We visited the Prime Meridian today at Greenwich, which is basically a metal line on the ground that is supposed to be 0 0 0. More importantly, its the home of hundreds of years of time-related research. In the "Time Galleries." It's easy to forget that our concept of time is a relatively new invention. For decades, time was kept differently in different places and no one place necessarily matched to another. However, it also wasn't necessary; most towns/villages were concerned with the events going on in their own areas. Once groups started to expand via sea and land, time and direction became very important. The Time Galleries explained how the British set about solving the "longitude problem" in the 18th century after a disastrous shipwreck. It took them years to solve because the direction and clock engineering at the time could not compensate for the natural movement of the ship. Read all about that the Royal Observatory. I think Dr. Who would enjoy this exhibit very much.
