Peter Ilieve wrote:
I'm afraid the BBC piece is quite wrong. It leads with "A Scottish astronomer and scientist is thought to have laid the first meridian line" but Gregory was definitely not the first. A famous earlier example is the meridian line in the Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna, placed there in 1575-6 by the Italian astronomer Ignazio Danti and greatly improved in 1655-7 (and restored in 1695) by Cassini. This was a working meridian line; among other things, Cassini used it to measure the diameter of the Sun, to verify Kepler's second law, and (more relevant for the tz database) to dispel doubts about whether the year 1700 should be a leap year. You can see a photo of part of the current version of that line here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Bologna060.jpg and there's some background here: http://www.imcce.fr/host/meridienne/italie.php My guess is that Dr John Amson told the BBC reporter that Gregory's line was the first line that was so long (2.4 km) and accurate, and the reporter jumped to the incorrect conclusion that it was the the first line ever.