what at first seemed like a leisurely trip down the Thames River.  As we made our way closer to Greenwich and I observed the various sites along the way, I realized I wasn't just on a boat going from point A to point B.  Cruising down the river also turned out to be a cruise through British history.

Tower of London

The Globe Theater

Canary Wharf

The decommissioned HMS...
something or other

On one side of the river stood the majestic dome of St. Paul's Cathedral.  On the other side was Shakespeare's (reconstructed) Globe Theater, where I had watched "The Merchant of Venice" a couple of days earlier.  The Tower of London kept careful watch over the iconic Tower Bridge and further along we passed an old battleship, an obvious reminder of the age when Britannia ruled the waves.  The glitzy sky scrapers jutting out of Canary Wharf symbolized the country's modern-day financial clout.  Starting from the year of the Tower of London's construction (1066) and ending with the completion of 30 St. Mary Axe (aka "The Gherkin") in 2004 gives a total of 938 years and taking into account the travel time between the Westminster and Greenwich piers (let's say 35 min) gives a total of 26.8 years/min.  Not too shabby, unless you happen to be an alien who time travels in a blue box.

Once we landed at the Greenwich Pier, I took a short stroll and I found myself standing in the midst of the Old Royal Naval College.  At my feet was a plaque stating that on the very spot my Chuck Taylors were planted on once stood a royal palace in which the queens Mary I and Elizabeth I were born.  Wow.  This plaque, and all the other things I mentioned earlier, were part of what appealed to me so much about London.  Aside from being a big, lively, cosmopolitan city, it was also the kind of place bursting at the seems with history.  As someone from a young country (US) and a history buff, I couldn't help but to be impressed.  I could easily imagine a tour guide with a slick BBC accent walking down a random street in London, pointing out things like "over here, a rather inebriated Oscar Wilde once vomited out his innards and just round the corner there, Samuel Johnson is said to have beaten a would-be robber half to death with a fish".

The Old Royal Naval College

The Old Royal Naval College was, as the name implies, one of the locations where British naval officers once received their education.  Although it stopped functioning as a learning institution in 1998, the the college, along with the various other related sites in Greenwich, are museums now part of the Maritime Greenwich UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The interiors of the buildings were elegant examples of the famous Baroque style of Sir Christopher Wren.  I had been completely blown away during my visit to his life's work, the iconic St. Paul's Cathedral, just a few days earlier, and was glad to encounter his handiwork once more.

The Old Royal Naval College as

viewed from the Royal Observatory.

My ultimate destination, the Royal Observatory, lay atop of a hill overlooking the Naval College.  The contrast between the old college and the flashy buildings of Canary Wharf just across the river made a for great contrast.  The path leading up to it was lined with trees as well as with statues of famous pirates and sea captains.  The lovely red brick architecture (again courtesy of Sir Christopher Wren) evoked images of mad tinkerers from ages long past toiling away with intricate gears and gadgets.  It turned out my initial impression wasn't so far removed from reality.

The observatory was established by order of King Charles II in 1675. He also created the position of "Astronomer Royal", which is a post once held by the likes of Edmond "the comet" Hally and still exists today.  Aside from being in charge of the observatory, the job description states the Astronomer Royal must:

...forthwith to apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the rectifying of the tables of the motions of the heavens, and the places of the fixed stars, so as to find out the so-much desired longitude of places for the perfecting the art of navigation.

While the mission as stated above may sound like a perfect fit for the ivory-coated halls of academia, we can rest assured the real intent was more along the lines of:

...stay up until ungodly hours of the night gawking at specks of light in the sky, meticulously measure these things with funny-looking instruments, and apply this arcane knowledge in a way that we can use to improve our naval power and thereby bring back untold riches from the farthest reaches of the planet.

 


 









 
Although the actual buildings themselves weren't very large, they did contain a wealth of funny-looking instruments, miscellaneous gadgets, and, of course, many telescopes and clocks.  On the side of one building was the famous dividing line itself, the Greenwich Meridian.  I, and every other visitor there, took a moment to straddle the eastern and western hemispheres.

Me and my Chucks on
the Meridian

Although I started out using the phrase "the center of time and space", I can't take credit for coining it.  Actually, I'm not sure where this phrase originated from but I do have to compliment the folks at the Royal Observatory for making good use of it.

Perhaps the Royal Observatory placed this sign
to clear up any confusion about just where
visitors are in the world

As interesting as I found all the technical information, the highlight of the visit for me was an extremely knowledgeable and very entertaining tour guide.  By chance I wandered toward the circle of people standing around her and after a few minutes, I too was both enthralled and entertained at her wonderful narration on the history of "the CENTER of tiiiiiiiime and spaaaaaaaace!", a phrase she comically emphasized throughout her talk.  The story concerning the Greenwich Meridian, Greenwich Mean Time, and it's modern successor, Coordinated Universal time, is one beyond the scope of this post but BBC Magazine has a great article on the subject.  One thing I found quite amusing was the history of disputes regarding the meridian.  While some countries objected to making Greenwich the planet's center of time and space on practical grounds, other objections were less scientific.  To quote the tour guide "...and the Irish objected to Greenwich because they 'did not want to have time after the English had finished with it' ".

A good guide can really make history come
alive...and make it really funny too!

The meridian, of course, is an imaginary line, an agreed upon designation for the sake of convenience and practicality and this point actually made me think about so many other things in our everyday lives that are just conventions.  For example, is there anything special about this particular day that makes it Sunday and not Monday?  "Sunday" is just so because it fits into a calendar system many others have decided to follow.  For people using a different calendar system, this particular day may not be "Sunday" at all but something else entirely.  Another obvious example of a convention is language: the words, constructions, and strings of sounds we make are agreed upon to mean something.  Different groups often have different agreements.  For example, the sounds that make up "mala" would mean "bad" or "harmful" in Spanish but the very same sounds in Hindi (written out as "माला") mean "rosary" or "garland".

For all of the conventions and designations we use, they are, at the end of the day, just that: conventions.  Or in the words of Immanuel Kant:

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.